‘And a very pleasant good evening’

Posted
Updated:

Vin Scully started every broadcast the same way: “Hi everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be.”

It always felt so pleasant. Like he cared about me and wanted me to feel included.

That is what baseball has always felt like for me, inclusive. It has always been my haven and my gateway to manhood. While my scrawny 5-foot-6 frame was never going to hit home runs or throw no-hitters, being able to talk baseball with my father was always a point of connection.

I always had an adversarial relationship with my father, but one thing that united us was our love of Dodgers baseball. We could talk about the players, the standings, the statistics. It was what kept us together.

He is gone now, but sometimes when I watch the Dodgers, I imagine he is sitting on the couch next to me drinking a beer. “Ooh, that one was filth,” he would say to me about Clayton Kershaw’s curveball that seemingly dropped from the sky into the strike zone. Those moments make me feel like we can still communicate in some abstract way.

Now, Vin is gone too. His passing this month hit me much harder than I expected. So much so that I delayed writing this very column a whole week because I kept getting too choked up to make any progress on it.

It felt like losing a piece of my dad all over again. Vin reminded me of all the best parts of my dad — the stories full of infinite wisdom and a comforting presence in times when I felt the most lost.

I grew up in southern California and watching Dodger games was a nightly tradition. When I moved to North Carolina at 14 years old, falling asleep with Vin in my ear was my connection back to the place I once called home. Suddenly, the string that once tethered me to home and my dad has come undone.

To me, like so many Dodger fans, Vin was a friend and a role model — an icon of all that was pure about the game we love. If you asked 6-year-old Ben what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would’ve told you he wanted to be a sports broadcaster, just like Vin Scully.

On several occasions, I tested the waters as a public address announcer at my brother’s all-star games or the Miracle League — a baseball league for children with special needs.

I would watch old Dodgers clips on a loop and feel the goosebumps at every iconic moment of franchise history, all narrated by the common soundtrack of Scully. I wasn’t alive for the impossible Kirk Gibson’s Game 1 home run, Rick Monday swiping the nearly burned American flag or Sandy Koufax’s perfect game, but hearing Scully’s calls of those historic baseball moments, I felt like I was there. I can recite each of these scenes from memory — sitting in my bedroom trying to emulate the magnitude of the moment.

I used to close my eyes when I would watch games with my dad. I would let him and Scully paint the picture of the game in my mind’s eye. Understanding the game helped me appreciate the power of language and the magic of storytelling.

Scully is an icon to the sports world because he could explain the game so vividly you felt like you were there with him. He could tell you about the action of the game, the story of a player’s family, and even the scenery of the ballpark.

“Cotton candy sky with that deep canopy of blue” he would say as the sun set over Dodger Stadium. “Good enough to eat.”

Vin is, in many ways, the reason I wanted to be a storyteller. He wove the mundane into magic and the magic into history. He showed me the power of voice, the grace of silence and the beauty of listening. It is that captivating feeling and the goosebumps of amazement that I hope to emulate in my own work. I learned it from Scully and connected to it because of my father.

Despite the qualms I had with him, it was my dad that gave me the gift of Dodger baseball. And in a way, it is because of him that I want to be a writer and a journalist who connects with people — the way Scully did for me.

“High fly ball deep left field,” Scully says in the bottom of the ninth of his final broadcast from Chavez Ravine. My dad and I rise from the couch in anticipation of the miraculous. “Back it goes — would you believe a home run? The Dodgers have clinched the division and will celebrate on schedule!”

A walk-off from a little-known utility player named Charlie Culberson who’s now etched himself into the history books. It was the perfect storybook ending to the historic 67 years of Scully as the voice of Dodger baseball.

It’s also one of the last good memories I have with my dad — a very pleasant good evening indeed.

Whooping and hollering ensue in the family room as the Dodgers win the National League West Pennant. My father and I embrace and for a fleeting moment, I feel included.

Reporter Ben Rappaport can be reached at brappaport@chathamnr.com or on Twitter @b_rappaport.