This is the complete transcript of the Kirk Gibson home run, a part of which is featured in Chapter One as well. To recapitulate it’s the ninth inning of the first game of the 1988 World Series at Dodger Stadium. The highly favored Oakland A’s have a one run lead in the bottom of the ninth inning. Kirk Gibson was not supposed to play because of severe injuries to both legs. When Mike Davis draws a two out walk, Gibson comes up representing the winning run. He is facing one of Baseball’s all time great pitchers, Dennis Eckersley.
The Kirk Gibson walkoff homerun in Game One of the 1988 World Series:
"And, (relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley) walked (pinch-hitter Mike Davis)... and look who's comin' up!"
(36 seconds of crowd cheering)
"All year long, they looked to him to light the fire, and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight—with two bad legs: The bad left hamstring, and the swollen right knee. And, with two out, you talk about a roll of the dice... this is it. If he hits the ball on the ground, I would imagine he would be running 50 percent to first base. So, the Dodgers trying to catch lightning right now!
"Fouled away.
"He was, you know, complaining about the fact that, with the left knee bothering him, he can't push off. Well, now, he can't push off and he can't land. ... 4-3 A's, two out, ninth inning, not a bad opening act!
"Mike Davis, by the way, has stolen 7 out of 10, if you're wondering about Lasorda throwing the dice again. 0-and-1.
"Fouled away again. ... 0-and-2 to Gibson, the infield is back, with two out and Davis at first. Now Gibson, during the year, not necessarily in this spot, but he was a threat to bunt. No way tonight, no wheels.
"No balls, two strikes, two out.
"Little nubber... foul—and, it had to be an effort to run that far. Gibson was so banged up, he was not introduced; he did not come out onto the field before the game. ... It's one thing to favor one leg, but you can't favor two. 0-and-2 to Gibson.
"Ball one. And, a throw down to first, Davis just did get back. Good play by Ron Hassey using Gibson as a screen; he took a shot at the runner, and Mike Davis didn't see it for that split-second and that made it close.
"There goes Davis, and it's fouled away! So, Mike Davis, who had stolen 7 out of 10, and carrying the tying run, was on the move.
"Gibson, shaking his left leg, making it quiver, like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly. 2-and-2! Tony LaRussa is one out away from win number one. ... two balls and two strikes, with two out.
"There he goes! Wa-a-ay outside, he's stolen it! ... So, Mike Davis, the tying run, is at second base with two out. Now, the Dodgers don't need the muscle of
Gibson, as much as a base hit, and on deck is the lead-off man, Steve Sax. 3-and-2. Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate.
"High fly ball into right field, she i-i-i-is... gone!!
(67 seconds of cheering)
"In a year that has been so improbable... the impossible has happened!
"And, now, the only question was, could he make it around the base paths unassisted?!
"You know, I said it once before, a few days ago, that Kirk Gibson was not the Most Valuable Player; that the Most Valuable Player for the Dodgers was Tinkerbell. But, tonight, I think Tinkerbell backed off for Kirk Gibson. And, look at Eckersley—shocked to his toes!
"They are going wild at Dodger Stadium—no one wants to leave!"
Vin Scully, Artist
When does craft become art? When the craft transcends its simple, practical functions, when it addresses the universals, when it is treasurable beyond its time and place, when it addresses the human condition, and when it is superlatively well done. The simple argument is that baseball broadcaster Vin Scully has raised his craft to an art form, that this needs to be recognized more widely, that, in fact, tapes of his broadcasts should be preserved in such cultural archives as the Smithsonian museum and National Gallery.
Elliot Eisner has identified four “senses” by which an activity can be considered and art. Although he was writing about teaching as an art form, his criteria are equally relevant for broadcasting. To adapt Eisner, broadcasting is an art in the sense that it can be performed with such skill and grace that, for the listener as well as the broadcaster, the experience can justifiably be characterized as aesthetic. What occurs is a performance that provides intrinsic form of satisfaction, so much so that we use the adjectives and accolades applied to the formal arts to describe what Scully does while broadcasting.
Scully’s broadcasting is an art in the sense that he, like painters, composers, actresses, and dancers, makes judgments based on qualities that unfold during the course of action. Qualitative forms of intelligence are used to select, control, and organize the coverage of a game including tempo, tone, pace, and forward movement. Scully reads the emerging qualities of a game and responds with qualities appropriate to that game whether the drama of a close world series, or the leisure of a Saturday afternoon game after the pennant races have been decided. In this process, qualitative judgment is exercised in the interests of achieving a qualitative end.
