Vin Scully

So I was channel-surfing at 3 AM and came across Game 7 of the 1965 World Series on the MLB Network. Sandy Koufax pitching a shut-out on two days' rest.

It was the same game but a way different medium. Black & white. No instant replays. No radar guns. But there was Vin Scully.

If you don't love baseball it's probably because you've never heard Vin Scully on the radio broadcasting a Dodgers game.

Listen to this, from the radio in 1965:

http://www.archive.org/details/VinScullyCallsThe9thInningOfSandyKoufaxsPerfectGame


If you don't feel like you're there, well... you'll never get there.

The "Fireside Book of Baseball" has a transcript of Scully calling the first Koufax perfect game. 1962 or so. I mean, this was before Sandy Koufax became SANDY KOUFAX!!! I'll have to look it up but Scully did the last inning as if he were a Homeric poet; lines like "Here he stands on the precipice of immortality."

Every game with Scully on the radio was like going anywhere with the smartest, wisest person you've ever known. I loved games when the Dodgers were getting blown out. Scully just made you appreciate the the game. How everything can go right for one team and everything can go wrong for the other team and they'll come out the next day and maybe turn it around.

This is beginning to sound like an obit. It's just my realization Vin has declared he's gonna retire after the 2010 season... after only 60 years as a Dodgers broadcaster (the slacker).