Iconic broadcaster Vin Scully was baseball’s merry poet laureate and so much more

“Hi everybody! And a very pleasant good evening to you, wherever you may be.”

Whether they were navigating Los Angeles traffic, retreating to their couch after work, preparing their dinner or eating it, millions of Angelenos turned on their televisions or radios at 7pm to join their nightly summer appointment with Vin Scully.

Scully, who died on Tuesday at the age of 94, was the Dodgers broadcaster for 67 seasons before retiring in 2016. He moved with the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958and spent nearly seven decades inviting viewers and listeners to join him.

His solitary presence in the booth turned broadcasts into fireside chats with millions of Angelenos and fans outside of greater Los Angeles who could find a feed of a Dodger game. Bob Costas called Scully the greatest baseball announcer that ever lived. Current Dodgers announcer Joe Davis said he was “as great of a storyteller as there has been in modern history”. In November 2016, US president Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Obama recalled that Scully asked whether he was deserving of such an honor, saying that “I’m just an old baseball announcer.”

Obama looked to the audience and then to Scully. “We had to inform him that to Americans of all ages, you are an old friend.”

A child of New York City, Scully was captivated by radio broadcasts of college football games and the roar of the crowd that crackled through AM radio. After graduating from Fordham University in the Bronx, Scully’s first professional assignment was a college football game between Maryland and Boston University at Fenway Park. There were no seats in the press box, so he called the game from the stadium roof. A year later, he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and