Vin Scully Hangs Up his Microphone After 67 Years

One of the top joys I’ve had in a wonderful career has nothing to do with what I covered or what I have seen.
It’s getting to know a little of Vin Scully, the Dodger broadcaster, who at the age of 88, is hanging up his microphone after 67 years of bringing wonderful moments to those who have tuned him in.
I first listened to Vin, who at the time, was a 23-year-old, second-year number 2 announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers growing up in Queens outside New York City.
He was second to his mentor Red Barber, but eventually was promoted to the lead assignment when Barber left the Dodgers in 1953.  Scully proceeded to follow the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1958, and the rest, as they say, is history.
It IS history, as in historic. There has never been any sports broadcaster in any sport as truly beloved and accomplished, certainly for as long a time, as Vin.
I met him in 1967 when I walked into a bar after my 11 o’clock stint as sports reporter on KDKA in Pittsburgh.  I introduced myself and intended to leave. But Scully invited this 24-year-old neophyte to sit with him. The Dodgers had arrived in town earlier and were going to start a series against the Pirates the next night.
“Do ever listen to the opponent’s home broadcast in preparation I asked?”
“Never,”  he replied.  “I don’t want to pick up any bad habits.”
It wasn’t an arrogant answer. It what what Vin Scully was all about.
He was a stickler in how he went about his craft and he followed it to a “T” in his entire career.
I would see him at an airport and we would discuss detective and suspense novels.
We never talked baseball.
When I worked Fox Sports MLB games and I found myself in Dodger Stadium, I would use the same booth he worked, because the network was the only telecast that day, and Scully had a day off.
He had his own coat hanger. Colorful with the word “Thanks” on the top, and “Vin Scully” on one side. It was obviously a gift. I have saved a photo of that hanger.
Vin Scully has a mellifluous, melodic voice. He has a beautiful vocabulary and a sense of the language and it’s history from his years of voracious reading.
He has timing, and a unique irony in his rhapsodic story-telling.
But I truly believe what has made Vin Scully the truest master of his craft who ever lived, is a genuine humility, and the undeniable belief that God is totally in control of his life, and that he is truly grateful for every minute of it.