Steve Webb
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Never let it be said that Vin Scully didn’t have a flair for the dramatic. It is almost too poetic, too perfect that news of his passing should hit the airwaves in the middle of a Dodgers game against the rival Giants at Oracle Park, the very site where the Greatest That There Ever Was signed off for that last time six years ago. And to make it even more perfect (if such a thing were possible), it happened on Trade Deadline Day, perhaps the day in the regular season when the attention of the world is most focused on the National Pastime.
It almost seems surreal, to think that we’re living in a world that Vin Scully is not a part of. Every one of us has memories of Vin that stretch back deep into the recesses of our collective childhood.
Full disclosure. I didn’t grow up in Los Angeles. And to be honest, I wasn’t much of a Dodgers fan until I moved here in my twenties. So, I cannot tell stories of growing up with Vin as the soundtrack of my summer. I will leave those stories to those who lived them. Sadly, I grew up in Twins territory, at a time when the team was awful, so my most vivid memories were of Twins broadcaster Herb Carneal sighing as another Minnesota pitcher got shellacked for a three-run homer. “Oh,” Carneal would huff in a voice full of resignation that bordered on despair, “that’s waaaay gone….”
But I grew to appreciate Vin Scully along with the rest of the nation as he began to get more national exposure in the ’70s and ’80s. And over the years, I came to appreciate what the good folks of Los Angeles had all along. And like so many others, I grew to love the way Vin would spin a story throughout the balls and strikes so somehow your mind was moving on two different tracks at the same time, and enjoying both of the rides. I recall a random story that Vin told about the Giants’ Madison Bumgarner killing a rattlesnake which had just eaten a baby rabbit that was living still inside its stomach. The story flowed out of him so effortlessly amidst the play-by-play that you would have sworn the whole thing was scripted.
But more than the technical skill, and there was plenty of that, what made Vin so universally beloved was his humanity. I can’t think of a single person in Los Angeles or anywhere else for that matter who had a negative thing to say about the guy. He was as generous as he was talented, giving freely of his time long after he needed to. Most recently, I recall hearing a PSA he cut for the Knights of Columbus that was running still this month. God knows when he cut the thing, but even in his infirmity, he was always giving back.
Typically other-focused, the last three check-ins on his Twitter page from earlier this year were posts honoring the fallen on Memorial Day, wishing Willie Mays a happy birthday, and recounting a story of an old high school buddy who made the big leagues and Vin got the chance to call a home run off his bat.
It’s hard to put into words exactly what the passing of somebody who’s been a part of our lives for so long does to us. It just reminds us of how much time has indeed passed since days of little league diamonds and skinned knees. It’s the little voice that whispers in our ear that some ineffable, irretrievable thing has been lost, and that it won’t be coming back on this side of Paradise.
But I like to think about the welcome that Vin must be receiving there tonight. And I like to think, that somewhere as Vin passes through to the other side, someone in Heaven will say those words that he himself uttered one October night in 1988…
“And look who’s coming up….”
