Vin Scully
Vincent Edward Scully (November 29, 1927 – August 2, 2022) was an American sportscaster, best known for his broadcast work in Major League Baseball. Scully was the play-by-play announcer for the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers for sixty-seven years, beginning in 1950 and ending in 2016. He is considered by many to be the greatest sports broadcaster of all time.
This article is about the sports announcer. For other people named Vincent Scully, see Vincent Scully (disambiguation).
Vin Scully
August 2, 2022 (aged 94)
Sportscaster
1949–2016
4
- Ford C. Frick Award (1982)
- Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award (2014)
- Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016)
- Hollywood Walk of Fame Star
- Los Angeles Dodgers "microphone" retired
Brooklyn Dodgers / Los Angeles Dodgers (1950–2016)
CBS Sports (1975–1982)
NBC Sports (1983–1989)
Born in the Bronx, New York City, Scully attended Fordham University where he played baseball before becoming a student broadcaster and journalist. After being mentored by Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber early in his career, Scully was hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950, and moving with them to Los Angeles in 1958. He became known for his distinctive tenor voice and lyrically descriptive style. Scully's tenure with the Dodgers was the longest of any broadcaster with a single team in professional sports history. He retired at age 88 after the 2016 season, ending his record-breaking run as the team's broadcaster.
In addition to Dodgers baseball, Scully called various nationally-televised football and golf contests for CBS Sports from 1975 to 1982, and was the lead baseball play-by-play announcer for NBC Sports from 1983 to 1989. He also called the World Series for CBS Radio from 1979 to 1982 and again from 1990 to 1997.
For his long and distinguished career, Scully was honored with a star of the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame and NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame. For his services to baseball, he was honored with the Ford C. Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. Prior to his final season, the Dodgers honored Scully by renaming the street leading towards Dodger Stadium to "Vin Scully Way". That same year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. After a long illness, Scully died on August 2, 2022, at his home in Hidden Hills, California.
Early life[edit]
Born in the Bronx, Scully grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.[1] His father, Vincent Aloysius Scully, was a silk salesman; his mother, Bridget (née Freehill), was a homemaker.[2] He was of Irish descent. His biological father died of pneumonia when Scully was four, and his mother later married an English merchant sailor named Allan Reeve, whom Scully considered "my dad".[3] He had one sibling, a younger sister who died of brain cancer in 2002, aged 67. Scully attended Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx.[4] He worked delivering beer and mail, pushing garment racks and cleaning silver in the basement of the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York City.[5]
Scully discovered his love of baseball at age eight when he saw the results of the second game of the 1936 World Series at a laundromat and felt a pang of sympathy for the badly defeated New York Giants, who had lost the game 18–4 to the New York Yankees. Since he lived near the Polo Grounds and because he was a member of the NYC Police Athletic League and Catholic Youth Organization, he was able to attend games for free and became a "very big Giants fan".[6]
Broadcasting career[edit]
Fordham and CBS Radio[edit]
After serving in the United States Navy for two years, Scully began his career as a student broadcaster and journalist at Fordham University, where he majored in English.[7] While at Fordham, he helped found its FM radio station WFUV (which now presents a Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award each year), was assistant sports editor for Volume 28 of The Fordham Ram his senior year, sang in a barbershop quartet, played center field for the Fordham Rams baseball team,[8] called radio broadcasts for Rams baseball, football, and basketball, earned a degree, and sent about 150 letters to stations along the Eastern seaboard. He received only one response, from CBS Radio affiliate WTOP in Washington, D.C., which hired him as a fill-in.[9]
Red Barber, the sports director of the CBS Radio Network, recruited Scully for its college football coverage. Scully impressed his boss with his coverage of a November 1949 University of Maryland versus Boston University football game from frigid Fenway Park in Boston, despite having to do so from the stadium roof. Expecting an enclosed press box, Scully had left his coat and gloves at his hotel, but never mentioned his discomfort on the air; the game proved an exciting affair that attracted Barber to ask him for further assignments.[10][11] Barber mentored Scully, and Scully would follow Barber's advice on being an impartial announcer without blatant "homer" connections. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, management had approached Scully about taking a pro-Dodger tone now that the team was the only one in its city (as the minor league Los Angeles teams had done) to which Scully responded weeks later by saying he would stick to objective and factual coverage.[12]