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.
Vin’s call of Henry Aaron’s 715th home run tells so much about him. He called the historic homer, then went quiet (and apparently walked to the back of the radio booth to drink water). On air there was simply the roar of the crowd. This goes on for 4 minutes or so before Vin returns to frame the moment in history (“a crowd in the deep South is giving a standing ovation to a black man who just beat the record of an all time baseball idol…”).
Of course, Aaron had been receiving death threats.
Vin had been there from the time of Jackie Robinson’s first game to what he witnessed on that April night in Atlanta in 1974. He knew that baseball was more than just a game and he clearly cared deeply about issues of civil rights and human dignity, And, he did not step all over the moment by telling his radio listeners what was happening, he let the roar of the crowd do so and then framed the moment into history. I know nothing of Vin’s politics, I just know that he cared about this country and its ideals and used the best moments of baseball to highlight these ideals.
Vince was the single greatest sports announcer of all time. He covered 5 different sports and was considered the best in 3 of them, now that is something to behold.
In the 1958 and 1959, late fifties, we did not really known baseball except in the two Hearst newspapers or in the LA Times, and in the regional papers in Long Beach, the OC, the SFV, or the So.Bay, and then it was because of the box scores. When in 1959 the Dodgers beat the White Sox for the World Series the game in Southern California really took off. All of the SoCal newspapers then assigned writers to cover the Dodgers. Vince was already a household name by the time the Dodgers swept the Yankees in ’63. For those of us, and there were not as many at first, who were Angels fans, Vince Scully never said one thing bad about the other team that shared Dodger Stadium. He always gave our score first when he told us of the American League scores, whether we were on the road or not and told us who won, hit a HR, etc.
Listening to the Dodgers was inescapable as the local strip mall’s Italian Pizza place had the game on along with the local corner market, Liquor Store, Drug Store, Gas Stations, 7-11 or Stop and Go or Circle K. It didn’t matter if it was a day game in some far-off city back east or a home game here in Southern California, Vince Scully was everywhere. Rush hour on the frwy back then, everybody had their windows down and the game on and you could hear Vinny. If you went to a hamburger stand back in the day everyone sat outside and the transistor radios didn’t have KFWB or KRLA on in the summer when the Dodgers were playing, they had Vinny on 50,000-watt KFI tuned in loud and clear. While Southern California did not invent radios in the car, it sure was embraced the most here more than anywhere in the country.
Why do we always have the highest geographical area baseball attendance, our roots go all the way back to when O’Malley brought the Dodgers and Vinny to us in the Southland. Kids baseball leagues flourished, Little League, American Assoc., Pony Baseball and Leagues in communities that popped up all over. High School Baseball took off in the late sixties and never looked back. Why? Vince Scully was teaching all of us about the game.
There can never be another Vince Scully, the greatest conquered the biggest and best area in the United States and in the 1970’s we had to share him with the rest of the country, who bte are just like us in considering him the greatest ever. When as a young man starting out in my chosen profession, I used to have to put my radio up in the second story apt. bathroom window to receive KFI in Lompoc Ca. as that was the only way to hear Vinny. Funny stuff sitting there on the toilet seat listening to games.
Growing up holds a lot of fond memories for me for sure, as it does for all of us, glad we all have one in common.
Only two things I like about the Dodgers
Vin Scully and Tommy Lasorda
Ran into them at the Riviera in the 90’s.
They couldn’t have been more gracious.
well said, Jeff
late 60s in Glendora i found an old transistor radio and began listening to Vin and Dick Enberg – that’s really the genesis of falling for this game –
my BIG BANG – the origin; when I first started to get interested in the game
and it takes me directly to backyard wiffle ball mostly
and on and on
for years when the Dodgers played the Angels especially lately, i’d listen to Vin
Same story here Rex, Garden Grove instead of Glendora.
I have a memory of picking my dad up at LAX with my grandparents as he was coming home from deployment, with Vin on the radio for those first few innings.
Countless other parties and beach days he’d be in the background.
The soundtrack to our lives for those that grew up in SoCal.
What a kind man he was. We will miss him.
Fitting that he have his own post/thread. Well said JJ. My favorite was him and Bob miller coming together for the stadium series game kings v ducks at doyer stadium. What a fun event and experience to cap all the baseball moments he provided.
The best I ever heard and likely will ever hear. A link between a bygone era and modern baseball. I hated the Dodgers but loved Vinny. The way he could spin a story and make you feel like he was telling it to you personally, sitting on his porch drinking lemonade. There was no flash, no attention grabbing. Just a kind man watching and describing a baseball game to you.
Growing up, many many years ago, in Hesperia, my parents loved to listen to baseball on the radio or have it on the TV. I, like most, can still clearly hear Vin Scully’s voice in my head. I myself have never really been a Dodgers fan, but I sure was during the 1981 WS as I listened to Scully call that great series against the Yankees.
The only thing I know about Hesperia is that there’s an In N Out right off the exit on the 15.
Lol.
Yep. My sister in law lived out there for a while. I’d turn off there and drive to her house. I think the line at In N Out was equal to the population of Hesperia.
It was the first In N Out my wife ever ate at back during pandemic times when we wanted to visit family and didn’t want to fly.
I always liked that the layout is different compared to all the others i’ve been to.
I left there in 1987, 3 weeks after graduating from high school. Went back a few years ago and couldn’t believe how much it had grown. When I was a little kid in the 70’s we didn’t even have a stoplight. Our first fast food restaurant was Naugles. How’s that for a blast from the past?
didnt have Naugles in the Coachella valley in the 70s but there was one in Yucca Valley we hit when we were up there
Used to go quail hunting in the Coachella valley every year on our way back from duck hunting at the Salton Sea. Always stopped at Hadley’s on the 10 as well. Went there on our visit a few years ago and was so disappointed with the new “sanitized” store.
That whole area is apparently booming.
It’s funny, people from your generation, my family included, talk about Naugles like it was this majestic perfect utopia lol.
Like their generations Chick Fil A or something.
We probably just had bad taste. 😃
Probably just intense nostalgia for your childhoods.
there weren’t as many so it just made it rarer but we knew it was Jack-In-the-Box fare. Not even close to In-n-Out
i think they sold egg burritos way before anyone else i saw
There is a Naugles near me in Fountain Valley. It’s in an odd spot in an industrial strip with just a small sign. I had fond memories of that place from growing up in Pomona. So, I finally stopped there about a week ago and ordered the natchos with the works.
They were terrible 🙁
That’s the way it goes.
Lana … that version (Ellis and Ward) is some youts valiantly trying to revive the brand. Nice try, but not the original.
Ah hah!
I drive by it all the time and never stopped.
We didn’t have Naugles or any other major chain when I was a kid. We got a McDonald’s and Taco Bell in 1990. We all tried them a couple of times then went back to our mom and pop shops that had always been there.
If memory serves, Naugles was founded by a former partner in Del Taco and was eventually absorbed by Del Taco. Some of the items on the Del Taco menu are former Naugles menu items. We would go to the one in Rosemead.