This transcript is from the third game of the Dodger playoff games with the New York Mets, October 7, 2006
“Hi once again everybody and welcome back to Dodger Stadium. In a ball game that is frustrating, maddening, euphoric, you put the label on it, the Dodgers down four to nothing rallied back amidst hysteria here at Dodger Stadium to take a 5-4 lead and then no where in the rule book does it say that you have to hit the ball hard and we never saw that more illustrated than the bloop singles by Reyes, LoDuca, and Beltran. And then, just to rub salt in the wounds, the Dodgers were penalized because they hit the ball too hard. Jeff Kent’s line drive double, really blistered, jumped into the box seats in the left field corner for a ground rule double and that prevented Lofton from scoring a run.”
Vin Scully told the Current Biography Yearbook
“…there’s symmetry and grace to baseball. The pace is relaxed, but it kind of builds. That’s why I don’t come on screaming and hollering to start a game. I say, ‘Hi,’ and hopefully, it builds and builds, and by the time you get to the last inning or two, the place is going wild.”
That description certainly applies to some of the great games that Scully has called. Koufax’ perfect game, Kirk Gibson’s walk off home run in the ninth inning in the 1988 World Series, the four consecutive home runs in the ninth inning against San Diego in 2006. However, Scully has also let his audience know that statistically a team ahead after seven innings of play almost always wins. Scully has been great in the great games, but he has also been great in virtually every game he has broadcast.
He has also been great when “the game got away early…the dam burst.” There are the rare games where there was an “amazing turn around.” Over the decades Scully consistently finds that day’s “story” and tells it exceptionally well.
Like Homer, Scully finds the deep-rooted conflicts, identifies the heroes (and goats), describes the action often in epic terms. Instinctively his audience recognizes the story told. Scully’s talent at finding the story also sets him apart from other broadcasters.
As Northrop Frye has said, “We hear or listen to a narrator, but when we grasp a (story teller’s) total pattern we ‘see’ what he means.” Scully consistently communicates his stories so that the audience, even the radio audience, sees.
Richard Kearney captures the importance such stories have, and, thus, suggests this added dimension to Scully’s broadcasts. Kearney says:
“Every life is in search of a narrator. We all seek, willy-nilly, to introduce some kind of concord into the everyday discord and dispersal we find about us. We may, therefore, agree with the poet who described narrative as a stay against confusion. For the storytelling impulse is, and always has been, a desire for a certain ‘unity of life’. In our own postmodern era of fragmentation and fracture, I shall be arguing that narrative provides us with one of our most viable forms of identity – individual and communal.”
All season long Scully does that work for his audience. Whether the Dodgers win or lose, Scully’s story of that game brings concord as a stay against confusion. The two to three hours of the broadcast satisfies a desire for a sense that there is ‘unity of life.’ Especially now that Scully has celebrated the major league players who have come from such varied backgrounds, there is a greater sense of the community, of the global village that houses Dodger baseball.
Implicitly Scully well uses the classical elements of fiction. His ‘plots’ consistently revolve around key turning points. “That play might haunt the Dodgers.” With his anecdotes and biographical information he quickly delineates the cast of characters, distinguishing between the uniqueness of their backgrounds, with their candidacy to fill such roles as hero or goat, David or Goliath, Achilles or Hektor.
Scully consistently accounts for the game’s setting. The day’s climate, the size of the audience, peculiarities about the stadium, become important considerations as to how a game’s outcome might change. The climate will likely affect how well a baseball carries, turning an out into a crucial home run, or vice versa. Scully is convincing that the hostile New York crowd makes it especially difficult for a visiting team to win there. Scully creates the understanding that Dodger Duke Snider, who had so many long fly balls caught in the cavernous right field of the old Los Angeles Coliseum, was unjustly served by that football, non-baseball stadium.
For point of view Scully is much like the omniscient narrator. He seems not only to read lips, but to read minds. He is a compassionate omniscient narrator, and he always seems compelled to tell the truth. He seems to have remembered most everything that has happened in baseball history, so he is always able to tell his story in the full context of other baseball stories.
Scully’s most consistent theme is something akin to the Shakespeare line about Richard III, that for the loss of a nail a kingdom was lost. Some small detail or pattern of details within the game itself, will likely affect the game’s outcome.
