Vin Scully has passed away

trekfan55

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Holy crap that got me in the stomach. He lived a full life and all but it still hurts.
 

jon abbey

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He called Dodgers games for 67 seasons, from age 22 to age 88. That is truly unbelievable. RIP, sir.
 

SoxinSeattle

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I absolutely loved Vin and the one man booth. He really put you in a time machine. We could here a game the same way our grandparents did. Rest in peace.
 

Deweys New Stance

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I guess I shouldn't be that surprised when a 94 year old passes, but this really does come as a shock. Seemed to still be full of vigor. Very saddened to end the day with this news. Just a great, great broadcaster and person. And such an incredible run with that franchise on two coasts.

Recent LA Times article on Vin Scully's bond with Dodger fans through the transistor radio. And accompanying video.
 

brienc

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I loved watching Dodgers games to hear Vin Scully tell stories about Brooklyn and Ebbets Field, which would make me reminisce about how lucky my parents and grandparents were to listen to him all summer, and see their beloved Brooklyn club at an absolute shrine. One more connection to my past is gone, and this one really hurts.
 

jcd0805

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I loved turning on a Dodgers game and listening as I was getting ready for bed, he had the best freaking way of calling a game and his voice was just like a warm blanket. RIP to a true great.
 

patinorange

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He did a lot of golf on NBC, and of course, he was great at that.
As a longtime resident of So. California, this one hurts.
Even for a team I really didn't care about, listening to him on the radio was something special.
 

DontTauntOrtizMe

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We moved from East Longmeadow to So. Cal when I was about 5. Some of my earliest memories are from when I would fall asleep listening to Vin Scully. Sometimes, I’d get woken up by the highlights played after the game was over. Usually when Vin got excited because the Dodgers pulled out a last minute victory. He was the voice of my childhood.
 

Bergs

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I was just talking about him today, and how rarely I watch West Coast baseball since he retired. He was the GOAT, and no one else comes particularly close. I am sad.
 

E5 Yaz

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How important was he in Los Angeles ...

Taking radios to ball parks to listen to the game as you watch it is a fairly common practice, but nowhere is it so pronounced a characteristic as it is in Los Angeles, and has been since 1958, the year the Dodgers left Ebbets Field and moved west. Los Angeles was hungry for major league ball, and though the Dodgers had a dreadful season that first year (they finished seventh), the crowds jammed into Memorial Coliseum, where the team played until Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine opened in 1962.
Perhaps their unfamiliarity with major leaguers prompted so many fans to bring transistors along at first in order to establish instant identification of the players. But a large percentage brought radios not just to identify players but to learn what they were doing.


https://vault.si.com/vault/1964/05/04/the-transistor-kid
 

soxhop411

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September 18, 2006 – Trailing 9-5 in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Dodgers hit four consecutive home runs (Jeff Kent, J.D. Drew, Russell Martin, Marlon Anderson) to tie the game against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium. San Diego scored a run in the top of the 10th, but Nomar Garciaparra’s walk-off two-run homer gave the Dodgers an 11-10 victory. The Dodgers entered the game ranked last among N.L. teams in home runs. The Dodgers became the fourth team in the 20th century to hit four consecutive home runs, joining the 1964 Minnesota Twins, 1963 Cleveland Indians and 1961 Milwaukee Braves
View: https://streamable.com/8t08fk

http://dodgershistory.mlblogs.com/2012/09/18/four-consecutive-home-runs/

And from 2012
View: https://streamable.com/97vogu
How important was he in Los Angeles ...

Taking radios to ball parks to listen to the game as you watch it is a fairly common practice, but nowhere is it so pronounced a characteristic as it is in Los Angeles, and has been since 1958, the year the Dodgers left Ebbets Field and moved west. Los Angeles was hungry for major league ball, and though the Dodgers had a dreadful season that first year (they finished seventh), the crowds jammed into Memorial Coliseum, where the team played until Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine opened in 1962.
Perhaps their unfamiliarity with major leaguers prompted so many fans to bring transistors along at first in order to establish instant identification of the players. But a large percentage brought radios not just to identify players but to learn what they were doing.


https://vault.si.com/vault/1964/05/04/the-transistor-kid
When Vin Scully receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 Obama talked about this exact thing
View: https://streamable.com/60pt9e
 
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Van Everyman

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Am I allowed to say I didn’t really care much for Scully? I get that he had a memorable voice. He and Garagiola were never my favorite pairing in the 80s – I much preferred NBC’s AL pairing (which Wikipedia tells me was Costas and Kubek but I don’t remember it being them and thought it may have been Dick Enberg). I’m sure Scully calling Game 6 didn’t help. But the hagiography with Scully has always low key annoyed me.
 

