Their impulse, for good reason, is to leave their mark on a moment. Play-by-play broadcasters trade in spoken words. But not shocked out of his professionalism.” Vin Scully is shocked by what he’s just seen. Every little ‘i’ is dotted and ‘t’ is crossed. “But what also was distinctive is that he never loses his place. “What resonates there is that here you have Vin Scully, the ultimate professional, and yet the 10th inning was so startling that even he registered not just excitement but surprise in his voice,” says former NBC broadcaster Bob Costas, who during the inning scurried out of the Boston locker room, where he was preparing to cover the victory celebration. I’ve heard Vin Scully say those words on, oh, dozens, if not hundreds, occasions in the ensuing 36 years. “Behind the bag! It gets through Buckner. Then, at the moment the ball went through the legs of Boston first baseman Bill Buckner, Scully’s voice rose to the appropriate level. “A little roller up along first,” Scully said, in a pinpoint description. The count now full at 3-2, Wilson made contact. “5-5, in a delirious 10th inning,” Scully intoned, stretching a few vowels to keep building anticipation. Scully paused for 30 seconds, letting the moment speak for itself until Wilson’s at-bat resumed with Knight, the winning run, now on second base. I leapt off the couch, hurling my cat her four feet landed safely on the rug (my bad, Smokey). “Here comes Mitchell to score the tying run!” The crowd went berserk. “It’s going to go to the backstop!” said Scully. “Fouled away again,” Scully said as Wilson nicked a two-strike pitch, barely keeping the season alive.Ī couple of pitches later, Boston’s Bob Stanley unleashed a ball that kept sailing, sailing, toward Wilson’s feet. Through Wilson’s now legendary at-bat, Scully offered a clinic in the old adage “show, don’t tell.” His sparse words, and the pulsations of the Shea Stadium crowd, built overwhelming tension. “55,078 here at Shea, and they’ve really been put through the wringer,” Scully said. Boston was on the cusp, finally, of winning its first World Series since 1918, forever shedding the Curse of the Bambino. They trailed 3-2 in the series, and were now down to their last out. My New York Mets, after rampaging through a 108-win regular season, were down 5-3 in the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. When you’re 10 years old, the fate of your favorite team is the most important thing in your world. “You would think that the fates would be a little kinder to one man in such a short amount of time.”Ĭat on my lap, and tears in my eyes, I sat in my living room on the night of Oct. Louis Cardinals supporters got Scully on the call of Jack Clark’s game-deciding home run in Game 6 of the 1985 NLCS, the second straight game in which a Cardinal hit a heartbreaking homer off of Dodgers reliever Tom Niedenfuer. “Montana … looking, looking … throwing in the end zone … Clark caught it!” On NBC, St. So San Francisco 49ers fans heard him call a franchise-altering moment, the Joe Montana to Dwight Clark touchdown pass in the 1981 NFC championship game-a.k.a. Fortunately for those of us who resided outside SoCal, Scully also worked for national networks, allowing his economical narratives and poetic incantations to resonate far beyond Los Angeles.
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