(Bloomberg) — Vin Scully, who broadcast Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games over a six-decade career that made him one of the sport’s most recognizable and respected voices, has died.
He was 94.
Scully died at his home in Los Angeles, according to the team, the Associated Press reported.
“We have lost an icon,” Dodgers President and Chief Executive Officer Stan Kasten said in a statement posted on the team’s Twitter account.
Scully called Dodgers games starting in 1950, when the team was based in Brooklyn, New York.
When the franchise moved to Los Angeles in 1958, Scully went with them, and over the next 58 years he became inextricably linked to the team and the sport.
Frequently tapped to do play-by-play for nationally televised games, Scully’s calm demeanor and lyrical style grew familiar to millions of baseball fans across the US.
He received the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982.
“Like no other, he has developed baseball broadcasting into an art form,” Ernie Harwell, the longtime announcer for the Detroit Tigers, wrote of Scully in 2003.
Harwell, who died in 2010, called Scully “the best of all time.”
‘Dance, Sing’
Curt Smith, in his 2005 book “Voices of Summer” ranking baseball’s all-time best announcers, gave Scully the only perfect score.
“Vin made network baseball breathe, dance, sing,” Smith wrote.
On Oct. 2, 2016, at age 88, Scully called his final game. His 67 seasons with the Dodgers was the longest consecutive service of any Major League Baseball broadcaster with one team.
During his tenure, he narrated many of the greatest moments in the team’s history: The Dodgers’ championships in 1955, while still in Brooklyn, and in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981 and 1988 in Los Angeles; Sandy Koufax’s four no-hitters, including his perfect game in 1965; and the scoreless-innings streaks of pitchers Don Drysdale (58 2/3 innings) in 1968 and Orel Hershiser (59) in 1988.
He also worked the Dodgers’ game against the Atlanta Braves in which Hank Aaron hit his 715th career home run to break Babe Ruth’s record.
In all, he called 25 World Series, 12 All-Star games, 18 no-hitters and three perfect games.
Memorable Moments
Scully was in the television booth when Kirk Gibson ended Game 1 of the 1988 World Series with a pinch-hit two-run home run that stands as one of baseball’s most memorable swings.
“In a year that has been so improbable,” he said, “the impossible has happened.”
He kept a level temperament even at tense moments, relying on the action on the field to provide excitement.
When Koufax was on the verge of retiring his 27th consecutive Chicago Cub batter to pitch a perfect game, Scully made the following call: “Two and two to Harvey Kuenn, one strike away. Sandy into his windup, here’s the pitch.
Swung on and missed, a perfect game!” Then he was silent for 38 seconds, an eternity in broadcasting, letting the cheers of the Dodger Stadium crowd travel into listeners homes.
He went silent again more than 20 years later, when Mookie Wilson’s dribbler evaded the glove of Bill Buckner, scoring Ray Knight to cap the New York Mets’ improbable comeback victory against the Boston Red Sox in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.
Scully narrated: “Behind the bag. It gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it!” After several minutes of silence to let the images speak for themselves, he said, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, you’ve seen a million.”
Early Career
Vincent Edward Scully was born Nov.
27, 1927, in the Bronx, New York. At age 8, he wrote for the school newspaper about becoming an announcer.
He began his broadcasting career while at Fordham University in New York, working baseball games for the school’s radio station.
He also played two seasons as a center fielder.
Following graduation, Scully, then 22, joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950 and worked alongside fellow Hall of Fame announcer Red Barber. He became the team’s lead announcer in 1954 after Barber started working for the New York Yankees, and he went west with the franchise after the 1957 season.
He was named the country’s outstanding sportscaster four times by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association and won a Lifetime Achievement Sports Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Fan’s Choice
Scully has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
A street was named after him at the Dodgers’ spring-training complex in Vero Beach, Florida, as was the press box at Dodgers Stadium.
In 1976, the team took a poll of its fans to determine the franchise’s most memorable personality.
Fans chose Scully over stars such as Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider.
Scully had three children with his first wife, Joan, who died in 1972, and one child with his second wife, Sandra.
Scully’s oldest son, Michael, died in a helicopter crash in 1994.
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