InstaFace

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If there were an inner circle of the hall of fame, for people who not merely excelled within baseball but actively grew the game's reaches, appeal and community - made it more of the celebration that it intends to be, rather than the commercial act that it's so easy to focus on - Vin Scully would surely be in it. Could there be even 20 people throughout the long history of pro baseball who have minted or sustained as many new fans of the game as Scully? Perhaps, but 50? It's not a long list. And even the Ruths and Mantles can only walk their part on the stage for 20 years or so. Scully was in it for 70, and not just punching a clock for the latter decades but reveling in it and bringing the same energy every day.

There were some great memories shared of Fred Rogers (Mr Rogers' Neighborhood) a few years ago, I forget what made them make the rounds. But in one of them, a woman's too-cool-for-school kids, boys of 8 or 10 or so, found themselves captivated by Mr Rogers after she introduced them to the show, despite being far too old for it. They'd come home from their overscheduled lives, get done with their homework, and then turn on a few episodes of a show from a bygone decade. And when she eventually asked why, they said "mom, isn't it obvious? He just likes kids." Around them, Rogers radiated that gentle joy, that genuine friendship and caring and curiosity, that is unmistakable and un-fake-able. Well, Scully had that for baseball, that's the best analogy I could muster. At no point while he was on the air did he stop radiating a genuine love of the game, never over-the-top or forced, but measured at the pace that the game itself provides. It was impossible to listen to a game called by him and not be drawn into some aspect of it, or nod along with his stories that were perfectly calibrated, as if having a conversation with the friend seated next to you at the ballpark. It was soothing, it was entertaining, it welcomed you into the warm embrace of a game that was never too intense or serious for a little anecdote or a joke. But most of all, it was loving. Vin Scully kept going at it for 70 years because of how genuinely he loved baseball, so it was never a job. Why stop? Why do anything else? There's a game on!

May we all find something we love as much as Scully loved baseball.
 

Pablo's TB Lover

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Back when that Red Sox Nation membership started in 2003 or 2004 (don't remember?), the $15 or $20 annual membership came with a login to MLB Radio online. The first thing I thought of was 'wow, now I can tune in to hear Vin Scully on the Dodgers call whenever I want, that's worth the price itself!' What an announcer.
 

soxhop411

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santadevil

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Damn it. This one hits me in the feels

To me, listening to Vin was the epitome of how baseball should be consumed
I'm grateful for being able to listen to him
 

Archer1979

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His voice was pure velvet.

Oddly enough, I think the first time I came across Vin Scully, he was a game show host for NBC (they used some of their sportscasters as game show hosts back in the 70's). Then he started doing NBC's Game of the Week. But it wasn't until the 1986 World Series that I really started to appreciate how good he was and the way he could tell a story. Obviously, it was an epic World Series despite how it ended and Vin Scully was the soundtrack to the end of 1986 for me. Phrases like "young Calvin Schiraldi" and "Johnny McNamara's calculated risk" are now permanently and indelibly etched into my memories of that year.

My ears aren't as good as they used to be, so there are sounds that I will never be able to experience again such as U2, crickets in the late summer, and baseball on the radio. The velveteen voice of Vin Scully is now on that list.
 

mikeot

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Irreplaceable, that voice, sunny summer baseball fun, forever lodged in my brain: thank you Vin. RIP.
 

Ale Xander

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What a voice
What a passion for the game

look who’s coming up, (St Peter)

RIP Vin
 

Yaz4Ever

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Absolutely heartbroken to see this this morning. As others have already said, he was the GOAT. Some of the above posts deserve a like button.
 

Koufax

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I went to bed as a child listening to him broadcast from Ebbetts Field. The Dodgers were my team then, and radio broadcasts from NYC could make it to Hartford at night. He was a great pleasure to listen to. RIP, Vin.
 

DJnVa

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I used to put on the Dodgers game as I fell asleep...his voice was soothing. It was baseball.
 

Coachster

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I'm cross-posting here, because I'm just gutted about this. Like a million other kids growing up in southern California in the mid-1960's, I took my transistor to bed and listed to Vin Scully. I can't imagine the number of hours I spent listening to him tell me about the Dodgers. I'm here, across the country, still a baseball fanatic, because of Vin Scully.

Lots of great clips above (and @Reverend posted Vin reading a shopping list on the P&G deaths page.) Here's Jon Miller doing his Vin impersonation. I've always loved this.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqe8uq9BWVc&t=142s
 

bankshot1

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Scully was a part of the fabric of baseball that many of us grew up with, no matter where we grew up.

He was a warm, entertaining informed voice and a real good listen.

thank you and RIP Vin