Scully’s announcing is an art in the sense that his activity is not dominated by prescriptions or routines but is influenced by qualities and contingencies that are unpredictable. He works in an innovative way to cope with these contingencies. Scully is especially at his best with the out of the ordinary, whether a no-hitter, play-off game, record breaking performance.
Scully’s coverage of a game is an art in the sense that the ends are often created in process. Craft has been defined as the process through which skills are employed to arrive at preconceived ends. Art has been defined as the process in which skills are employed to discover ends through action. For Scully each game has the prospect of becoming something new, whether chronic, tragic, humorous, touching, parabolic, allegorical, mundane.
Virtually all of the words in the preceding four paragraphs are taken from Eisner as he discusses the art of teaching, but which I argue are comparably descriptive of the reasons Vin Scully must be perceived as a consummate artist.
John Dewey said that criticism is the re-education of perception. This analysis of Scully’s poetic prose is hopefully only an initial study of what it is that makes his broadcasts so exceptional. A game for Scully is never just anywhere. He always sets the scene including its time and place, a sense of the ballpark, the outcome of the season’s rivalry thus far, the positioning in the pennant race, anecdotal information about coincidences, ironies, personal histories as they pertain to the day’s confrontation. Scully also keeps the fans up to date on scores elsewhere which set the individual game in the context of all of baseball. Unlike so many other announcers who rarely mention games elsewhere, Scully gives his games larger significance by mentioning it in the context of all other games, National and American League.
Having set the context, Scully then fills in the picture with choice details. He makes a judicious use of statistics, mentions little tid-bits like what the catcher’s hands felt like in a handshake an observation right after the said catcher has taken a foul ball off a finger tip. He lets you know if the rival happens to be a local boy from Southern California, if family or friends are in the crowd, what some of the bench players are doing to keep themselves involved in the game. As he calls the game he gets everything clear and in the right order so that the listener knows the strategy, where the fielders are, where the base runners are, and where the ball is, but so that s/he can anticipate plays whether double plays, plays at the plate, fast runners scoring from first on a double. He deftly captures the mood of each game. He seems to the listener to be offering commentary on the game, and also on life.
His attention to detail provides great texture; his great sense of baseball history as it pertains to each game; his picturesque diction; his literary references; his flourishes of enthusiasm; his personal touches; his knowledge of the game itself are some of the means he uses to raise his craft to an art form. These abilities suggest the outline of the remainder of the chapter, his sense of style; his personal touches; and his sense of baseball as a sport.
What are some of the specific characteristics of Scully’s work that are most remarkable and artful? The answer requires both a connoisseurship of baseball in general, broadcasting, and Scully in particular. To reveal those subtle qualities of his art requires criticism, as in aesthetic criticism. However, I interject as a personal point, and readily confess, that my accolades to Scully stem more quickly from my years as a fan rather than a recognized connoisseur or critic. It was some time in my early twenties when I realized that, other than the voices of my family, I had listened to Vin Scully far more than any other person. My observations are those I’ve noted over fifty years of listening to Scully.
With the economy of expression of a poet Scully sketches the physical details of a game that make for great visualizations.
“Drysdale takes a little walk back of the
rubber. Picks up the resin bag and drops
it again. McCovey moving the bat back and forth.”
"Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers
through his black hair, and pulled the
cap back down, fussing at the bill.”
“(Singer) head down, holds both hands
high over his head for a moment takes
off his cap, puts it back on and turns
around and looks right dead center at a
no-hitter.”
These word pictures dispute that a picture is worth a thousand words. As Scully said about Koufax’s perfect game, “you can almost taste the pressure now.”
But as brilliant as are his descriptions of the main actors in a baseball performance, it is his inclusion of the role players that give Scully’s game their great texture. Perhaps the finest detail of his description of Koufax’s perfect game is his inclusion of teammate Al Ferrara, who didn’t happen to be in the game.
“In the Dodger dugout Al Ferrara gets
up and walks down near the runway, and
it begins to get tough to be a teammate
and sit in the dugout and have to watch.”
Scully suggests that, perhaps, there isn’t such a distinction between the players and fans because the players are surely fans, too. In a dramatic moment against the Giants during Don Drysdale’s record-setting, consecutive innings pitched streak:
“Every member of the Giants on their feet
at the base of the dugout steps, everyone!”
And their manager, Tom Lasorda, is the greatest fan of all. When they won the 1981 World Series Scully described the response of Lasorda:
“Lasorda throws his hat away and runs
out with his hands and arms held high
in the air to grab Steve Garvey.”
