Rarely is a man as universally loved as Vin Scully. Love the Dodgers, hate the Dodgers, or fall anywhere in between it didn’t matter; you still liked Vin Scully. Even as a die hard Angels fan, I would watch the Scully broadcast during the Freeway Series. He was simply that great.
It didn’t take Vin Scully’s passing to bring out a feeling of nostalgia. When a man is the voice of summer for 67 years, hearing his voice would often bring back memories of earlier days.
Just hearing his distinctive voice would bring me back to the smell of freshly cut hay fields and freshly watered almond orchards. Decades and a couple hundred miles away from childhood summers spent out on farms would disappear once Vin started in on a story, spinning it like an Uncle who spends a lot of time with you and has something just for you.
In my conversations with baseball fans since Scully’s death, I hear a familiar refrain, “he’ll always remind me of….” A good friend of mine lost his father a few years back and Scully’s voice will always remind him of summer nights in the garage with his dad. Another told of cruising around as a teenager in the 60s listening to Vin on his car radio.
For me it was my grandfather. We were extremely close until his death when I was 11 years old. To this day I measure all pain in life relative to the pain I felt when he died.
There wasn’t much I could do in life at age 35 that I had done with Grandpa. But I could listen to Vin Scully call a game. The other was drive to A&W to get a root beer float. Combine the two and it was almost like having Grandpa with me for a little bit.
Vin Scully will deservedly go down as one of the greatest broadcasters of all time. He spent the last 34 years of his illustrious career as a Hall of Famer and his voice provided the soundtrack to many of the greatest calls in all of sports. There’s nothing more to say about his public career that hasn’t been said.
But for a man that is lauded for so many large milestone moments, it is the fact he joined us for so many of our “small” moments that truly made him special. The private, personal connection we felt.
And that is what we’ll miss.
So, thank you Vin Scully. We never met but you were a part of a lot of life’s not so little “little” moments and I can’t imagine having those memories without your voice in them. And I know millions more feel the same way.
RIP, legend.