What would New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world,” walk-off home run to clinch the 1951 National League pennant have sounded like without Giants radio broadcaster Russ Hodges’s immortal call of “And the Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant!” there to provide the sound track as Thomson trotted around the bases? How would St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith’s National League pennant-clinching home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers appear without hall of fame broadcaster Jack Buck telling Cardinals fans to “Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!”? Finally, what would Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run in game 1 of the 1988 World Series against Oakland A’s closer Dennis Eckersley sound like without the vocal accompaniment of the Dodgers’ own Vin Scully? Scully was often hired by NBC to broadcast World Series games even if his Dodgers weren’t competing in them. The ’88 season just happened to be magical enough that Scully and the Dodgers both found themselves in the fall classic. Before “turning the mic over” to Scully and Gibson’s timeless shot, it’s perhaps fitting to set the scene for this silver-screen-worthy moment.
Having already saved 45 regular season games and all four American League Championship Series wins for the Athletics, Dennis Eckersley came into the game having not surrendered a home run in almost two months. Eckersley’s fastball slider lived up to its reputation, as shown by Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia’s infield pop-up to A’s shortstop Walt Weiss and Jeff Hamilton’s motionless bat as he watched Eckersley’s patented pitch soar by for a called strike three. X-rays later revealed a bruised shoulder from the weight of Hamilton’s resting bat. These two quick outs led some Dodgers fans to make their way up the aisles with slumped shoulders and hanging heads. Apparently, the price for being a part of World Series history is spending a half hour less in traffic on the California 101 Freeway. Now, let’s turn the mic over to Vin Scully for a recap of the 1988 World Series game 1 some 26 years later: “It all began with the ninth inning. We had just gone into commercial before going to the bottom of the ninth and I asked the producer in the truck for NBC. I said, ‘Do me a favor and follow me.’ Now you rarely do that, but, at this instance, I felt that he was busy trying to get the time of whatever broadcast would follow the game. I asked him please to follow me and he said, ‘Okay.’ So when we came out of commercial, there was the overhead shot by the blimp looking down at Dodger Stadium and I said something to the effect ‘If you were here with us tonight in person, the first thing you would do would be to look in the Dodger dugout,’ and immediately, there was a shot of the dugout. Then the camera panned the length of the dugout and I said something to the effect of ‘Obviously, Kirk Gibson is not in the dugout, and so, obviously, he will not be able to play tonight.’ Well, as I was saying that, Kirk was in the clubhouse, sitting on the trainer’s table, both legs encased in ice, watching on television like everybody else. For some reason, the way I said he’s not going to appear struck a chord. You’d have to really ask him. All of a sudden, he jumped up and threw the ice off his leg and said to the clubhouse boy, ‘Run down and tell Tommy (Lasorda) that I’ll be there in a minute.’ Now I’m totally unaware of all of that, and the clubhouse man ran down and told Lasorda that he was going to come in a minute.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers had an outfielder named Mike Davis, and Mike Davis, an aggressive, good outfielder and hitter, was getting a walk, so that consumed some time. After Mike got the walk, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kirk starting to come up the steps in the dugout, using the bat as a cane, and I immediately reacted and said, ‘Well, look who’s here.’ Well, as he came up off the steps, the crowd just went wild and he eventually went up to the plate to pinch hit. Mike Davis had also stolen second base, so the tying run was at second. In my mind, I knew they weren’t going to walk Gibson. Gibson had bad legs and couldn’t really do anything, so I hoped in my mind that he would not strike out because he had had such a tremendous year. He was such a courageous player and all banged up, so that was my silent prayer that he wouldn’t strike out. He hit a couple of squirrelly little foul balls. Had they been fair, he never would have been able to run to first base. Then, out of the blue, he hits the home run, and I remember later, people asked me to kind of classify the home run. I thought that it was the most theatrical home run I had ever seen. I was very fortunate during the minute and a half that I let the crowd roar. I’ve always done that. That’s when I had the thought ‘In a year that was so improbable, the impossible has happened,’ and that kind of stuck with the fans.”
With Hollywood itself just over the hill, “theatrical” couldn’t have been a better adjective. At the time Gibson’s home run ball landed in the right-field bleachers, Scully had been in his 39th season as a Major League Baseball broadcaster. Some 26 years later, he could recall the event, down to the slightest detail, as if it had happened yesterday. Today’s broadcasters, as well as those from yesterday, understand their responsibility as storytellers for the team. They received tutelage from voices whose names line the halls of Cooperstown, calling games for players who may someday grace those halls as well. Thanks to the example of veterans like Vin Scully, broadcasters know when to pause for the crowd and how to guide them through what they’re seeing, or, in the case of a radio audience, hearing to the point that they actually could see it. Some 65 seasons after calling his first Dodgers game, Vin Scully still understands his and the other broadcasters’ role in baseball, which is as everlasting as the game itself.