"And folks, we've run out of July." — Vin Scully
The spectacle that is the Barry Bonds' chase of Hank Aaron's all-time home run mark touched down in Los Angeles this week but the most riveting television came from the rare chance (for Canadians, that is) to hear the man responsible for the colourful turn of phrase posted above.
Vin Scully opened the broadcast of Tuesday's series opener with those simple words, a phrase indicative of what has made him one of the most beloved broadcasters of all time. While so many broadcasters and talking heads try so desperately to find their niche by outdoing the last guy, Scully continues to be the class of them all because of his incredible ability to paint the big pictures with a mere few strokes.
As Bonds and the Giants settled in the City of Angels for a three-game set against the Dodgers — one that indeed had more vital implications to Dodger fans who were watching a team that actually has something to play for — throngs of media followed. Scully, who now limits the number of games he does for Fox Sports, was there too. The difference is when Bonds and the carnival takes its travelling road show south (next stop, San Diego) and sets up there for a few days, Scully will still be in L.A. and produce infinitely more captivating television than Bonds and his inevitable crowning as home run king.
Through nearly 60 years of covering a game that is best served narrated by great storytellers, Scully has become the ultimate elucidator. He has attached his voice to some of the most legendary calls ever heard and as renowned as they are for the action that took place, they are highlighted even more because of the man who chronicled the scenes. Bill Buckner's infamous gaffe in the 1986 World Series; Kirk Gibson's improbable home run in 1988 and Hank Aaron's record-breaking blast in Atlanta. They are all classic productions to which Vin Scully has laid the soundtrack.
It is ironic that as modern broadcasting has become an ongoing race to one-up the competition, television networks have added more people to their play-by-play booths, flooded us with countless sideline reporters and approached their studio shows like circus clowns to an old Volkswagen. When everywhere we look on the sports dial they are trying to cram in more, Scully's solitary act shows that less is more.
And while his voice has blessed some of the most significant baseball moments ever witnessed, it's his mastery of making the mundane poetic that exemplifies how so many others in the business are so painfully far behind.
•"He (Bob Gibson) pitches as though he's double-parked."
•"He's (Tom Glavine) like a tailor: A little off here, a little off there and you're done, take a seat."
•"It's a mere moment in a man's life between the All-Star Game and an old timer's game."
•"Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamp post: For support, not illumination."
•"The Dodgers are such a .500 team that if there was a way to split a three-game series, they'd find it."
Scully is in the booth by himself and his narration covers nearly every minute of those nine innings. It's a unique quality to rarely let silence hit the air and yet not have viewers wishing you'd give them a moment's peace. Scully is the guy you'd wish would tell just one more story.
When Barry Bonds was lifted in the seventh inning of Thursday's game at Chavez Ravine, Fox showed a tape of the pre-game hoopla that surrounded the Giants dugout, which included 100 newspaper reporters and nearly as many cameras and reporters. Bonds wasn't going to hit his historic home run in the city of his team's biggest rival and, unless Bonds is still seeking that thus far elusive home run on the final weekend of the season (when San Fran is next in L.A.), Vin Scully won't be there to lend audio to one of the most contentious moments of baseball history. Maybe it's better that way. Bonds hardly deserves the voiceover.
Instead Thursday night, Scully closed his chapter on the story of Bonds' chase just how you'd expect. He provided a line that will likely never be remembered, was just one in a million of utterances, but yet stood up as typically reserved and utterly perfect for the setting:
And hello San Diego, the circus is coming to town.
Can Vin come too?
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