Vin Scully Loved Life in the Palisades as Dodgers’ Play-by-Play Announcer
By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor
His customary line “It’s time for Dodger baseball!” is how Vin Scully began virtually every broadcast and last Friday, before the team’s first home game since his passing, the crowd of 52,714 at Chavez Ravine echoed that phrase in unison—a fitting tribute to the man who for nearly six decades blessed the City of Angels with his iconic voice and humble heart.
The beloved Hall of Fame announcer died August 2 at his home in Hidden Hills at the age of 94 and perhaps no community in the Southland is mourning more than Pacific Palisades. For this is where he raised his family and, in his own quiet way, touched countless lives through his gentle demeanor and friendliness to everyone he met.
Scully called his final game on September 25, 2016 at Dodger Stadium, where Charlie Culberson hit a walk-off home run versus the Colorado Rockies to clinch a fourth straight National League West title for the boys in blue. That ended a 67-year stretch beginning in 1950 when the franchise was still located in Brooklyn, NewYork. His tenure with the Dodgers was the longest of any broadcaster with one team in professional sports history. In 1982 Scully won the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually by the National Baseball Hall of Fame to a broadcaster for major contributions to baseball. In 2016, Scully was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama and he even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Yet, despite his success and notoriety, to his neighbors in the Palisades he was simply Vin.
Upon moving to Los Angeles in 1958, Scully and his first wife Joan lived in a two-story apartment house on a corner off Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood, where he was neighbors with then UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. The couple eventually settled in a house near Riviera Country Club, where in 1972 Joan died suddenly from an accidental overdose of medication, leaving Vin alone to care for their three young children. Two years later, Vin met Sandi, who had two kids of her own from a prior marriage, and within a year of their first date they got married. Their daughter Catherine’s arrival in January 1975 grew the family’s size to six children and Vin, upon meeting actress Florence Henderson, joked he now had a “Brady Bunch” of his own.
A devout Catholic, Scully was a regular in the pews on Sundays at Corpus Christi Church and it was his unwavering faith that allowed him to cope when his oldest son Michael was killed in a helicopter crash at age 33 in January 1994. He even arranged for masses to be celebrated in the media interview room at Dodger Stadium.
“I was raised in the Catholic Church and the greatest single gift I’ve ever received is that of faith,” Scully said in 2008. “How strong you’re faith is… that is what gets you through the difficult times.”
Scully occasionally golfed with fellow Riviera resident and then California Governor Ronald Reagan and enjoyed taking his family to their beach club or to nearby Rustic Canyon Park to play softball. They did not go on many vacations because he was always traveling, but as he once famously said of his family: “They pay the bill of loneliness when I’m away.”
The Scullys sold their eight-bedroom 10,000-sq-ft. home on Capri Drive in 2005 and moved to Westlake Village.
For the first few seasons in Los Angeles, before Dodger Stadium was built, Scully called the home games at the Coliseum and it did not take him long at all to endear himself to his listeners, who were as privy to what was taking place on the field as the fans watching from behind home plate.
Scully’s honesty and longevity are legendary. A testament to his commitment to his job lies in the fact that 28 stadiums he called a game at are no longer in existence, including Turner Field in Atlanta, Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, Candlestick Park in San Francisco, JackMurphy Stadium in San Diego, Mile High Stadium in Denver, RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami, Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, the Astrodome in Houston, Shibe Park in Philadelphia and Shea Stadium in Queens.
While he is primarily known as the voice of the Dodgers, Scully also announced the World Series, NFL football and PGA golf while working for CBS Sports (1975-82) and NBC Sports (1983-89). Undoubtedly his most famous call was Kirk Gibson’s game-winning home run off Oakland A’s closer Dennis Eckersley in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series (the Dodgers went on to win the Fall Classic in five games), but other highlights include Game 6 of the 1986 World Series (known as the Bill Buckner game); Joe Montana’s touchdown pass to Dwight Clark in the 1981 NFC Championship football game between the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers (nicknamed The Catch); Atlanta Braves slugger Hank Aaron’s record-setting 715th career homer in 1974; and emceeing the Major League Baseball’s All-Century Team ceremony in 1999.
Since his passing hundreds of athletes, reporters and broadcast brethren have paid their respects and expressed gratitude on social media. Retired LA Kings play-by-play man Bob Miller tweeted: “I am deeply sorry to hear of the passing of Vin Scully, the greatest baseball announcer ever , who set the standard for all play-by-play broadcasters in any sport. Vin was a good friend and a gracious human being. It was a true honor to join him on the Dodger Stadium field to welcome fans to the LA Kings’ first-ever outdoor hockey game in California. I send my sincere condolences to the Scully Family.”
Hall of Fame center fielder Willie Mays, now age 91, shared: “Vinny was a great announcer. I met him in Brooklyn in 1951 at Ebbets Field with Leo Durocher and Jackie Robinson. What a nice, nice man. He did his job all theballplayers loved him. He will be greatly missed. It is so rewarding to think about my friend—he loved the guys, the game and the truth. So long, pal.”
After a video tribute and a moment of silence in Scully’s honor Friday night, a banner was unveiled by TV broadcasters Joe Davis and Orel Hershiser reading “Vin—We’ll miss you!” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said: “This moment right now he really deserved. Vin was a man of character, integrity and class. A true gentleman. He wasn’t just a Dodger. He loved the game that we all love and care about.”
Sharing Scully’s intense passion for the sport of baseball is Alphabet Streets resident and longtime Pacific Palisades Baseball Association Commissioner Bob Benton.
“Baseball was my first love,” said Benton, who owned a sports shop on Swarthmore for 35 years and has served as PPBA Commissioner since 1989. “I used to listen to Vin every night on my transistor radio. I’ve met him several times—at Bel-Air Country Club, at my store and around town. My stepson had a friend who was Vin’s grandson and one time we got to make a trip up to the announcing booth at Dodger Stadium to meet and spend time with Vin before a game.”
