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Read the Book

Vin Scully wasn’t just the voice of the Dodgers, he was the voice of Los Angeles. Tom Hoffarth discusses Vin Scully’s life.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 8, 2024

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This video video is a transcript discussing the life and impact of legendary Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully, shared by a long-time sports writer who grew up in Los Angeles and admired Scully for decades. After Scully's death in August 2022, the writer felt a profound loss and wanted to commemorate him through a project, eventually leading to the creation of a book in his honor.

Drawing on his extensive experience as a sports media writer, the author reflects on Scully's warm storytelling style, humility, kindness, and the deep connections he forged with fans, players, and fellow broadcasters. The book includes contributions from various individuals who share personal stories about how Scully influenced their lives and careers.

The writer emphasizes Scully's character, highlighting his faith and the lessons he imparted on empathy, friendship, and personal integrity. Additionally, in the process of compiling stories for the book, he sought a diverse range of voices to illustrate Scully's impact across different backgrounds and communities. The final work is described as a collective appreciation of Scully's life, not merely a tribute, and aims to resonate with readers by showcasing the profound connections he made throughout his career. The intent is for the book to serve as both a record of Scully's influence and a living testament to his legacy, encouraging ongoing sharing of memories through a dedicated website.

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Here are some key quotes from the video:

1. **On Personal Connection to Sports**:
- "And I was born in Los Angeles and grew up a Dodger fan, like everybody in Los Angeles did."

2. **On Vince Scully's Influence**:
- "So many of us grew up saying, I wanna be the next Vince Scully, which is not possible, but you can take away things about the way he broadcast a game and kind of incorporate that, not only into a professional pursuit, but just in being a good person."

3. **On the Loss Felt in the Community**:
- "When Vince Scully died on, in August of 2022, we all had this great sense of loss in Los Angeles."

4. **On the Purpose of the Book**:
- "Let's give him, uh, the acknowledgement and not so much a tribute, but let's just, it's an appreciation of the life he lived."

5. **On His Faith and Impact**:
- "His friend Jackie Robinson once said that a life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives."

6. **On Vince's Character**:
- "He loved history, he loved patriotism... his humility, his sincerity, uh, how he dealt with celebrity and fame."

7. **On Listening to Vince**:
- "You meet Vince once and you feel like you've known him forever and it's because of that connection he made over so many years of being a broadcaster."

8. **On Encouragement and Mentoring**:
- "Just be the best person you are."

9. **On the Book's Emotional Process**:
- "None of it really felt like labor. It was all this emotional rush... every story led to another great story."

10. **On Community Sharing**:
- "I hope that is also what becomes of this... to where people still wanna share stories and meetings and times that he touched their lives."

These quotes encapsulate the themes of personal connection, influence, loss, and memorialization in honor of Vince Scully's life and impact.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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And I was born in Los Angeles

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and grew up a Dodger fan, like everybody in Los Angeles did.

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My parents were as well.

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And as a sports writer, I worked

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for the Los Angeles Daily News for many, many years,

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almost 40 years in the newspaper world as a,

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as a sports reporter.

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But most importantly, I was a, sports media writer.

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I covered the business of sports and the media.

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So having grown up for 30 years, listening to Vince Scully

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as the broadcaster of the Dodgers, that was sort

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of a natural indoctrination of what the sport was about

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and learning about the game.

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And then for the last 30 years, I got to cover him.

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And I had all these interviews and boxes of audio tape

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and photographs that I'd taken over the years.

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And we talked about so many different things.

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And when Vince Scully died on, in August of two,

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2022, we all had this

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great sense of loss in Los Angeles.

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And my immediately response was,

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I have all these great things to share with people.

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How can I do that? What can I, what can I do

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to help comfort us through this?

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Through this time? And I started putting things together.

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And with the help of Nebraska Books, they agreed

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to do the project with me.

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Um, it was interesting to me,

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'cause Nebraska is such a great book, publisher of

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academic studies of baseball,

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and this really was not an academic study.

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It was very touch feely, emotional.

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And as I started piecing together, what I wanted

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to tell people about Vince Scully's life is everybody sort

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of know, knew him as a broadcaster, as a storyteller,

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a person who loved the game.

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He loved history, he loved patriotism.

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But having known him and know his faith background

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and his love of his family, his humility, his sincerity,

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how he dealt with celebrity

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and fame, all this sort of built up and,

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and especially the way he influenced other young people

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to be broadcasters.

