Stark: Vin Scully, the man, the voice, the stories
From SABR member Jayson Stark at ESPN.com on September 21, 2016:
For 67 years, we have been hearing those soothing words come floating out of that voice: The warmest, most welcoming, most melodic voice in the sports universe.
And if it feels as if that voice has been a part of your life forever, well … It probably has.
He has been as much a presence over these last 67 years as the afternoon sunshine and the sparkling stars that hover above the broadcast booths where he has spun his magical tales. So how are we supposed to comprehend life after Vin, life after baseball’s most iconic voice exits the booth for the last time on the first Sunday in October?
When Vin Scully first walked into the Dodgers’ broadcast booth, Winston Churchill hadn’t started his second stint as the prime minister of Great Britain. Connie Mack, a man born while Abraham Lincoln was president, was still managing in the major leagues. The transistor radio — a gizmo that would turn the man at the microphone into a California icon — wouldn’t be invented for another four years.
That was April 1950.
The Dodgers still played baseball at Ebbets Field. And Vin Scully was a 22-year-old rookie broadcaster, sharing the booth with the legendary Red Barber. He was a young man about to embark on a journey even he could have never envisioned: from East Coast to West Coast, from crackling AM radios to the fuzz of black-and-white TV to the splendor of “living color” to baseball games streaming across your smart phone.
So how do we capture the magnitude of Vin Scully, the meaning of Vin Scully, the miracle of Vin Scully? Not with our words, but with the words of the men and women who have known him best, whose company he has shared, whose lives he has touched, whose careers he has described and even transformed.
Read the full article here: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/17595432/the-man-voice-stories
Originally published: September 21, 2016. Last Updated: September 21, 2016.