Vin Scully, the eternal voice of the Dodgers
Vin Scully died this week -- Aug. 2 -- at age 94. In 1987 I interviewed him on the outfield grass at Dodger Stadium. Then 59, he didn't retire until the end of the 2016 season.
Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium, 1987
Vin Scully was at Dodger Stadium again.
But he was not there to add yet another broadcast to the 5,000-plus baseball games he's called since he began his play-by-play career at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field in 1950.
It was preseason, a windy March morning in 1987, and Scully was in a suit standing by the pumps of the Unocal 76 gas station that sits at the edge of the stadium's empty parking lot in Chavez Ravine. He was shooting a series of commercials that will run all season long on Dodgers telecasts.
The small location crew -- director, cameraman, actors, make-up girl, helpers – watched in silence as Scully looked into the camera and spoke in the clear, familiar voice that millions of Dodgers fans have grown up on.
Arguably the best baseball play-by-play man in the country, and the most copied, he is known as a straight-ahead, no-nonsense type of guy.
But in the middle of his 27-second pitch extolling the virtues of Unocal 76 unleaded gasoline, he threw a Fernando Valenzuela-class screwball:
Instead of saying the word "baloney," Scully -- without missing a beat – slipped-in a locker-room synonym – “bullshit.”
The TV crew didn't react until he finished. Then they broke into laughter. So did Scully.
The Irishman from Brooklyn obviously had conspired with the producer to make a special version of the gasoline commercial that will be used to perk up a few future Unocal sales meetings.
Scully spent two full days shooting four Unocal commercials. It was slow, stop-and-start, let's-try-it-once-more work, with lots of standing-around time for the talent.
But watching Scully, it was obvious he was no prima donna. He was patient, cooperative, easygoing and unaffected -- a nice and pleasant guy.
He joked with the crowd easily, swapped baseball stories, was apologetic when he made a rare mistake, and took it in stride when the director asked again and again for a re-take.
Scully, who had been shooting Unocal spots with some of these people for 14 seasons, only did commercials for Dodger sponsors -- Unocal and Farmer John Meats.
He's turned down many other offers, but he' had plenty of work to keep him busy. Dodger games during the week. NBC network telecasts on Saturdays. Golf tournaments in the winter. He was paid very well -- the Dodgers and NBC reportedly each paid him about $750,000 a year.
One of six broadcasters in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Scully, 59, started doing Dodger games under Red Barber. When Barber left in 1954, Scully -- all of 26 -- began his reign as the team's No. 1 broadcaster.
Since then, he had called 13 no-hitters, two perfect games and 14 World Series. Via the national TV networks, his friendly, literate, story-telling style of baseball play-by-play had long ago became familiar to sports fans across the country.
But to local fans, Scully, whose voice echoed from millions of radios throughout Southern California all summer long, was as much a part of the Dodgers as Tommy Lasorda.
Q: This is your 38th season. You're probably pretty used to it by now. But Red Barber said that when you started with him you already knew a lot.
SCULLY: I knew the game pretty well. What he taught me more than anything else was good work habits. The philosophy of coming to the ballpark early and digging and coming upstairs with your questions answered. He was great at that.
The other thing he taught me -- and it took me really a few years to relax about it, was not to be afraid of silence, to let the roar of the crowd carry the story. That's always difficult.
Sometimes you don't use the crowd enough. Maybe it's a dull game and you don't hear a lot of noise, so you're inclined to cover, especially on TV, and then you're guilty, as we all are, of talking too much. Other times the crowd is vibrant and very much alive and you lay back, and then you can be accused of not talking enough. It's a very fine line.
Q: Can a play-by-play announcer save a boring game?
SCULLY: I don't think it's his responsibility. I certainly don't say to myself, "Well, this is a dull game. I'm gonna try and do a dog-and-pony act and juggle.” I don't believe in that. Basically, my job is a reporter. To say what's going on. I don't like to inflict myself on the game. The game is the thing. If it's a dull game, it's a dull game. That's all there is to it.
Q: Do you like doing baseball play-by-play better than football?
SCULLY: Baseball, for the broadcaster, is more of a challenge. Football is challenging enough, don't get me wrong, but there are more gaps and more chances to show knowledge -- or lack of it -- doing baseball.