Here is an example of Scully finding this story in a game in 2006:
Hi once again everybody. Welcome back to Dodger Stadium. In a ballgame that is frustrating, maddening, euphoric, you put the label on it, the Dodgers down 4 to nothing, rallied back amidst hysteria here at Dodgers Stadium to take a 5-4 lead, and, then, nowhere in the rule book does it say that you have to hit the ball hard, and we never saw that more illustrated than the bloop singles by Reyes, LoDuca and Beltran, and, then, just to rub salt in the wounds, the Dodgers were penalized because they hit the ball too hard. Jeff Kent’s line drive double, really blistered, jumped into the box seats in the left field corner for a ground rule double and that prevented Lofton from scoring a run.”
This example also suggests Scully’s awareness of the classic plots, this one suggestive of “man vs. fate.” Jeff Kent hit the ball much harder than Mets Reyes, or LoDuca, or Beltran, but the fates rewarded the Mets.
Scully consistently works all the classical plots into his stories. “Man vs. Nature” becomes particularly significant during unusual weather. He narrated a Dodger game on television in 1959 that the Dodgers nearly lost when Wally Moon could not see or find a flyball hit to left field by Willie McCovey, hit into the San Francisco fog.
The plot of “man vs. man” comes up especially in the match ups. It can be a pitching match-up of future Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddox and Boomer Wells, or a match up between a fastball pitcher and a fastball hitter. Mano e mano.
“Man vs. the environment.” The Dodgers lost the 1977 and 1978 World Series to the Dodgers. In 1978 the Dodgers had gone up two games to none in Los Angeles before going to New York. In the New York hostile environment the Dodgers fell apart.
“Man vs. machines and technology” does not come up a lot. But just this year Scully commented several times that the “new fangled” catchers’ masks are not protecting the catchers, that two catchers were out for at least the year because of head injuries from foul balls. Their lack of availability had an impact on the season. Scully has bemoaned the evaluation of umpires’ strike zones by a digital video computer system. He seemed almost angry by a hitting display in Colorado when the umpires ran out of baseballs from the humidors that ordinarily made the baseballs, at Mile High Stadium, react more like baseballs used at ground level.
Scully particularly uses the “man vs. self” plot, where virtually every player faces a self-inflicted problem on himself. How many times was Steve Garvey going to bite and swing at the curve ball out of the strike zone, down and away? How many hits was Don Drysdale going to give up to Willie McCovey? How was Kirk Gibson going to run to first base on two bad legs?
Scully also relies upon less famous plot devices. The “quest” plot is usually for first place, or at least a wild card spot, but it can also be a quest for a personal best mark, a record, to improve on the last season. The Dodgers of 1955 had never won a World Series, the Dodgers of 1988 were serious underdogs, the Dodgers of 2004 had not won a playoff game since 1988. Koufax’ quest was for his first perfect game. Bill Singer had promised to eventually throw a ho-hitter.
The “Theme of Pursuit” is one of Scully’s most common themes. He keeps the listener abreast of scores in other games that affect the pennant races.
One of the problems with the new baseball practice of having a “closer” to pitch ninth innings of games in which the team is ahead is that the plot of “rescue” comes up much less often. Ah, the good old days! Phil Regan received the nickname of “The Vulture” because he would come in relief of Sandy Koufax, give up the tying run, but later, when the Dodgers scored again, get the victory. His record was 14-1 that year – winning games that belonged to Koufax. That was not rescue, but it is the theme. Former Dodger “firemen” Jim Brewer and Ron Perranoski might come into a game at any time, especially with men on base, not just for the ninth inning, because the role was to be “rescuer.” This was a story line that Scully handled very well.
A favorite Scully story about “revenge” was from a spring training game. An inter-squad game. Pitcher John Candelaria deliberately threw at and hit one of his new Dodger teammates. Scully, ever the inquiring mind, wanted to know why. The answer was that the last time Candelaria had faced this same batter had been several years before, apparently in the Dominican Winter League, and this player had hit a home run against Candelaria, and “show boated” on his way around the bases. Candelaria finally paid him back.
Scully is at his best in spotting and calling attention to the “rivalries.” In 2006 Scully particularly enjoyed the sibling rivalry of Dodger player J.D. Drew playing against his younger brother. So it was particularly enjoyable listening to Scully call the play when J.D. Drew threw out Stephen Drew with a great throw to second when it looked to all the world like Stephen had hit a sure double. Scully’s favorite rivalry is the historical one, going back to New York and Brooklyn. “If it’s the Giants and the Dodgers, it wouldn’t be any other way.” Hopefully Scully’s call of the game when Juan Marichal hit Dodger catcher, John Roseboro, with a bat, and Willie Mays followed by hitting a home run off Sandy Koufax to beat the Dodgers still exists, because that game was another where Scully was at his best. “We” need an archive of Scully’s work.
