LOS ANGELES — Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, who called Dodgers games on radio and television for 67 seasons and captivated generations of Southern California baseball fans after the club’s 1958 move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, died Tuesday night. He was 94.
Scully died at his home in Hidden Hills, according to the team, which spoke to family members. No cause of death was provided.
“We have lost an icon,” team president and CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement. “His voice will always be heard and etched in all of our minds forever.”
Named the No. 1 sportscaster of the 20th century by more than 500 national members of the American Sportscasters Association in 2000, Scully began announcing Dodgers games in 1950 and had the longest continuous service with one team of any major-league broadcaster. Sixty-six years after his debut, Scully called his final Dodger game on Oct. 2, 2016 in San Francisco. A plaque remains on the wall of the visiting broadcast booth inside Oracle Park – where the Dodgers played the Giants on Tuesday night – to commemorate the occasion.
With a mastery of the English language, a near-encyclopedic knowledge of baseball history and an unparalleled story-telling ability, Scully both educated and entertained listeners while receiving nearly every honor the broadcasting industry offers.
“There’s not a better storyteller and I think everyone considers him family,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He was in our living rooms for many generations. He lived a fantastic life, a legacy that will live on forever.”
Voted the “most memorable personality” in L.A. Dodgers history by fans in 1976, Scully received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and induction into the broadcast wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame as the recipient of the Ford Frick Award in 1982.
A four-time winner of the Outstanding Sportscaster Award from the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, Scully was also a 21-time California Sportscaster of the Year. Inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995, Scully received a Lifetime Achievement Sports Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences the following year.
Also a recipient of the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, Scully covered 12 World Series and six Major League All-Star Games, in addition to football, golf and tennis, for CBS and NBC, but he will always be linked with the Dodgers. The team honored Scully with the dedication of the “Vin Scully Press Box” at Dodger Stadium in 2001.
Rick Monday interrupted the play-by-play of Tuesday’s radio broadcast to deliver the news of Scully’s death, choking up as he made the announcement.
“For those of us that were touched by him, listened to him, and learned from him, this is a deep loss,” Monday said.
Born Nov. 29, 1927, in the Bronx and raised in New York City, Scully set his sights on being a sports announcer from an early age. He spent two years in the Navy and graduated from Fordham University in 1949, having lettered for two years as a Rams outfielder before turning to broadcasting.
Scully called Fordham baseball, football and basketball games over the school’s radio station, and began his professional broadcasting career at WTOP-AM in Washington, D.C. Scully’s big break came in 1950, when legendary Dodgers announcer Red Barber and his partner, Connie Desmond, chose Scully to become the third man in the radio booth.
Duplicating Barber’s renowned work ethic, by 1954 Scully had become the Dodgers’ lead announcer. He called Brooklyn’s only World Series championship the following season, and also announced Dodgers World Series victories in Los Angeles in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981 and 1988.
From the days of Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider in Brooklyn, to the early years in Los Angeles with Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Maury Wills, Scully was at the microphone for nearly every significant moment in Dodgers history since 1950. Scully also called Don Larsen’s perfect game for the New York Yankees in the 1956 World Series and Henry Aaron’s record-breaking 715th career home run for the Atlanta Braves in 1973.
“This is where I learned baseball. … I would go to sleep listening to Vin Scully,” Angels interim manager Phil Nevin, who grew up in Fullerton, said Tuesday. “My parents let me listen to the radio, Dodger games, before I went to bed. I learned to keep score listening to him. It’s a tough day.”
Over the course of his career, Scully worked 18 no-hitters, three of which were perfect games, including Koufax’s 1965 gem against the Chicago Cubs. His closing words in the final inning of that game are remembered among the greatest play-by-play descriptions of all-time.
“On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California,” Scully said. “And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years, and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter, he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flurry. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that ‘K’ stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.”
Scully was there for Wills’ record-breaking 104 stolen bases in 1962, record scoreless-innings streaks by Drysdale in 1968 and Orel Hershiser 20 years later, and Kirk Gibson’s dramatic, pinch-hit home run that won Game 1 of the 1988 World Series against the Oakland A’s.
“He meant so much to so many and there will never be another like him,” Josh Rawitch, the president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, wrote on Twitter.
Despite having been associated with the Dodgers seemingly forever, Scully retained a solid sense of objectivity unknown to many revered announcers in the East and Midwest. He also made it a point not to get too close to Dodgers players, in order to maintain that perspective.
He opened broadcasts with the familiar greeting, “Hi, everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be.”
Ever gracious both in person and on the air, Scully considered himself merely a conduit between the game and the fans.
“I’ve always tried to make the players human beings – individuals – rather than wind-up dolls down on the field running around,” Scully said. “So I’ve always searched for the human side of the game, if I can possibly find it. That’s the character that I try to paint, the character that the man represents himself. I think that helps, especially when a team is struggling and you have something interesting to say about someone. I think on the other end, a listener might enjoy it.”
Although he was paid by the Dodgers, Scully was unafraid to criticize a bad play or a manager’s decision, or praise an opponent while spinning stories against a backdrop of routine plays and noteworthy achievements. He always said he wanted to see things with his eyes, not his heart.
“Vin Scully was one of the greatest voices in all of sports. He was a giant of a man, not only as a broadcaster, but as a humanitarian,” Kasten said. “He loved people. He loved life. He loved baseball and the Dodgers. And he loved his family. I know he was looking forward to joining the love of his life, Sandi.”
Scully was the son of a silk salesman who died of pneumonia when Scully was 7. His mother moved the family to Brooklyn, where the red-haired, blue-eyed Scully grew up playing stickball in the streets.