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So many of us grew up saying,

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I wanna be the next Vince Scully, which is not possible,

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but you can take away things about the way he broadcast a

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game and kind of incorporate that,

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not only into a professional pursuit,

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but just in being a good person.

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And in, in the bottom line, when Vince Scully had,

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his family had a very small funeral for, there was no public

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sort of forum for this, for people to sort

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of get their emotions out there and share their feelings.

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Um, we had similar incidents where Kobe Bryant died

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and the whole city sort of had this large mourning period

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and there was a big event at Staples Center and things,

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but we didn't have any of that for Vin.

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And I thought that was kind of a missed opportunity

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for the city to sort of hug each other

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and figure out what we take away from vin.

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And so knowing all these things that I did know about him,

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I started going to other friends of mine in the business and

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Said, did, did you have these kind of experiences?

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And they said, not only that, but,

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and they would tell this marvelous story

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about how he helped them.

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He wrote them a letter. He, he

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called their mom on their birthday,

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he called a sick friend in the hospital.

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All these things that he did without any sort of recognition

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or wanting any recognition.

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And so as I started pulling this together

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and I had a deadline, I said, let's just see what we got.

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Let's just, I'm gonna reach out to as many people as I can.

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I'm gonna meet this deadline

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'cause we wanna have it out as soon as possible.

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And I know a book takes about 10 months

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to a full year to come out.

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And so there couldn't be anything really immediate.

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So we, let's, let's work with that timeline.

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Let's see what we got. And I don't know how it worked out,

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but I got 67 essay responses,

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which is exactly the number

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of years he was a dodger broadcaster.

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I got the last one on the day that I had

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to send in the manuscript.

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And it was from Bud Sek,

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the former commissioner of baseball.

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It started first with Bob Ko, just the great broadcaster.

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And I just weaved in so many different people,

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so many different areas, friends, family, acquaintances,

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and we just kind of put it out there, in hoping that

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that would help sort of people really know the true man.

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And I, and, and as this book has slowly been getting out

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to people, the response has been like a warm embrace.

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And that's really, I I've never felt it was my book.

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It was kind of our city's book to sort of, let's,

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let's give him, the acknowledgement

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and not so much a tribute,

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but let's just, it's an appreciation of the life he lived.

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The research was me going through my garage

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and finding all these audios and, and newspaper clippings.

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And I know a lot of the newspapers today are available

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online, but still it's not the same.

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I had, I have every story I've ever done with Vin

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and I formed this box and I have these audio tapes.

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I had to go find a new Sony tape recorder that had micro

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tapes capacity 'cause they don't even use those anymore.

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And that's what I used back in the day

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and could re-listen to some

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of these discussions that we had.

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And, it was just interesting to hear his voice

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over 30 years, almost exactly the same.

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He had the same cadence, the same warmth,

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the same importance and, and,

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and vision of what he wanted to say.

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He was very candid about a lot of things

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and things we talked about.

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And those were discussions that I know he had

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with me as well as other people.

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So I wanted to really capture those.

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And then it was just, the research was just making a list,

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a wishlist of other people I wanted to include in this.

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Um, many did not wanna write essays

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'cause it's just not their thing.

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They're broadcasters. So what happened was I had

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to really sort of interview a lot of people

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and then form that, do an essay, have them approve it.

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And, so it was a lot more time involved in a time

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crunch that I didn't anticipate,

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but I knew I wanted to do it.

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So I just devoted day and night weekends

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and everything just to get this done by a June deadline

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of 2023 so that it would be out right now

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for the, the opening of baseball.

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So it, and none of it really felt like, like le like labor.

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It, it was all this, emotional rush and,

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and, all this drive to get this finished

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because it every story led to another great story

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and led to another person who could,

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who could bring another great story.

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So that was really, kind of how the research was.

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And it, like I said, since it's not an academic book,

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I didn't have to worry about footnotes and all these things

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and I could just, just, just pour yourself out.

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I'll figure it out. Well, I was lucky enough

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to get Peter O'Malley,

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who was the Dodger owner during the time.

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I was lucky enough to find a person named Tom Volante,

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who was actually 95 years old

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and was Vince's first TV producer back in Brooklyn.

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Um, and through all these different people, I I was able

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to talk to Oral Hershier

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and Eric Caros, Steve Garvey, a lot of the players.

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But what's interesting is the players

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who are now in the broadcasting world didn't have

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that deeper relationship with VIN

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until they became broadcasters as players.

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Vin was not someone to really sort

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of be chummy with the players.

