Sound affects

Mellifluous Scully will take you back to the old ballgame

A few basketball games remain, and then there'll be nothing but diamonds before us. The Stanley Cup is won, with the NBA championship trophy soon to be raised. When that time comes we'll have only baseball to warm our sporting souls.

It's a luxurious and simple time, watching the playoff races unfold. Baseball's incomparable assets and nuances -- its long-term ebbs and flows, its nightly surprises -- shine in the summer, and there are few greater assets than Vin Scully.

If you don't live near Los Angeles, where Scully is in his 54th year broadcasting Dodgers games, you need to do something. You need to call your cable operator, or your satellite disher, and explain that you have to get Vin Scully into your home. They'll make you pay, of course, but whatever the fee it's worth it. Scully is going to make you happy. He's going to make you love baseball all over again. He's going to make you feel young.

The first time I heard Scully's voice I was 9 years old and on the floor of my basement, working a turntable. I lived in New York but for some reason -- probably because my mother had been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan -- I'd saved up some allowance and ordered a gift package from the Dodgers. It had a few baseball cards in it and an old yearbook and best of all, a 45-rpm record of Scully calling the last half inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965.

Next to KISS Alive, it was the best record a boy could get. I listened to that call over and over: Scully setting the scene of "29,000 people and a million butterflies" in the stands; Scully saying "the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world;" Scully's description after Koufax triumphed, "Sandy Koufax, whose name has always been synonymous with strikeouts, did it with a flurry."

You may have your own Scully memory. His call on Kirk Gibson's World Series home run in 1988. His descriptions during Game 6 of the Mets-Red Sox Series in 1986. Or Scully's narrative in For Love of the Game, during which he told us that Kevin Costner's character, Billy Chapel, was "trying to push the sun back into the sky and give us one more day of summer."

People have described Scully's voice as "velvety" and "silky." Sports Illustrated's Steve Rushin wrote that it is like "drawn butter." There's honey in that voice, and warm milk, and the subtle breaths and emphases of your uncle telling you a bedtime story that you never want to end.

Scully reminds me, in some sense, of Fred Rogers -- there's a "Hello, neighbor" quality to Scully's games. After Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Rogers taped spots on PBS hoping to reassure children. And in the Dodgers' first game after the Twin Towers fell, Scully was the voice of his pastime "And so, with a heavy heart, baseball gets up out of the dirt and brushes itself off ... hoping in some small way to inspire the nation ... out of duty and courage and to pronounce a national firmness of will."

If Bertrand Russell had ever called a ballgame he'd have done it like Scully does. But Scully's not all philosophy. He's astute and insightful, and as savvy a baseball analyst as I've ever heard. He sets a scene and delivers information with humility. Take a random game, in late May. The Braves and ace Greg Maddux against Dodgers ace Kevin Brown. The Dodgers were getting to Maddux -- they had built a 4-0 lead after five innings. Carefully, effortlessly and gradually, Scully gave you a window into what the great Maddux, who'd struggled much of the year, was enduring.

He said Maddux's nickname was Mad Dog ("to tell you about his desire") and that his favorite player was Pete Rose. He reminded you what the Braves had given up (Tom Glavine and Kevin Millwood) to be able to keep Maddux. And as Maddux's pitches began to miss, Scully dropped in statistics that showed how Maddux's great control fit into the history of the game. He described Maddux's smile as "sarcastic" after a close pitch missed for ball four in the fifth, and then, when he caught Maddux muttering said, "Maddux talks to himself a great deal, and sometimes hollers at himself (chuckle). He is quite a study."

A few passages, from a random game. They can't convey what a few innings with Scully will do for you. He never forgets that he is but an accessory to the gorgeous game and he never forgets that there are times to turn down even his own golden voice. When Koufax got the final out of his perfect game Scully was silent for 38 seconds. I can still hear the roaring of the crowd.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides each week at SI.com.

 

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