As a child, Scully would grab a pillow, put it under the family’s four-legged radio and lay his head directly under the speaker to hear whatever college football game was on the air. With a snack of saltine crackers and a glass of milk nearby, the boy was transfixed by the crowd’s roar that raised goosebumps. He thought he’d like to call the action himself.
At age 22, he was hired by that CBS radio affiliate in Washington, D.C. In 1953, at age 25, Scully became the youngest person to broadcast a World Series game, a mark that still stands.
Scully moved west with the Dodgers in 1958, and monumental moments in the sport often seemed to find him. When Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s record in 1974, it was against the Dodgers and, of course, Scully called it.
“A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol,” Scully told listeners. “What a marvelous moment for baseball.”
Scully credited the birth of the transistor radio as “the greatest single break” of his career. Fans had trouble recognizing the lesser players during the Dodgers’ first four years in the vast Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
“They were 70 or so odd rows away from the action,” he said in 2016. “They brought the radio to find out about all the other players and to see what they were trying to see down on the field.”
That habit carried over when the team moved to Dodger Stadium in 1962. Fans held radios to their ears, and those not present listened from home or the car, allowing Scully to connect generations of families with his words.
Some of those listeners, like the Angels’ Nevin and current Dodgers Justin Turner and Austin Barnes, grew up to become pro ball players and coaches.
“Growing up in L.A., he was the voice I always heard,” said Texas Rangers manager Chris Woodward, a former Dodgers coach. “Back when I played my first big league game against the Dodgers, we were playing them in Toronto. The next day, I was watching my at-bats from that game. The sound was on, and normally the sound isn’t on, but I put it on and I heard Vin Scully, talking about me being a hometown guy from California. It meant the world to me. It was a really goosebump moment for me just hearing him say my name.”
Scully often said it was best to describe a big play quickly and then be quiet so fans could listen to the pandemonium. After Koufax’s perfect game in 1965, Scully went silent for 38 seconds before talking again. He was similarly silent for a time after Gibson’s pinch-hit home run to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.
Scully’s timing was impeccable and he knew exactly how to humanize a moment, such as the way he narrated three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw pitching a no-hitter in 2014 alongside images of Ellen Kershaw, nervously watching her husband from the stands.
“He was the best there ever was,” Clayton Kershaw said after Tuesday’s game. “Just when you think about the Dodgers, there’s a lot of history here and a lot of people that have come through. It’s just a storied franchise all the way around. But it almost starts with Vin, honestly. As far as the history of our organization, Vin’s been through it all. Just such a special man. I’m grateful and thankful I got to know him as well as I did.”
The Dodger Stadium press box was named for Scully in 2001, and the street leading to the stadium’s main gate was named in his honor in 2016. That same year he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
“God has been so good to me to allow me to do what I’m doing,” Scully, a devout Catholic who attended mass on Sundays before heading to the ballpark, said before retiring. “A childhood dream that came to pass and then giving me 67 years to enjoy every minute of it. That’s a pretty large thanksgiving day for me.”
In addition to being the voice of the Dodgers, Scully called play-by-play for NFL games and PGA Tour events as well as calling 25 World Series and 12 All-Star Games. He was NBC’s lead baseball announcer from 1983-89, calling memorable moments such as Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.
While being one of the most widely heard broadcasters in the nation, Scully was an intensely private man. Once the baseball season ended, he would disappear. He rarely did personal appearances or sports talk shows. He preferred spending time with his family.
In 1972, his first wife, Joan, died of an accidental overdose of medicine. He was left with three young children. Two years later, he met the woman who would become his second wife, Sandra, at the time a secretary for the NFL’s L.A. Rams. She had two young children from a previous marriage, and they combined their families into what Scully once called “my own Brady Bunch.”
He said he realized time was the most precious thing in the world and that he wanted to use his time to spend with his loved ones. In the early 1960s, Scully quit smoking with the help of his family. In the shirt pocket where he kept a pack of cigarettes, Scully stuck a family photo. Whenever he felt like he needed a smoke, he pulled out the photo to remind him why he quit. Eight months later, Scully never smoked again.
After retiring in 2016, Scully made just a handful of appearances at Dodger Stadium and his sweet voice was heard narrating an occasional video played during games. Mostly, he was content to stay close to home.
“I just want to be remembered as a good man, an honest man, and one who lived up to his own beliefs,” he said in 2016.
Few would dispute he accomplished that.
“I will never know anyone as kind, as gracious, as talented as Vin. Twitter isn’t big enough for all the memories, stories, instances of a person who was the best at what he did behind a microphone and who was even a better person than he was a broadcaster,” former Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti wrote on Twitter.
In 2020, Scully auctioned off years of his personal memorabilia, which raised more than $2 million. A portion of it was donated to UCLA for ALS research.
“Vin Scully was bigger than baseball. He was the soul of Los Angeles, the undisputed voice of America’s pastime, and the narrator of some of the most thrilling moments of our lives. It is impossible to think about the Dodgers without reflecting on Vin’s incomparable way with words and the boundless wisdom he shared with generations of fans around the world,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement.
Scully was preceded in death by his second wife, Sandra. She died of complications of ALS at age 76 in 2021. The couple, who were married 47 years, had daughter Catherine together.
Scully leaves four other children (Kevin, Todd, Erin and Kelly), 21 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. A son, Michael, died in a helicopter crash in 1994.
Funeral services are pending.
Staff writers J.P. Hoornstra and Jeff Fletcher and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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MLB Network mourns the passing of Vin Scully. pic.twitter.com/BgJwsxqij7
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) August 3, 2022
There will never be another Vin Scully. You will be forever missed. 🎙💙 pic.twitter.com/WyTmXsati5
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 3, 2022