Scully is equally proficient with the telling detail of other non-playing actors. In a donnybrook with the Giants, their manager Herman Franks was thrown out of a game and on the ensuing argument Scully noted:
“Peanuts Lowry (a Giants coach) puts a plug
of tobacco in his mouth, perhaps to save
himself from saying something wrong.”
And the families of key players are sure to be included as the situation demands. During Bill Singer’s no-hitter Scully noticed his wife, Jean Singer in the crowd:
“And Jean Singer ran her left hand along
the side of her dress. I’m sure not drying
off her nails. Not now.”
Such quickly drawn details add to the texture and drama.
The texture Scully adds to a game is also enhanced by his sense that each game is a part of baseball history. In the big games Scully invariably gives the dates and attendance as if it had just been chiseled in stone. In Koufax’s perfect game Scully announced – “The time on the score board is 9:44, the date September the ninth, 1965.” During Drysdale’s scoreless inning streak Scully noted, “It’s the ninth inning at Dodger Stadium. It’s May the thirty-first, 1968.” It’s not September 9th or May 31st, it’s September the ninth and May the thirty-first, and it’s not just 1965 or 1968, it’s nineteen hundred and sixty-five, nineteen hundred and sixty-eight. If he was writing his own scripts, Scully would surely write such dates in Roman numerals. After all, such classic games make for classic history.
The use of dates only suggests the importance of baseball history in Scully’s call of the game. It’s not unusual for him to say that he hasn’t seen such a play since Ashburn did it in 1952, as if it were just yesterday.
Sometimes the historical details are by association. When Ty Cline faced Drysdale with the bases loaded and Drysdale’s record on the line, Scully said about Cline’s first name, “That’s a great name to come up right out of 1904, Ty.” That was also about how long the record for consecutive scoreless innings pitched had lasted, “(Drysdale) has received a standing ovation before 46,000 as he goes to the mound to go after a record that has stood in the books for sixty years.” This was, coincidentally, a record which would fall just twenty years later and the occasion for another classic performance by Scully, but more on that later.
It is not just old baseball history that Scully manages to use to make each game, ironically, fresh. He has a great memory for relevant history as it pertains to game situations. About Koufax’s bid for his fourth career no-hitter, Scully remarked, “Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth when he turned in a no-hitter.” As Koufax faced Joe Amalfitano Scully recollected ominously that “Joey’s been around, and as we mentioned earlier, he has helped to beat the Dodger’s twice.” In the last inning of the last game of the 1981 World series Scully noted that it would be appropriate to make Bob Watson the final out because he had practically single handedly beaten them in game one of the World Series. After Bill Singer pitched a no-hitter Scully remembered, “And one other remark before we close it off. When he was interviewed on the post-game show in Atlanta after pitching 7 2/3 innings of no-hit ball, Bill said, ‘I’ll get one one of these days and one of these days is July the twentieth.’” In Drysdale’s streak he had to pitch to Willie McCovey, and as every Dodger fan knows he was “facing one of the toughest hitters he has ever faced, Willie McCovey to lead it off.” McCovey, a San Francisco Giant, practically owned Drysdale and as Scully remarked about the Giant-Dodger rivalry, “The bases are loaded, nobody out, the batter is Dick Dietz, but down through the years it just wouldn’t be the Giants and Dodgers if it didn’t wind up this way.” What a premonition Scully had, the next pitch hit Dietz, but he was not awarded first base touching off perhaps the most controversial single incidents in Los Angeles Dodger history. What makes all these historical recollections so special is that they are so apt for the game being called, unlike the unrelated recollection so many other announcers work into a game.
Scully’s ability to turn a phrase during a key moment in a game makes it almost unbelievable he is not working from a script. In describing Drysdale Scully remarked he was, “a boy named Donald Scott Drysdale, born in Van Nuys, who had his ears blistered and his skin roasted (emphasis added) so many times from the boos he heard at the Coliseum.” In describing Drysdale’s bid for a fifth consecutive shutout, Scully described the first eight innings as “eight blanks,” and the forty-four consecutive shut-out innings as “forty-four pearls on a string. He needs one more.” During Koufax’s perfect game Scully remarked there were “29,000 people and a million butterflies.”
When a twenty-year old Fernando Valenzuela stunned the baseball world by winning his first ten games of 1981, Scully remarked, prophetically, “and a little child shall lead them.” As Scully later wrote the Foreword to Lou Sahadi’s, The L.A. Dodgers, “the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers…will always be remembered as “The Year of the Child…not just any child mind you, but a very special young man from south of the border named Fernando Valenzuela. El Toro, as he was soon to be affectionately called…(was a) 20 year-old lefthander from the tiny hamlet of Etchohuaquila in northwestern Mexico who spoke no English did his talking with his now-famous screwball in winning his first eight major league starts,” and led the Dodgers to their first World Series title since 1965.