Also, I firmly believe that the average baseball fan is more knowledgeable than the average fan of any other sport. The average fan has played some form of baseball. And the fans in football are not about to challenge Don Shula or Tom Landry, because they say to themselves, “These guys are brilliant.”
But in baseball I don't care who the manager is ... he could have spent 40 years in the game, it doesn't make any difference. The baseball fan feels in his heart that he really knows as much, or more, and that's where the charm is.
Q: Do you think TV has been good or bad for baseball?
SCULLY: Obviously, the attendance has risen considerably. I think it's helped a great deal. Baseball has learned, since the mid-'50s or the '60s, that it must market the property, and I think that's helped. If you look at the numbers, you see that they're way up. No one ever dreamed that a ball club would draw three million, yet the Dodgers are actually saying there will come a day when they'll draw four million.
Television's a part of it. Radio. And the fact that they've really tried to sell the sport. In the old days, they never sold it They played it, and it was up to you to come out and discover it. Now they've broadened the sport to reach the people, and the people have responded.
Q: Were there any great influences on you, besides Barber, who set you off in one direction or another?
SCULLY: My mother, because my father died when I was very young. She remarried and she and my stepfather were influences. The late Dodger owner Walter O'Malley was influential. He was almost like an extra father. (Dodgers play-by-play announcer) Connie Desmond was another.
He and Red were broadcasting for the Dodgers when I started. Red was the father figure, Connie was the older brother. That was kind of the charm of the broadcast group we had in Brooklyn. I think the people kind of enjoyed that interplay.
Q: Can you imagine doing play-by-play for a team other than the Dodgers?
SCULLY: No. I couldn't imagine that all.
Q: Yet you seem to be pretty objective and almost neutral in the booth. You don't come out with strong opinions either about the players or the world outside baseball.
SCULLY: I think that's because of the way I was trained. When I started in New York, you had three teams. The New York attitude was, we're the real big league. We're impartial. It also made good sense because your listeners were not only Brooklyn fans, and you didn't want to alienate anyone.
I also found very early that I was a much better reporter if kept personal emotions out of it I saw things clearer, with my eyes and not with my heart. All of these things started out at a very early age.
Q: It's obvious that you care an awful lot about the fortunes of the Dodgers, yet, as a broadcaster, you're not known as a homer."
SCULLY: No. One of the reasons is that I've got a wonderful relationship with the organization. It's been such a class organization, in that they have not insisted that I root. It would have been very difficult if they had said, "Pal, you're going to root.”
It's been a tribute to (Dodger president) Peter O'Malley and the entire organization that they've said, "Yes, he's critical But he's fair, and that's the way we want it.” It takes a big organization to accept that, but they do. When I do a network game. I do the same thing. I don't care who wins.
Q: Speaking of the network games, there was talk that you and Joe Garagiola wouldn't get along, because you were so used to working alone in the booth. But it seems like you two get along pretty well.
SCULLY: Yeah. We get along very well. There's no jealousy. No animosity. We've known each other a long time. We never thought there would be any problem. We would always say to people who brought up the question of having two big egos in the booth, "Do us a favor. At least give us a chance before you bury us."
We each know our role. I'm the play-by-play man. Joe is the expert analyst who's played in the big leagues. And I think they're very comfortable roles.
Q: How is it to work with guys like NBC director Harry Coyle?
SCULLY: They're as warm a group as you'd ever want. I'd hope the consensus about me and my work would be, "He's very easy to get along with." I don't know of any production group or director or producer who'd say anything but, "Oh, Scully, he's a pussycat.”
Q: What's the worst aspect of a broadcasting career?
SCULLY: It's not the travel, per se. It's the absence from home that's the biggest single drawback to the job. When you start, you're young and single, and being away from home doesn't enter into it.
Later on, the years go by and you realize, "I can't go to my daughter's graduation ... " and that begins to wear on you. But that's part of the job, and you have to come to grips with it. And you do, or you get out of it.
Q: You've actually done a network game on a Saturday and made it to a Dodger game the same night, right?
SCULLY: Yeah, I did it. I wouldn't do that very often. But I was able to do it, so did it. But it didn't kill me. I don't think that's good, to force yourself to do something where you're harried, and tired. That's not right. I did a game in Anaheim and and drove to San Diego that night, but that's not really that tough.