When the renovation project at the Palisades Recreation Center launched in the spring of 2003, Scully stepped up to the plate with the largest contribution of all.
“Our committee convinced him and his family to donate $100,000 to the Field of Dreams,” Benton added. “His generosity really got the fundraising going and we were able to reach our $1 million goal.”
As the public address announcer for the LA Rams, Marquez Knolls resident Sam Lagana has always respected Scully as much for his kindness to others as for his storytelling acumen. When Lagana was named President of Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks last year, not surprisingly Scully was one of the first to congratulate him.
“Mr. Scully was a dad who knew his kids’ friends and our lives and we all knew his,” said Lagana, a 1980 Palisades High alum whose own trademark rallying cry “Rise with the Rams” fires up the faithful at So-Fi Stadium. “He cared about people. On my first day as CEO at Notre Dame he called the office at 10 a.m. to check in and offer his best wishes. It was more than a 30-minute call and mostly him telling me not to call him Mr,. Scully anymore. He is always my friend’s dad and a man who was a hero to many and a friend. To me, he was a strong role model of what a good Catholic should be. May Vin rest in peace.”
A vivid illustration of Scully’s character is revealed in Chapter 17 of K.P. Wee’s newly-published “So You Want to Work in Sports?” It tells the story of Charlie Blaney, who spent the first 32 years of his baseball career in the Dodgers organization (1966-98) thanks to an assist from the team’s radio voice. Blaney’s brother happened to be a parishioner at Corpus Christi and the rest, as they say, is history.
“My brother never knew Vin or met him,” Blaney revealed in the 2022 book. “So my brother asked the parish priest to ask Vin ‘How does a young guy get into baseball with the Dodgers?’ Vin Scully, being the first-class gentleman that he is, talked to Buzzie Bavasi, who at the time was the Dodgers’ general manager. Buzzie said—this was in August 1965—‘Tell the kid when the team goes on the road to come see me.’ Vin Scully passed that message on to the parish priest, who passed it on to my brother, who passed it on to me.’”
Blaney met with Bavasi the next week and four months later he was offered a job as business manager for the Dodgers’ Double-A farm club in Albuquerque.
Another Palisadian with fond memories of Scully is Pali High teacher Lisa Nehus Saxon, a Los Angeles Daily News journalist from 1979-87 who became only the second woman to cover MLB as a full-time beat reporter for a daily newspaper. Then in her mid-20s, she was screamed at in the press box and denied access to the locker room on a road trip in Cincinnati, but Scully rode next to her on the team bus the following day and offered words of wisdom and encouragement that are locked in her memory to this day.
A glowing example of Scully’s humility was brought forth vividly
by former Palisadian-Post Sports Editor Chris Reed, now an editor and reporter for the St. George News in Utah. Growing up listening to Scully as a diehard Dodgers fan in Southern California, Reed was sad to hear the news of Scully’s passing and the next day he wrote a heartfelt opinion piece titled “Vin Scully: Dealing with the Silence of a Voice Lost,” recounting that memorable day in January 1997 when he got to meet Scully.
“Somehow, we all thought Vin Scully would live forever. But no one does. Not even the greatest among us,” Reed said in the Aug. 3 story. “I had the distinct honor once of having coffee with Scully. It had actually been arranged for Scully to meet with “The Read-Aloud Handbook” author Jim Trelease but I was invited to come along and also cover it for the local newspaper. Sitting at a coffee shop owned by Los Angeles Lakers player Vlade Divac and his wife, Trelease related as a kid in Brooklyn listening to Scully. But the thing is, with Scully you didn’t have to ask, “What was it like to try to ski with Jackie Robinson?” or any other question. You just let him talk. Between Trelease – who passed away himself last Thursday – and myself, we perhaps said a total of two things. Scully just did all the talking with a mind full of what would be a history book to so many others. They say sometimes it’s not a good thing to meet your heroes. And without naming names, I can say there were many in sports, politics and other fields I grew up admiring who proved to be far from heroic praise in person. But I’m delighted to say that friendly, warm person you heard coming into your room from a stadium beyond during the “Game of the Week” was not a mask or an act. That was who Scully really was. He greeted us and talked with us like we had always been his friend. Because, in a way, he was always ours. To this day, I don’t remember if it was a half hour of my time or a lifetime— only that it was priceless.
“After my story was published, Scully did something he didn’t have to do,” Reed’s recounting continued. “He sent me a complimentary letter. “Many thanks for the kind article,” Scully said. “All your efforts are greatly appreciated.” I still get letters and e-mails complimenting articles and of course an equal share of not-so-complimentary letters. But I am positive none will ever top that one from Scully.”
The online version of Reed’s story last week included a scanned image showing the front page of the sports section in the Feb. 6, 1997 issue of the Palisadian-Post. The headline across the top reads “Coffee with Vinnie.”
Another life touched by a man who was more than merely a gifted storyteller with a magic microphone who could reach through our windows and car stereos, offer up a seat next to him in the booth, put his arm around us and say: “A very pleasant good evening to you… wherever you may be.”
For Palisadian-Post owner and lifelong Dodger fan Alan Smolinisky, who joined the organization’s ownership group in 2019, Scully was a master wordsmith unrivaled in his profession: “Listening to Vin was how my dad learned to speak English. With the $1.25 per hour that he made sweeping floors in the garment district he bought a small radio and permanently set it to Vin’s broadcast. Vin was always so kind and generous with me. He left me a very long voicemail a few years ago that I saved and I’ve been listening to it daily since he passed. He was truly one of the greatest Americans. We were all so lucky to have him in our lives.”
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