Vin Scully's Last Call
How the Dodgers announcer's final day at the mic bookended a master class
On October 2, 1936 — years before he learned Shakespeare — an 8-year-old redheaded boy studied a Chinese laundromat’s window. Posted in front, deep in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, was the line score of that day’s World Series blowout: New York Yankees 18, New York Giants 4. “Well, the boy’s reaction was pity for the Giants,” he recalled years later. “He became a rabid Giants fan from that day forward until the joyous moment when he was hired to broadcast Brooklyn Dodger games in 1950.”
Poetry went on to follow Vincent Edward Scully. Such was the case whether he was in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, on CBS or NBC, or bookending his 67th year as the Dodgers’ play-by-play announcer. On the last day of what he had decided would be his last regular season, it just so happened that the team of his adulthood was to play the team of his youth, the now-San Francisco Giants. The date happened to be October 2, 2016.
So the 88-year-old Catholic, whose red hair had turned white on the sides, attended a Sunday Mass at San Francisco’s AT&T Park and prepared to give his final verses. From a microphone booth overlooking the bayside field, he said later that day, “It was as if it was ordained that I would do this game.”
The sellout crowd of 41,445 agreed. Angelenos who had trekked upcoast to see him had homemade signs in reach — “Vin Scully is my hero”; “From Brooklyn to L.A., you’ve been nothing but class.” Even the Giants fans, whose wild-card hopes rode on whether their team would beat the visiting division champs that afternoon, ignored their nerves and tipped their caps toward him. The out-of-town scoreboard past right field read “THX, VIN.” Beyond the ballpark, football’s Oakland Raiders had bought a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle, thanking Scully with the phrase “Commitment to Excellence.”
The next nine innings were his way of returning the thanks. Simulcast on television and radio, the tenor signed on with his trademark speak-singing: “IT’S TIIIIIIME FOR DODDDDGER BASEBAAAAALL!”
What followed was classic Scully. Though he could have, he didn’t rush to make the day about himself. He instead raised the senses of viewers and listeners — his “friends” — through word-pictures, as he had during most other games. In this case, Giants starter Matt Moore’s erratic record evoked the poet Longfellow’s line about “the little girl with the curl.” Fidgety Giants outfielder Hunter Pence “would make coffee nervous.” Dodgers stalwart Adrián González was “the butter-and-egg man, he’s been delivering for years.” After scoring their third and fourth runs on a Denard Span triple, the Giants were “dancing in the streets.” Right before San Francisco made the score 5-0, it was “gray overhead, but for [Dodgers starter Kenta] Maeda, it feels like the sky is falling.” And it was only the second inning.
The game’s lulls allowed Scully, as usual, to weave past and present. A camera shot of two boys, one in blue and the other in orange, inspired him to recount the Dodgers-Giants rivalry’s genesis. He referenced the Giants’ championship year of 1933 and the time manager Bill Terry had upset the “borough of churches” by saying “The Dodgers? . . . Are they still in the league?” He mentioned how the Giants redeemed themselves in 1934 by beating the Dodgers in that season’s final two games. In between Dodgers infielder Justin Turner’s leg-kick swings, Scully made comparisons to Giants icon “Melvin Thomas Ott from Gretna, Louisiana.” The fact that this was yet another Dodgers-Giants game sparked memories of Giant Bobby Thomson’s 1953 “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” — “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” — and the fan whose recording had preserved Russ Hodges’s radio call.
But at some point, even the humble Scully found it harder to ignore the impending goodbye that distinguished this game from the rest. There was no other way to explain why the Giants had decided to simulcast their rival Dodgers’ broadcast feed in the third inning. “I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to use the radio up here in San Francisco, an opportunity to say hello to all the Giant fans and others, baseball fans as well, all over the Bay Area,” he said over the air. “I can just imagine two guys. One says to the other, ‘Did you hear Scully?’ The guy says, ‘Yeah, big deal.’ But it is a big deal to me. I really do appreciate the opportunity.”
Between the third and fourth innings, San Francisco kept the tributes coming. Giants legend Willie Mays came up to the visiting broadcast booth. The 85-year-old “Say Hey Kid” handed Scully a photograph of Mel Ott and a ticket stub from the day of Ott’s 500th home run. Mays also unveiled a plaque: “VIN SCULLY, FINAL MLB BROADCAST. SEASONS: 67, BROADCASTS: 9,000+. BASEBALL FAN: 80 YEARS. LA VS. SF, OCTOBER 2, 2016.” As Scully described it in the top of the fourth: the Giants had “put up a plaque on the wall saying, like Kilroy, I’ve been here.” With kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids mere feet away, he said, “I really want to thank the Giants for what they have done for my wife and family throughout the weekend. I can root for them now when they go to New York to play the Mets.”
