57 Facts About Vin Scully

Vin Scully was best known for his 67 seasons calling games for Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers, beginning in 1950 and ending in 2016.

Vin Scully retired at age 88 after the 2016 season, ending his record-breaking run as the team's play-by-play announcer.

Vin Scully called the World Series for CBS Radio from 1979 to 1982 and again from 1990 to 1997.

Vin Scully's father, Vincent Aloysius Scully, was a silk salesman; his mother, Bridget, was a homemaker.

Vin Scully had one sibling, a younger sister who died of brain cancer in 2002, aged 65.

Vin Scully worked delivering beer and mail, pushing garment racks and cleaning silver in the basement of the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York City.

Vin Scully received only one response, from CBS Radio affiliate WTOP in Washington, DC, which hired him as a fill-in.

In 1950, Vin Scully joined Barber and Connie Desmond in the Brooklyn Dodgers' radio and television booths, replacing Ernie Harwell after the latter departed for the crosstown Giants.

When Barber got into a salary dispute with World Series sponsor Gillette prior to the 1953 World Series, Vin Scully took Barber's spot in the NBC television booth, becoming the youngest person to broadcast a World Series.

Vin Scully announced Dodgers games in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the club moved to Los Angeles.

Radio and television engineers often had difficulty compensating for the sound of Vin Scully's play-by-play reverberating through the stands at Dodgers home games.

Vin Scully declined the offer and chose to remain with the Dodgers.

When Gowdy inherited the announcing reins, Vin Scully was so upset that he refused to say another word.

At a press conference August 29, Vin Scully said 2016 would probably be his final year.

From 1975 to 1982, Vin Scully announced National Football League telecasts for CBS Sports, teaming with several different color analysts including Sonny Jurgensen, Paul Hornung, Alex Hawkins, George Allen, Jim Brown, John Madden, and Hank Stram.

Vin Scully called Dwight Clark's touchdown catch in the NFC Championship Game on January 10,1982, that put the San Francisco 49ers into Super Bowl XVI.

Vin Scully contributed to the network's tennis and PGA Tour golf coverage in the late 1970s and early 1980s, usually working the golf events with Pat Summerall, Ken Venturi, and Ben Wright.

In 1977, Vin Scully began his first of two stints calling baseball for CBS Radio, broadcasting the All-Star Game through 1982 and the World Series from 1979 to 1982.

Vin Scully decided to leave CBS in favor of a job calling baseball games for NBC following a dispute over assignment prominence.

At the time Vin Scully was the number two announcer for CBS, a position he had held since 1975, and was calling games alongside the former Kansas City Chiefs head coach Hank Stram, who had been promoted from CBS' number three broadcast team alongside Curt Gowdy.

Vin Scully then teamed with Stram for the remainder of the NFL season.

An angry Vin Scully, who felt that his intelligence had been insulted by the move, was assigned as a consolation prize that year's NFC Championship Game, which he called alongside Stram.

Outside of Southern California, Vin Scully is remembered as NBC television's lead baseball broadcaster from 1983 to 1989.

Besides calling the Saturday Game of the Week for NBC, Vin Scully called three World Series, four National League Championship Series, and four All-Star Games.

Vin Scully reworked his Dodgers schedule during this period, broadcasting home games on the radio, and road games for the Dodgers television network, with Fridays and Saturdays off so he could work for NBC.

Vin Scully called Kirk Gibson's famous home run during Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

On Saturday, June 3,1989, Vin Scully was doing the play-by-play for the NBC Game of the Week in St Louis, where the Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs in 10 innings.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers were playing a series in Houston, where Vin Scully flew to be on hand to call the Sunday game of the series.

However, the Saturday night game between the teams was going into extra innings when Vin Scully arrived in town, so he went to the Astrodome instead of his hotel.

Vin Scully picked up the play-by-play, helping to relieve the other Dodger announcers, who were doing both television and radio, and broadcast the final 13 innings, as the game went 22 innings.

Laryngitis prevented Vin Scully from calling Game 2 of the 1989 National League Championship Series between the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs.

Vin Scully returned to being the national radio announcer for the World Series, since CBS Radio gave him the position that Jack Buck had vacated in order to become the primary announcer of CBS's television coverage of Major League Baseball.

The final World Series game that Vin Scully called was Game 7 of the 1997 World Series between the Florida Marlins and Cleveland Indians.

Vin Scully called the Senior Skins Game for ABC from 1992 to 2000, as well as various golf events for TBS during this period.

In 1999, Vin Scully was the master of ceremonies for MasterCard's Major League Baseball All-Century Team before the start of Game 2 of the World Series.

Vin Scully missed most of the Dodgers' opening homestand of the 2012 MLB season because of an illness, returning to the announcers' booth on April 15,2012, which was the 65th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier in baseball.

Vin Scully was simulcast for the first three innings of each of his appearances, then announced the remaining innings only for the TV audience.

On January 31,2016, Vin Scully announced that he planned to retire from broadcasting after the conclusion of the 2016 season; his final game was the team's October 2 finale at San Francisco.

Vin Scully was assigned a total of six road games for the 2016 season: the opening game in San Diego, two games in Anaheim, and the entirety of the three-game regular-season closing series in San Francisco.

Besides his sportscasting work, Vin Scully was the uncredited narrator for the short-lived NBC sitcom Occasional Wife.

Vin Scully retired from announcing for video games after MLB 2005.

The surname of the Dana Scully character on the television show The X-Files is an homage to Vin Scully, as the show's creator Chris Carter is a Dodgers fan; Scully himself can be heard calling a game in the Season 6 episode "The Unnatural".

Vin Scully received the Ford Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award for sportscasting and induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.

Vin Scully was the 1992 Hall of Fame inductee of the American Sportscasters Association, which named him Sportscaster of the Century and top sportscaster of all-time on its Top 50 list.

Vin Scully was inducted into the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2009.

Vin Scully has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6675 Hollywood Blvd.

Vin Scully himself was the inaugural recipient of the award in 2008.

Vin Scully served as the Grand Marshal for the 2014 Tournament of Roses Parade.

Vin Scully was the 14th recipient and second non-player to receive the award, which was created to recognize accomplishments and contributions of historical significance to the game of baseball.

Also in 2017, Vin Scully won the Icon Award as part of that year's ESPY Awards ceremony.

At Game 2 of the 2017 World Series, being played at Dodger Stadium, Vin Scully participated in a pre-game ceremony; addressing the crowd over the PA system, he implied that he was about to throw the ceremonial first pitch, and introduced Steve Yeager to serve as a ceremonial catcher.

However, Vin Scully then claimed that he could not actually pitch because he had hurt his rotator cuff, resulting in him introducing the actual ceremonial pitcher, Fernando Valenzuela.

Vin Scully was inspecting oil pipelines for leaks near Fort Tejon, California, in the immediate aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

An unauthorized biography of Scully, Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story, written by Curt Smith, was published in 2009.

In November 2017, Vin Scully stated that he would "never watch another NFL game again," due to some of the league's players kneeling during the playing of the national anthem prior to games.

Vin Scully had four children, two stepchildren, 21 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Vin Scully resided in Thousand Oaks, California, and attended St Jude the Apostle Church in Westlake Village, California.