Q: Of all the exciting moments you've seen in sports, is there anything that tops the list?
SCULLY: It varies. When the Dodgers won their (first) World's Championship in 1955, that was a tremendous moment, because they had never won, and I knew their frustrations and I could understand. So I was happy for them.
When Bobby Thompson hit the famous home run in 1951, that was a great moment for the Giants, a tragic moment for the Dodgers. There's been a lot of them down through the years, and maybe the '55 win was the happiest for the Dodgers and for me, because I was younger and more impressionable, and it had a greater effect on me.
After the Dodgers came out to Los Angeles, they won in '63 when they swept the Yankees in four in the World Series — that was kind of a peak moment for the organization, and I was happy for them.
And there's been a hundred individual moments no-hitters, perfect games, all that stuff. I've seen a lot. It's nothing that I've accomplished. I've just been fortunate that I've been there.
Q: Baseball hasn't changed that much over the years. But are there any changes you wish hadn't occurred... like the artificial surfaces, for instance?
SCULLY: No. I don't mind the artificial surface. And there's more of a uniformity in baseball with the stadiums. Most ballparks are pretty much the same, so that the fan does have a chance to argue — I grew up in New York where we had fans of all three teams, and we could never agree on what to disagree about.
If it was a Dodger fan, you'd say, "It's ridiculous. It's 399 feet to center field and in Yankee Stadium it's 461, so you can't compare."And someone would say, "The Polo Grounds? It's 257 down the left-field line."
Q: Don't you miss those differences?
SCULLY: Oh, yeah. There's a certain atmospheric feeling, but it's only for those of us who travel all around. See, if you grow up in Pittsburgh and you go to Three Rivers Stadium, that's all you know. You're not going to say, "Gee, this place really doesn't compare with Dodger Stadium," so you're okay.
Q: Do you remember what you got paid for your first season with the Dodgers?
SCULLY: In my first full season, I worked from spring training into October, and I got $5,000. But I would have paid them $5,000 if I'd had it, for the chance to be there.
I had a job cleaning silverware in the Statler Hotel once. It was an awful job, in a closet full of steam and the smell of rancid food, and I used to pass out, literally, twice a day. But it was the best job I ever had -- for one reason.
Afterward, I always had something to relate to. So if I ever had a job I might not be happy with, I'd immediately say, "Yeah, but it sure beats the Silver Room," as they called it.
I think everyone should have a dreadful job for a whole summer -- a really tough, hard, miserable job. You're really better off having it.
Q: Does the word "retire" ever enter your mind at all?
SCULLY: Not so much "retire," because retirement to me means the end, fini, and I can't ever see my nature allowing me to do that. To cut back, yes. More and more I'd like to cut back. I haven't figured out how.
For the next two years I would certainly try, God willing, to keep the schedule that I have. Then I have do a lot of soul-searching as to where and what I want to do. I still have a freshman in college, a daughter who's a senior high school and a daughter who's in sixth grade.
But when I feel I'm in a spot where I don't have as many obligation I do now, and that should be maybe in two years, we'll see. I don't know.
Q: In eight years, will we see out here taking in a Dodger game?
SCULLY: I pray to God I'm healthy enough eight years from now to be alive. Who's to say? There's an old proverb, Czechoslovakian I think, that says, “Talk about next year, and make the Devil laugh." So I don't like to project that kind of thing. I'll talk to you about this afternoon — maybe.
Q: Do you have any failures or regrets?
SCULLY: No, not really. That's one of the things I've learned, too, from baseball, from being with successful managers and successful ballplayers, and that is to resist the temptation to second-guess. Most of the time after a broadcast you know you've done a good job, a fair job. You're much better off not second-guessing.
Q: How do you relax on I road?
SCULLY: Oh, I love to read, almost anything. A Churchill bio, an Elmore Leonard mystery, Bowie Kuhn -- I don’t read many sports books. It's not out of snobbery, but because I want to broaden my view.
The Kuhn book I read because he talked about owners and he is a friend and I wanted to see how he felt. That probably is the only sports book I've read in quite a while.
Q: You seem to be a pretty easygoing guy, even while shooting these commercials, which look like they can be annoying. Is that regular guy we see here the real you?
SCULLY: Oh, I pray to God so. Yeah.