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He, he kept, he kept a distance and it was for a reason

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because he didn't want that sort of, feeling like

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whatever their relationship was would affect his broadcast.

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And, and, but the most heart heartening thing was

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to find all these people who said, it's

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because of Vin, that I wanted to be a broadcaster.

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And, when you got a person like Al Michaels

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who grew up in Brooklyn listening to VIN at the beginning

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of his career and heard him all the way to the end

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of his career, Al Michaels just admits that VIN is part

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of his broadcasting career.

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And, and Al is a hall of fame broadcaster himself.

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Bob Costas was predominantly someone who grew up in St.

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Louis in New York, but he spent some time in southern

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California as a child and would listen to VIN on the radio.

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So he took all that in.

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And it's not so much name dropping as the people

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who were in the book, but it, it,

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I got actors like Brian Cranston

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and Harry Sheer to contribute,

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to contribute stories as well.

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And they were fabulous.

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And I tried to get some others,

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but like I said, it was just a time

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crunch and some couldn't do it.

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So I really, I really wanted

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to tap into those people in Los

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Angeles who were most affected.

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I wanted a cross section of people, men, women,

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all different ethnic people.

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There are two or three stories about,

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how Vin taught them English.

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They came from either Honduras or Belgium or something.

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And just listening to him

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and used the language the way he did that affected them.

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And so all these different entry points sort

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of form this great tapestry of

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what we can now put out there in a book

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and just share with everybody else.

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And to me, it was important to

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Not just make this a book, but also a process to

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where I've set up a website

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and the, the, the web addresses in the book Vince Scully

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appreciation book to where people still wanna share stories

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and, and, and meetings

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and times that he touched their lives.

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You, you meet Vince once and you feel like you've known him

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forever and it's because of that connection he made

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so many years and years of being a broadcaster

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and listening to, to people listening to him.

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So in that regard, I did, I wanted this to kind

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of a be a living, breathing organism,

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not just a one-off book.

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So I hope that is also what becomes of this, one of the, one

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of the lines in the book, and

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I wanna make sure I get it right.

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His friend Jackie Robinson, whoops, once said

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that a life is not important except

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for the impact it has on other lives.

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And that's what I want to have people realize, the impact

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that Vin had on everybody else's life,

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and not just the sports writers or the athletes,

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but the people who he connected with.

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And, it was especially important for me to get

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to his faith journey.

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Uh, he grew up a Catholic, he had a great faith base

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that helped him get through some personal tragedies,

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but it also made him realize that

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there's a bigger picture in life.

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It's, this is not just why we're here to be on earth

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and enjoy baseball games.

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There's a bigger picture about, reuniting with family

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and, and, and just being a good person

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and the benefits of, of friendship and all those things.

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And I think that's what I hope the takeaway is

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that people realize that if they sense this was about him,

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it really was about him.

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And so now this is kind of verifying that

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through other people's discussions

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and their essays, I think,

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I hope readers take away from the book that he was a man

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of faith and his faith is really the foundation of

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what made him so great.

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Not just as a broadcaster and a storyteller,

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but as a person who had empathy and kindness

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and knew the power of friendship

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and knew that if he did something that inspired other people

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to do things, not to copy him, just to be their own person.

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And that was really some advice he gave to,

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one writer in particular

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who was having a hard time while

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she was covering the Dodgers.

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She was not allowed in the locker room

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and she was being very frustrated

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and Vin saw her on the team bus and took her aside and,

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and really comforted her

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and told her, just be the best person you are.

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And she became a very good sports writer.

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And she later went to church with him just

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because he invited her just to join him in, in some kind

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of sacred holy time.

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And, and it's funny, sometimes a a person like Oral

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Hershe is a famous pitcher.

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I would be talking to him at a Dodger game

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and he would look up and goes, the Pope is here.

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I gotta go talk to him. And it's, it was Vince Scully,

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but just he had this reverence that you just sort of,

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he understood that because of his fame and his,

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and his, accessibility,

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but he also was so humble in that, you knew

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you weren't interrupting him if you wanted just to say hi

11:54.645 --> 11:56.045
to him and he made the time for you.

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And he didn't take himself as seriously.

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He took the profession seriously,

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but he really took seriously the connections he made

12:02.565 --> 12:02.885
with people.

