Dear Mr. Scully,
When I was five years old, my parents got divorced and I moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco with my mother. If not for that fact, I would have grown up a Giants fan. I guess that’s the one positive thing that came from that separation. As it was, I had the pleasure of joining you, Mr. Scully, for amazing afternoons and magical evenings of Los Angeles Dodger baseball (which always had the feeling of Brooklyn Dodger baseball when you were behind the microphone).
I can remember listening to the radio on your 3 inning rotations with Ross Porter. Your voice was soothing to a small child confused that his father wasn't in the house. In that space that missed a presence of a male voice, you came in, told stories, and created pictures with your words that still echo in the spaces of my childhood.
Those wonderful memories that could have been cold shadows are forever warm Dodger blue. It was your love for the game that made it so.
Being an only child of a single mother gave me plenty of time to be alone, but during baseball season, there was rarely solitude. Starting in the magnificent spring when Vero Beach Florida would slowly open up a new season, your voice ushered in the reality I’d been waiting all winter to take refuge in.
Each season was a new chapter in a spectacular baseball novel.
I saw my father when I would fly up to San Francisco for brief weekends. He passed his love for the game on to me. For him too, as a boy of immigrants, it offered an anchor in times of confusion and distance. He would teach me the history of the game and gave me my first baseball encyclopedia, a 10 pound book that I was carry around in my backpack when I wasn’t with him. For me, you were a baseball bridge that kept his passion for the game connected to my heart.
In 1988, as I was just heading into my teenage years, I took a last pause at boyhood when the Dodgers run to the World Series took place. You were my local voice through the regular season, then transitioned to the national spokesperson as we moved to the playoffs and, finally, to that improbable night when Gibson limped around the bases with a home run blessed by the gods.
Through all of that, your voice, that voice of a small boy who never let the adult ruin how he viewed the game, controlled time and made sure history recorded the moment properly.
Now, as an adult in my early 40s, with a child of my own, I look back ant those afternoons and evenings of my youth and smile.
We can just look at each other and say “Scully” and it carries so much weight. So much understanding.
As you step down from your throne this October, though sad to see you go, you will exist forever in my memory and keep the child inside of me comfortable throughout the restless winters to come devoid of your observations.
Thank you for the voice.
-CH