Baseball is a game of stats. A cascade of numbers is presented as players approach the plate: strikeouts, saves, batting averages, runs batted in, and a dizzying array of ratios and percentages. But in a game of numbers, it’s a storyteller who is celebrated today.
Few, if any, of the articles reflecting on Vin Scully’s 67-season career as the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers highlights his knowledge of statistics. Oh, he knows his data, but it’s Scully’s stories that fans will miss the most. “Scully would rather tell stories. He engaged in conversation with his audience, collecting anecdotes about players and about life, weaving them seamlessly into his game description,” writes baseball columnist Bill Shaikin in the LA Times.
George Will, a Washington Post columnist and an avid baseball fan, titled his column, Baseball’s storyteller, our friend. “In an era with a surfeit of shoddiness, two things are well-made — major league baseball and Vin Scully’s broadcasts of it,” Will writes. “Everything humane depends on words — love, promise-keeping, story-telling, democracy. And baseball.” Baseball, according to Will, is a “game of episodes…it leaves time for, and invites, conversation, rumination and speculation. And storytelling, by which Scully immerses his audience in baseball’s rich history, and stories that remind fans that players are not wind-up dolls.”
Sports Illustrated reflected on Scully’s career by posting audio and video clips from “Vin Scully’s best stories of the 2016 season.” While Scully will be remembered for some of baseball’s most iconic calls, “the broadcaster has endeared himself to generations of fans with his ability to seamlessly tell a story while still managing to call every pitch.”
Listen to some of the clips and you will hear a true craftsman who speaks with a remarkable balance of story and statistics. Vin Scully could find a story in anything: rattlesnakes, dirt, or beards.
For example, San Diego catcher Derek Norris was at-bat. Like many players, Norris has a considerable beard. Scully had done his research on beards and seamlessly weaved the history of beards with the stats of the game.
“Two down, second inning, and no score. First pitch. Fast ball. First strike. They say, way back to the dawn of humanity, beards evolved because, number one, because ladies like them, and number two, it was the idea of frightening off adversaries and wild animals—Here’s the one-strike pitch. Swung on and missed. Strike two—In fact, it was so serious, if you look it up, there’s a divine mandate for beards in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.”
Scully could even make dirt interesting. In one game he noticed dirt on the white uniform of Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw. “You know, it reminds us of the importance of dirt to certain people,” Scully’s story began. “Back in 1916, the Yankees were playing in the Polo Grounds, and whenever the Washington Senators came to New York to play the Yankees, would you believe, they brought their own dirt. They would bring their own dirt to dry their hands. And they claimed the soil around home plate in the Polo Grounds was trick dirt. Have you ever heard of trick dirt?” Here’s the one-one pitch, a fastball banged into right field. Base hit…”
In another story about SF Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner, Scully masterfully weaved the following anecdote with the game’s statistics. It keeps your interest in what happens next.
“During spring training in Arizona, Bumgarner and his wife were roping cattle, which is what they do—one-one pitch. Sinker low ball. Two and one—and they were startled by a large snake. And Madison thought it was a rattlesnake, so he grabbed an ax and hacked the snake to pieces. But there’s something more to this story—low ball pitch. Low. Ball three. Three and one—His wife Ali examined what was left of the snake, she found two baby jackrabbits. And after she extracted them—three one pitch to Turner. Way inside. Ball four—she noticed that one of the rabbits was alive. Well his wife brought the rabbit back to their apartment, the next days they kept it warm, bottle nursed it, and the rabbit was soon healthy enough that they released it into the wild.”
Anthropologists say storytelling marked a major milestone in human development because stories inform, illuminate, and inspire. Scully’s stories certainly informed and illuminated. They also inspired. When Scully talked about players who overcame poverty or setbacks, those stories inspired others, especially young fans who could see themselves in those narratives.
Scully’s stories resonated with everyone, young and old. Zoe, an 8-year-old Dodgers fan, was quoted in this tweet as saying, “I hate when the Dodgers have away games. They don’t tell stories.”
Vin Scully didn’t train to be a baseball announcer; he wanted to be a writer. It should come as no surprise, then, that Scully touched so many fans so deeply. He cared as much about words as he did about stats. “If you go to a ballgame, you’re not going to talk pitches for three hours,” Scully once said. “There’s a running conversation; it’s not just about the game. I’m talking to a friend.” Baseball is losing an announcer this week, but fans are losing a friend.