00:00 - And I was born in Los Angeles and grew up a Dodger fan, like everybody in Los Angeles did. My parents were as well. And as a sports writer, I worked for the Los Angeles Daily News for many, many years, almost 40 years in the newspaper world as a,

00:15 - as a sports reporter. But most importantly, I was a, sports media writer. I covered the business of sports and the media. So having grown up for 30 years, listening to Vince Scully as the broadcaster of the Dodgers, that was sort of a natural indoctrination of what the sport was about and learning about the game. And then for the last 30 years, I got to cover him. And I had all these interviews and boxes of audio tape and photographs that I'd taken over the years.

00:43 - And we talked about so many different things. And when Vince Scully died on, in August of two, 2022, we all had this great sense of loss in Los Angeles. And my immediately response was, I have all these great things to share with people. How can I do that? What can I, what can I do to help comfort us through this? Through this time? And I started putting things together. And with the help of Nebraska Books, they agreed

01:14 - to do the project with me. it was interesting to me, 'cause Nebraska is such a great book, publisher of academic studies of baseball, and this really was not an academic study. It was very touch feely, emotional. And as I started piecing together, what I wanted to tell people about Vince Scully's life is everybody sort of know, knew him as a broadcaster, as a storyteller, a person who loved the game.

01:40 - He loved history, he loved patriotism. But having known him and know his faith background and his love of his family, his humility, his sincerity, how he dealt with celebrity and fame, all this sort of built up and, and especially the way he influenced other young people to be broadcasters. So many of us grew up saying, I wanna be the next Vince Scully, which is not possible, but you can take away things about the way he broadcast a

02:10 - game and kind of incorporate that, not only into a professional pursuit, but just in being a good person. And in, in the bottom line, when Vince Scully had, his family had a very small funeral for, there was no public sort of forum for this, for people to sort of get their emotions out there and share their feelings. we had similar incidents where Kobe Bryant died and the whole city sort of had this large mourning period and there was a big event at Staples Center and things,

02:40 - but we didn't have any of that for Vin. And I thought that was kind of a missed opportunity for the city to sort of hug each other and figure out what we take away from vin. And so knowing all these things that I did know about him, I started going to other friends of mine in the business and Said, did, did you have these kind of experiences? And they said, not only that, but, and they would tell this marvelous story about how he helped them.

03:07 - He wrote them a letter. He, he called their mom on their birthday, he called a sick friend in the hospital. All these things that he did without any sort of recognition or wanting any recognition. And so as I started pulling this together and I had a deadline, I said, let's just see what we got. Let's just, I'm gonna reach out to as many people as I can. I'm gonna meet this deadline 'cause we wanna have it out as soon as possible.

03:32 - And I know a book takes about 10 months to a full year to come out. And so there couldn't be anything really immediate. So we, let's, let's work with that timeline. Let's see what we got. And I don't know how it worked out, but I got 67 essay responses, which is exactly the number of years he was a dodger broadcaster. I got the last one on the day that I had to send in the manuscript.

03:58 - And it was from Bud Sek, the former commissioner of baseball. It started first with Bob Ko, just the great broadcaster. And I just weaved in so many different people, so many different areas, friends, family, acquaintances, and we just kind of put it out there, in hoping that that would help sort of people really know the true man. And I, and, and as this book has slowly been getting out to people, the response has been like a warm embrace. And that's really, I I've never felt it was my book.

04:29 - It was kind of our city's book to sort of, let's, let's give him, the acknowledgement and not so much a tribute, but let's just, it's an appreciation of the life he lived. The research was me going through my garage and finding all these audios and, and newspaper clippings. And I know a lot of the newspapers today are available online, but still it's not the same. I had, I have every story I've ever done with Vin and I formed this box and I have these audio tapes.

04:59 - I had to go find a new Sony tape recorder that had micro tapes capacity 'cause they don't even use those anymore. And that's what I used back in the day and could re-listen to some of these discussions that we had. And, it was just interesting to hear his voice over 30 years, almost exactly the same. He had the same cadence, the same warmth, the same importance and, and, and vision of what he wanted to say.

05:27 - He was very candid about a lot of things and things we talked about. And those were discussions that I know he had with me as well as other people. So I wanted to really capture those. And then it was just, the research was just making a list, a wishlist of other people I wanted to include in this. many did not wanna write essays 'cause it's just not their thing. They're broadcasters. So what happened was I had

05:49 - to really sort of interview a lot of people and then form that, do an essay, have them approve it. And, so it was a lot more time involved in a time crunch that I didn't anticipate, but I knew I wanted to do it. So I just devoted day and night weekends and everything just to get this done by a June deadline of 2023 so that it would be out right now for the, the opening of baseball. So it, and none of it really felt like, like le like labor.