Indeed, noting the 5-1 score in the middle of the fourth, much of San Francisco already anticipated a win, a wild-card berth, and a division series out east. Giants fans felt able to breathe — and spend more energy joining Dodgers fans in honoring Scully. A shoutout by AT&T Park public address announcer Renel Brooks-Moon brought the audience to its feet, with thank-you signs and camera phones hoisted. As Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” played over the speakers, Scully and Mays embraced and smiled against the Dodgers booth’s window glass. The broadcaster turned to the most decorated Giant and told him privately, “Who ever thought that I would be holding hands with you?”
Scully sat back down with his headset as the Dodgers retook the field. This time, he looked into a camera and said it for all to hear: “Who would ever think that little redheaded kid with a tear in his pants and the shirttail hanging out, playing stickball in the streets of New York with a tennis ball and a broom handle, would wind up sitting here, 67 years of broadcasting, and with my arm around one of the greatest players I ever saw, the great Willie Mays? . . .
“There are miracles, aren’t they?”
He paused, giving his friends at home a moment to answer yes.
“Right. Let’s go back to this one.”
The seventh-inning stretch gave the crowd a chance to sing his favorite song, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” “How about it, everybody?” said Giants announcer Mike Krukow from the home booth. “Let’s salute Vin. Stand up, hold your cheer cards, and sing your hearts out!”
Scully sang with them for most of the way. He stopped only to laugh, because fans of both teams had replaced the lyrics to say “root, root, root for the Dod-gers.”
By the end of the song, the voice of Sandy Koufax’s 1965 perfect game (“You can almost taste the pressure now”), Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series homer (“In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened”), and Hank Aaron’s 715th home run (“A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South”) got choked up. “Boy, I’ve been to a lot of ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Games.’ Hm. That’s about the best thing I can say right now.”
But Scully had more to say in the top of the ninth. With the Giants up 7-1, he paraphrased German poet Ludwig Jacobowski: “Don’t be sad that it’s over; smile because it happened. That’s really the way I feel about this remarkable opportunity that I was given and I was allowed to keep for all these years.” Aware of how much older his most loyal listeners had gotten, he quoted late sportswriter A. J. Liebling: “The world isn’t going backward, if you can just stay young enough to remember what it was really like when you were really young.”
Before long, the Dodgers — and their announcer — were down to their last out of the afternoon. Giants reliever Sergio Romo threw a slider from the stretch. Dodgers first baseman Rob Segedin hit the ball high to left-center. “Coming over is [Ángel] Pagán,” Scully said. “He puts it away, and the Giants are the wild-card team. The city is going wild, appropriately enough.”
Even so, the guys on the field took time for the man above. Players and umpires waved at him. He waved back.
Minutes later, the field was quiet.
Scully looked once more into the lens. He spoke to the audience that had accompanied him through wins and losses, the 1972 death of his first wife, the 1994 death of son Michael in a helicopter crash, and this very afternoon.
May God give you,
For every storm, a rainbow,
For every tear, a smile,
For every care, a promise,
And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends,
A faithful friend to share,
For every sigh, a sweet song,
And an answer for each prayer.
You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know in my heart I’ve always needed you more than you’ve ever needed me. And I’ll miss our time together more than I can say.
But you know what? There will be a new day and eventually a new year. And when the upcoming winter gives way to spring — oh, rest assured — once again it will be time for Dodger baseball.
So this is Vin Scully, wishing you a very pleasant good afternoon wherever you may be.
The hum of coastal winds took over.
It was Scully’s time to do what he had told one reporter he might do.
“Maybe I’ll take my watch off and just put it in the drawer.”
References
Jamie McCauley, “Scully Calls Final Game in Hall of Fame Broadcasting Career,” Associated Press online, October 2, 2016, https://apnews.com/scully-calls-final-game-in-hall-of-fame-broadcasting-career-97edd4b8a68a48aeabc672ac37f1d673.
Tom Hoffarth, “Why Vin Scully Wants to Be Known as ‘a Man Who Lived Up to His Own Beliefs,’” Los Angeles Daily News, September 24, 2016.
The author also consulted a consulted a recording of Spectrum SportsNet LA’s telecast of the game, available on YouTube.