Vin Scully

What a pleasure it was to turn on MLB cable channel and hear Vin Scully -- now 88-years-old -- broadcasting the Dodgers/Giants game on the feed from SportsNetLA, just as I used to listen to him on my AM radio in the fifties.  He started broadcasting the Dodger games in 1950 and never stopped, though he also did the NBC Game of the Week in the 80's.  I mentioned recently that one can hear his last-inning call of Sandy Koufax's perfect game on the internet, but keep an eye on MLB and when they broadcast a Dodgers home game you will probably hear Scully, his voice instantly recognizable.

Susan asked me, "Why do you think he is such a great announcer?"  I think the two main reasons (other than his voice) are that he works alone, not feeling any need to talk all the time and letting the game speak for itself when necessary, and that he concentrates on the beauty of the game, even pointing out things -- such as the swings of the player in the on-deck circle -- that the viewer of the cramped TV image cannot see.  He doesn't bring in a lot of extraneous statistics and the like, which have nothing to do with what is going on in the game, i.e., he doesn't think, like many announcers and their producers, that the game is boring and an intrusion on discussions about the past and the future.  Andrew Sarris once said to me that he thought baseball was not a particularly good subject for movies because it is too immediate.  I think he is generally correct about that (though Lloyd Bacon and Frank Tashlin's Kill the Umpire, 1950 is an honorable exception, being mostly about umpires) and Scully does what few other announcers do:  he enhances the immediate enjoyment of a beautiful game.  In last night's game he said "the P-men --Pence, Panik, and Posey -- are on the bases" and then when the next batter singled Scully added, "they each move up ninety feet." He keeps it simple and eloquent.