06:17 - It, it was all this, emotional rush and, and, all this drive to get this finished because it every story led to another great story and led to another person who could, who could bring another great story. So that was really, kind of how the research was. And it, like I said, since it's not an academic book, I didn't have to worry about footnotes and all these things and I could just, just, just pour yourself out. I'll figure it out. Well, I was lucky enough

06:44 - to get Peter O'Malley, who was the Dodger owner during the time. I was lucky enough to find a person named Tom Volante, who was actually 95 years old and was Vince's first TV producer back in Brooklyn. and through all these different people, I I was able to talk to Oral Hershier and Eric Caros, Steve Garvey, a lot of the players. But what's interesting is the players who are now in the broadcasting world didn't have

07:12 - that deeper relationship with VIN until they became broadcasters as players. Vin was not someone to really sort of be chummy with the players. He, he kept, he kept a distance and it was for a reason because he didn't want that sort of, feeling like whatever their relationship was would affect his broadcast. And, and, but the most heart heartening thing was to find all these people who said, it's because of Vin, that I wanted to be a broadcaster.

07:37 - And, when you got a person like Al Michaels who grew up in Brooklyn listening to VIN at the beginning of his career and heard him all the way to the end of his career, Al Michaels just admits that VIN is part of his broadcasting career. And, and Al is a hall of fame broadcaster himself. Bob Costas was predominantly someone who grew up in St. Louis in New York, but he spent some time in southern California as a child and would listen to VIN on the radio. So he took all that in.

08:04 - And it's not so much name dropping as the people who were in the book, but it, it, I got actors like Brian Cranston and Harry Sheer to contribute, to contribute stories as well. And they were fabulous. And I tried to get some others, but like I said, it was just a time crunch and some couldn't do it. So I really, I really wanted

08:23 - to tap into those people in Los Angeles who were most affected. I wanted a cross section of people, men, women, all different ethnic people. There are two or three stories about, how Vin taught them English. They came from either Honduras or Belgium or something. And just listening to him and used the language the way he did that affected them. And so all these different entry points sort

08:47 - of form this great tapestry of what we can now put out there in a book and just share with everybody else. And to me, it was important to Not just make this a book, but also a process to where I've set up a website and the, the, the web addresses in the book Vince Scully appreciation book to where people still wanna share stories and, and, and meetings and times that he touched their lives.

09:08 - You, you meet Vince once and you feel like you've known him forever and it's because of that connection he made so many years and years of being a broadcaster and listening to, to people listening to him. So in that regard, I did, I wanted this to kind of a be a living, breathing organism, not just a one-off book. So I hope that is also what becomes of this, one of the, one of the lines in the book, and I wanna make sure I get it right.

09:30 - His friend Jackie Robinson, whoops, once said that a life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives. And that's what I want to have people realize, the impact that Vin had on everybody else's life, and not just the sports writers or the athletes, but the people who he connected with. And, it was especially important for me to get to his faith journey. he grew up a Catholic, he had a great faith base

10:01 - that helped him get through some personal tragedies, but it also made him realize that there's a bigger picture in life. It's, this is not just why we're here to be on earth and enjoy baseball games. There's a bigger picture about, reuniting with family and, and, and just being a good person and the benefits of, of friendship and all those things. And I think that's what I hope the takeaway is that people realize that if they sense this was about him,

10:31 - it really was about him. And so now this is kind of verifying that through other people's discussions and their essays, I think, I hope readers take away from the book that he was a man of faith and his faith is really the foundation of what made him so great. Not just as a broadcaster and a storyteller, but as a person who had empathy and kindness and knew the power of friendship

10:54 - and knew that if he did something that inspired other people to do things, not to copy him, just to be their own person. And that was really some advice he gave to, one writer in particular who was having a hard time while she was covering the Dodgers. She was not allowed in the locker room and she was being very frustrated and Vin saw her on the team bus and took her aside and, and really comforted her

11:17 - and told her, just be the best person you are. And she became a very good sports writer. And she later went to church with him just because he invited her just to join him in, in some kind of sacred holy time. And, and it's funny, sometimes a a person like Oral Hershe is a famous pitcher. I would be talking to him at a Dodger game and he would look up and goes, the Pope is here. I gotta go talk to him. And it's, it was Vince Scully,

11:39 - but just he had this reverence that you just sort of, he understood that because of his fame and his, and his, accessibility, but he also was so humble in that, you knew you weren't interrupting him if you wanted just to say hi to him and he made the time for you. And he didn't take himself as seriously. He took the profession seriously, but he really took seriously the connections he made with people.

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