[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t may seem paradoxical on the surface, but over the last several years, new technology and innovations have helped people connect to the history of baseball in a major way.
I’m not talking about historic game clips that can be found on YouTube and Twitter or the digitized versions of old newspaper clippings available on the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s website. I’m talking about the fact that, thanks to MLB.tv, it gave a new generation of baseball fans the chance to appreciate the greatness of Vincent Edward Scully.
Since 1950, Vin Scully has been calling games for the Dodgers, bridging the organization’s existence in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles. And in his 67 years as the preeminent play-by-play guy in baseball—he’s also done football and golf—he has become one of the most beloved broadcasters in the history of the game.
But in October, at the end of the 2016 season, the 88-year-old will be hanging it up, retiring from the booth, severing one of the last remaining relationships that the MLB of today has with a bygone era.
Sure, yesterday’s legends are trotted out from time to time, at All-Star Games and on days when each organization around the league opts to pay tribute to its past stars, but Scully was an everyday reminder of the game’s legacy, a man who called games featuring everyone from Jackie Robinson to Clayton Kershaw.
And to think, if it wasn’t for apps like MLB.tv, today’s younger fans—if they weren’t West Coasters—might not have ever gotten the chance to hear him call a game.
Scully, who called his fair share of World Series games (28 to be exact), hasn’t exactly been a figure on the national stage for quite some time, working his last Fall Classic TV broadcast in 1989, meaning that for most of my adult life, my only real knowledge of Scully came from watching baseball highlights—like Kirk Gibson’s World Series homer in 1988 or Mookie Wilson’s dribbler through Bill Buckner’s legs in 1986.
That all changed when I sprang for the MLB.tv package. I got it , ostensibly, to follow my out-of-market Red Sox, but I soon lost myself in the wide variety of games—and announcers—that were now available for my consumption. I got well-acquainted with Hawk Harrelson, whose angry, unquestionably biased calls during White Sox games were both laughable and engrossing. I got the chance to listen to Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow call Giants games and continue to establish themselves as perhaps the best two-man booth in the game.
And then, there was Scully.
I can’t tell you how many nights over the last few years I’ve clicked on the Dodgers’ broadcast at 10:10 p.m., just to lay in bed and listen to Scully’s silvery voice describe things as mundane as a fly ball to left field, or a young Dodger fan enjoying an ice cream cone.
There is simply something soothing about his rhythms, something unimpeachable about his delivery, that transports fans back to the days when the only way you could see the game—without physically going to the ballpark—was tuning the dial on the transistor radio, to a voice you implicitly trusted.
After Oct. 2, the game simply won’t be the same anymore. So I urge you all to tune in to the last week’s worth of broadcasts of one of baseball’s greats.
It’s going to be a different world next year, when Scully won’t be around to wish us a pleasant good evening, wherever we might be.
