Vin Scully Helped California Baseball Take Root

“It wasn’t the first baseman, or the manager, or the team — certainly not with the won and lost record, because they had a tough year,” Peter O’Malley, the son of the former owner Walter O’Malley, said in a mid-July essay by Bill Shaikin of The Los Angeles Times about Scully’s immediate impact on Los Angeles.

“It was Vinny who introduced the team,” he added. “There was no one who could have done it better. When you pause to understand the impact that he had then, as well as today, it’s extraordinary.”

One consolation for the heartbroken Brooklyn fans left behind by the Dodgers was that Scully remained within earshot. He called World Series games often enough that we could be reminded of what we had lost. Gil Hodges and Duke Snider came to the Mets as faded icons, but Scully would materialize on the air waves at the peak of his game.

Scully had a good teacher in Red Barber, who was broadcasting Brooklyn games when Scully was a young (Giants) fan. Barber had his practiced Southern patter. (“Tearing up the pea-patch,” “the two teams are having a rhubarb,” the Dodgers are “sitting in the catbird seat” — we came to know exactly what each one meant.) But behind the jocular and charming regionalisms, Barber was a complicated religious man who had once thought about being a teacher.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/sports/baseball/vin-scully-dodgers.html