Scully fully appreciates “the underdog” and no where was that more evident than with the “improbable” even “impossible” 1988 season when the underdog Dodgers won th ke World Series in five games against the heavily favored Oakland A’s.
“Maturation” is a consistent Scully plot theme. Scully celebrated that Drysdale, “Who had his ears blistered and his skin roasted many times from the boos he heard at the Coliseum, had received a standing ovation before 46,000 as he goes to the mound to go after a record that has stood in the book for 63 years.”
“Sacrifice” is primarily a subplot for Scully. More often than not it comes up with regard to the sacrifice bunt. Scully is quick to note in a game when one team’s pitcher was able to put down a sacrifice that led to a decisive run, when the other pitcher had not been successful at laying down such a sacrifice bunt. He also notes when a player is injured making a risky play for the team, or a pitcher who stays in a game while taking a pounding in a lopsided game to protect the rest of the pitching staff.
The greatest season long story of “ascension” was the Dodgers making the greatest all time ascent in major league history by going from seventh place in 1958 to first place and a World Series victory in 1959. That was a Scully unifying plot theme for all of 1959.
Perhaps the greatest season of “descension” was from 1966 to 1967. Maury Wills, the great Dodger short stop, was traded because of an altercation with owner Walter O’Malley. Sandy Koufax retired. Scully was honest about the fall in Dodger fortunes.
(Personal note: What frustrates me as a scholar in this chapter, is that I do not have access to all the important games. I would like to check my memories against a record that hopefully exists, but is not currently available.)
Scully does emphasize, that there are turning points in most games.
“The key to the last inning was the injury to Garciapara…if Garciapara doesn’t hurt his quad, Kent would have turned the double play that Lugo failed to turn.
Scully is constantly on the lookout for such pivotal points.
Scully’s story telling revolves around the incident. A play rather than an inning is ordinarily the crucial difference in a game where two teams can likely play 162 games to determine the champion and they may still require a playoff game to determine who moves on to the Conference Series. About 1/3 of all games are decided by one run, 2/3 by one or two. Even though teams losing after 7 innings almost always lose, the preponderance of games will at least have the tying run on deck in the ninth inning. Such built in realities define the game, and Scully understands and communicates how the percentages fight the vagaries of fate and that a single human error or feat may turn the day. He revels in that crucible. The pitcher should not get a hit, but perhaps one time out of ten he does. Scully knows a pitcher may be unlikely to get a hit, but it happens. So he stays interested, seeing if some small detail will lead to the unlikely. For Scully it can be the small detail that changes the future. 3.8 million fans might not watch or listen to a game with the full attention Scully gives, but listeners do very often think along with Vin, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Such inherent dramatic tensions and possibilities become the raw materials for Scully to find and weave his stories.
Scully builds both his composition and his story (blending two artistic traditions) seamlessly. He structures his story around the at bat. Earlier in his career Scully offered more physical detail about the At Bat. More recently he has spent more time on the biography of the batter (and often the pitcher as well). Perhaps it is that he has gone to a greater emphasis in the biography, not only because more information is probably readily available to him, but because with free agency, the modern fan has otherwise been disconnected from much knowledge about the great numbers of players on more teams who move much more often from team to team. He finds and identifies by background and statistics, the human profile of the “combatant”. Biography is certainly another part of the stories Scully delivers.
The action stems from the confrontation of the batter with the defensive team. The pitcher throws high and away, hurries one, flips one. A batter takes one low and away, hits a chopper, flares one, whacks one. For the batted ball the defense reacts in response. Furcal charges, Drew back to the warning track, Betemit charges. The inning progresses. For sixty years the listener has known that the turning point of any game may come at any moment. For want of a nail the Kingdom was lost. Failure to properly wear sunglasses may determine who wins a pennant. It is a variation on Ray Bradbury’s short story, “Sound of Thunder,” where the death on one butterfly changes the fate of mankind.
With the game in progress, Scully brings out all of the bells and whistles of rhetoric and style to enrich his story/composition. He identifies the heroes and otherwise unsung heroes. He identifies the ebb and flow of the contest. He teaches inside baseball. He provides a sense of judicial observation.
By accomplishing so much with his metaphorical language, his composition, and his story telling Scully the story-teller has brought “concord into the everyday discord and dispersal we find about us.” His gift is a “stay against confusion.” Over the years he has “provide(d) us with our most viable forms of identity – individual and communal.” Great story telling is a major part of Scully unparalleled success in this medium.