Column: Remembering 'the best there ever was'

Aug. 6—What's your favorite Vin Scully call?

Hank Aaron's 715th home run? Sandy Koufax's perfect game? Bill Buckner's error? Kirk Gibson's World Series walk-off home run?

Those memories, and plenty more, washed over me Wednesday morning when I found out that the legendary baseball announcer had died. He was 94.

Even though I was on vacation and a couple of hundred miles from home, bad news traveled fast. When my wife informed me early Wednesday, I reached for my smart phone and found plenty of articles and social media posts. The one common theme was that Scully was "the best there ever was."

You won't get any arguments from me. Even though South Carolina has been my home for all my life, I learned about the legendary Dodgers announcer when I was a kid and started following the team. By that time, he had been calling baseball games, and a variety of other sports, for more than a quarter of a century.

Sports fans are fiercely geographic when it comes to their favorite announcers. A couple of generations of Braves fans loved the work of Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson and Pete Van Wieren. St. Louis fans loved Jack Buck, and Ernie Harwell was an institution in Detroit.

Scully was seemingly everywhere. In addition to calling the Dodgers, he also did work on national broadcasts. Before he became NBC's top baseball announcer in the 1980s, he worked for CBS Sports. He called the 1975 Masters, where Jack Nicklaus held off Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller. He called it "a horse race" as the action came down to the wire. And he was on duty when Joe Montana and Dwight Clark teamed up for "The Catch," the touchdown pass that lifted the San Francisco 49ers over the Dallas Cowboys.

A few years ago I made the command decision to splurge and get the DirecTV baseball package so I could follow my Dodgers. Getting to hear Scully say "It's time for Dodger baseball" and his trademark opening — "Hi, everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be" — were worth the extra cost.

At his core, Scully was a supreme storyteller. He could read the phone book and make it sound interesting, but he and his team always had interesting nuggets to tell about players on the opposing team. I always enjoyed hearing him talk about how Madison Bumgarner, the pitching ace of the rival San Francisco Giants, wasn't the only person named Madison Bumgarner at his own high school.

Scully retired from the broadcast booth in 2016 after 67 years behind the microphone. He was replaced — if anyone can really replace Vin Scully? — by Joe Davis, who has blossomed into one of the game's best play-by-play announcers.

As long as baseball is played, we'll still hear Scully's iconic calls played over and over again. When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run to break the mark previously held by Babe Ruth, Scully was on the call. Aaron's homer came against the Dodgers.

"What a marvelous moment for baseball," Scully said. "A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol."

When Bill Buckner committed his famous error in the 1986 World Series, Scully was on the call that night. "If one picture is worth a thousand words, you have seen about a million words," he said as the Mets rallied to stay alive and eventually win the World Series.

My favorite baseball call from Scully came in 1988. The Dodgers were matched against the mighty Oakland A's in the World Series, and they were down to their last out in the first game when a hobbled Kirk Gibson limped to the plate.

On a 3-2 count, Gibson connected off Dennis Eckersley to hit a game-winning home run. The underdog Dodgers won the World Series in five games.

"In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened," Scully exclaimed as Gibson rounded the bases.

But back to my original question: What's your favorite Scully call? For someone who called 25 World Series, 20 no-hitters and three perfect games, there are many options.

Mine has nothing to do with baseball. Many years ago, on June 6, I was driving home from Augusta when I turned in to the Dodgers broadcast. I get the feeling he did this a few times, but it gave me goosebumps as I drove through the night. The action on the field became secondary as Scully rattled off the names of the D-Day beaches where the Allied troops landed: Omaha, Sword, Utah, Gold and Juno.

On June 6, 2015, Scully told this story:

"The operation was called 'Overlord.' The largest air, land and sea operation undertaken. It included over 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, 150,000 servicemen, and it came down to this: the boat ramp goes down, you jump, swim, run and crawl to the cliffs. Many of the first young men were not yet 20 years old, and they entered the surf carrying 80 pounds of equipment. Many of them drowned. They faced over 200 yards of beach before reaching the first natural feature offering any protection at all.

"... And here we are, watching a ballgame."

Rest in peace, Mr. Scully, and thanks for the memories.

Thanks for reading.