Rip Vin Scully!

Rest in Peace, Vin Scully, long-time voice of the Dodgers -- one of the few men who could do the whole game by himself without anyone helping him out with the chatter. That was because he knew that his job was to tell a story to people listening on the radio, who had to piece together in their imaginations what was going on in the field.

I have heard that Vin Scully was a devout Catholic, though he did not seem to make a public deal of it. Since I lived on the east coast, I heard Scully only on television, and he seemed to me to be the nicest of men, deeply knowledgeable about baseball, appreciative of smart play and good sportsmanship, and still just a kid at the ballpark, enjoying a boy's life no matter how old the boy was.

Scully is up there in my pantheon of great baseball callers, with Jack Buck, Bob Prince, and the two Harrys, Kalas and Caray. I know that Ernie Harwell belongs there too, but I never got to hear him much, and the fine Denny Matthews, who is still going strong.

In Paradiso deducant eum angeli.