In one of the most dramatic games in World Series history, the first game of the 1988 Dodger-A’s World Series, Kirk Gibson came up for his only at bat of the series due to his severe leg injuries. Just prior to his home-run, the only home run in World Series history to turn defeat into history in the bottom of the ninth inning, Gibson fouled a pitch away and Scully described Gibson as “shaking his left leg, making it quiver, like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly.” Scully offered an omen of what was to come by announcing,
“And look who’s coming up? (Roar of crowd)
All year long they looked to him to light
the fire and all year long he answered the
demands until he was physically unable to
start tonight with two bad legs.”
And then,
“So the Dodgers, trying to catch lightening
right now. 4-3 A’s. Two outs. Ninth inning.
Not a bad opening act. High fly ball into
Right field. She is gone.” (Roar of the crowd.)
What an interesting diction, “ears blistered,” “skin roasted,” “eight blanks,” “forty-four pearls,” “a little child,” “butterflies,” “a horse and a troublesome fly,” “light the fire,” “catch lightening.” Such picturesque language by Scully is reminiscent of Dizzy Dean, but where as Dean consistently used such language, Scully seems to save it for special moments like these when the game, even the season, the playoff games are on the line.
Scully also has a marvelous talent for the use of literary quotations. He doesn’t use them often, certainly not every game. But when he does work them in they are so apropos as to be stunning in significance. Having broad cast Drysdale’s record of consecutive scoreless innings two decades before, and having Don Drysdale on his broadcast team as Orel Hershiser was on his way to breaking Drysdale’s record, Scully remarked,
“Eugene O’Neill wrote a great line. He
said there’s no present and no future.
There’s only the past over and over now.
And that’s what we’re looking at. The
past, twenty years ago. We’re looking
at it again. Remarkable!”
Perfect.
While Scully has been rightly praised for the objectivity of his reporting, it is this basic objectivity that makes his flourishes of enthusiasm for the game all the more meaningful. About the ninth inning of Drysdale’s fifth consecutive shut-out, the game with Dietz and the Dodgers, Scully exuded,
“Oh can you picture it. If you had
presented this script three days ago
the only word would be balderdash,
and maybe one or two others.”
During the Fernando pitching, hitting, and base running mania of 1981 Scully wondered, “Is there anything this kid can’t do?” And after Fernando threw a shut-out and got three hits in the game of April 27th Scully effused, “I swear Fernando, you are too much in any language…listen to this crowd just talking to themselves.” Still later in the year when Pedro Guerrero hit a ninth inning home run to win yet another game for Valenzuela Scully exclaimed,
“Fernando, it’s gone…(crowd roar).
There are no words to express what’s going
on here. The sounds of a cheering crowd
tell it all. The Fernando Valenzuela magic
is alive and well and so are the spirits of
55,000 at Dodger Stadium… who is to say
when it will end?”
The drama of the game is all the more poignant because of the personal touches Scully weaves into the game. For one thing Scully likes to work names and nick-names into the significance of the game. In the 1981 World Series Yankees pitcher Ron Guidry was leading the Dodgers 1-0 when Guerrero and Yeager hit consecutive homeruns. Scully observed, “well, they call him (Guidry) Louisiana lightening and Guidry’s been hit by it.”
In score keeping a strikeout is written in the score book as a “K.” To preserve his 1965 perfect game Koufax struck out the last six batters. Scully noted, “So, when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record book, the “K” stands out even more than the “O-U-F-A-X.” When Bill Singer pitched his no-hitter Scully added,
“They call him Billy No-no. The no-no is
because of the way he runs. When Bill
Singer runs his head shakes from side to
side and Don Drysdale once said, ‘here
comes Billy No-no.’ And on the message
board in left field just underneath
where it says 12,455 (in attendance) it
says no-no and everybody here knows no
hitter for Billy Singer.”
This personal touch also carries over to players’ families as they become a part of the story. The families of Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser have been highlighted in Scully’s coverage of their games. During Bill Singer’s no-hitter both Singer’s wife and Jeff Torborg’s children became a part of the story. That this was during a season when the Dodgers were not in contention for the pennant is undoubtedly a reason why this story became more of a personal drama than the performances of Hershiser, Valenzuela, and Koufax in pennant winning years. In Singer's no-hitter his wife, Jenny, received almost equal billing.
“And Jenny Singer lowers her head and writes
an “8” (the previous batter flied out to
the centerfielder) in her score pad
and now for the first time she starts to
applaud and, then, hands folded in her
lap. (Then after a pitch) Jenny Singer
has not unlocked her hands, not now.
The strike one pitch to Browne, low. And
in case Jenny didn’t write it in her
score pad, it is Monday, July the twentieth,
nineteen hundred and seventy, and hopefully
you can play this one for the grandchildren….
And now Jenny Singer turns, has a few words
with Jean Lefebvre and also we see Mrs. Don
Sutton. It’s appropriate to have another
pitcher’s wife alongside.”
After Singer completed the no-hitter Scully tells his audience, “Jenny Singer got her hugs from Mrs. Don Sutton and Mrs. Jean Lefebvre. It was a family effort.” Scully also adds that Singer’s catcher, Jeff Torborg’s two youngsters were here to watch him catch the foul ball (for the last out).”
Finally, all Dodger fans think that Scully has taught them enough that they could manage in the major leagues, but that Vin Scully would be the ideal baseball manager. He seems to know everything that goes on. In Drysdale’s consecutive scoreless inning streak Dick Dietz was hit by a pitched ball which would have forced in a run and ended the streak. Almost unbelievably the umpire ruled Dietz had not tried to get out of the way of the pitch and thus the pitch was only a ball. This is such an unusual call no one really knew what was going on on the field, but shortly thereafter Scully was hypothesizing (correctly) that the umpire “could have conceivably said that Dietz did not make an effort to get out of the way.” Soon thereafter Scully explained rule 6.08. Scully knows his bacon. Rule 6.08 The batter becomes a runner and is entitled to first base without liability to be put out…when (b) He is touched by a pitched ball which he is not attempting to hit, unless (2) the batter makes no attempt to to avoid being touched by the ball.”
He also has great anticipation. Earlier in that same game when Willie McCovey walked Scully anticipated, as he seemingly always does, the manager’s next move. “We’ll see if there is a runner for McCovey, or not. He’s gone all the way on a bad leg.” And sure enough – “Here comes a runner out of the Giant dugout.”
Scully also knows what is going on with the pitchers. In Koufax’s perfect game Scully observed,
“Sandy ready, and the strike one pitch:
very high, and he lost his hat. He really
forced that one. That was only the second
time tonight where I have had the feeling
that Sandy threw instead of pitched.”
Scully is not only a lip reader, but a mind reader. In Singer’s no-hitter he gave us an uncanny sense of what was going through the catcher, Jeff Torberg’s mind when after a low pitch Scully described,
“Curve is low and Torberg, stumbling up
out of a crouch--he wanted that so badly
and Jeff almost fell down. In the last
out in the eighth, Torberg, when he got strike
three, ran to the dugout long before Singer
had left the mound and you know Jeff can
feel it.”
Scully creates such vivid word pictures fraught with telling detail, lends a sense of baseball history to the proceedings, uses such fresh and original language, creates a sense of drama with great enthusiasm, makes the game seem a story of personal stories and does all this with such a professional understanding of the nuances of the game. The inevitable conclusion is that Scully’s work is deserving of the adjectives and accolades usually applied to the formal arts.
Having paraphrased Eisner earlier in making points about Scully the artist, it seems only fitting to now paraphrase Scully. Scully was describing a four run ninth inning rally by the Dodgers, but the same thing could be said about Scully and his work:
“Unbelievable even for the Dodgers. Ho hum.
Just another Dodger ball game. Can you
Believe it? Can you possibly imagine?
Holy Mackerel!”
As argued in the beginning of this essay and through judicious use of Scully’s own words it has been evidenced that Scully has performed with such skill and grace that the experience is aesthetic. That like other performing artists he responds uncannily to the action on the field. Like the game itself, he is influenced by the qualities and contingencies that make each game and its broadcast so accustomed to the authoritativeness of his voice that in one memorable World Series game television broadcast he made a rare mistake and said the Dodger centerfielder caught a ball that the had in fact dropped. (As a personal aside, I was watching that game, and for longer than a moment, I believed Scully rather than my own eyes.).
On a Saturday television game of the week, after all the pennant races had already been decided, Scully became more anecdotal. It was almost like a Spring Training game, and the joy was undiminished. Scully made an otherwise ordinary game seem like the quintessence of the national past time. At other times whether victory or defeat, playoff triumphs and last place finishes, the games become like Greek tragedies. Players battle their own histories, the elements, the fates, the gallant opposition. Their agony and ecstasy reveal the universals, the human condition, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes. Scully the artist par excellence.
Truly Scully has proven himself as Artist. The remainder of this book emphasizes the complexity of this Art.