In the summer of 1974, Eric Neel was a 6-year-old kid going through hard times: His parents were divorcing, and he was living with his grandfather in Los Angeles. The only thing that gave him solace was sitting on a small kitchen stool, listening to Vin Scully announcing Dodgers games.
"He'd say 'Hi again, everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you, wherever you may be,' and my life would come back on line," said Neel, now a senior writer for ESPN. "I swear the way [his] smooth, round Irish lilt wrapped itself around me, it promised, almost every summer night, to keep me safe."
Such is the primordial bond that Scully has forged with millions of listeners during his nearly 60-year career behind the microphone, and it is one of many poignant anecdotes in Curt Smith's "Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story." Smith, who wrote "Voices of the Game," a well-received history of baseball broadcasters, shows how Scully's legacy goes well beyond calling balls and strikes, and amounts to a special relationship with fans who can't imagine the game without him.
But those seeking deeper insights into the redheaded announcer will be disappointed. Scully, now 81, is a humble man and has long said he does not want a biography written about him. He did not cooperate with Smith, and the result is an engaging yet uneven book. The author relies on earlier interviews given by Scully as well as other sources to tell the story of a 22-year-old Bronx kid who made his debut in the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcasting booth alongside Red Barber in 1950. Smith recounts Scully's early years in Los Angeles, his rise in the radio and TV business, and his growth as an announcer whom many consider baseball's best.
Unfortunately, the human being behind the microphone gets lost in a maze of statistics and a writing style plagued by a bewildering shorthand. "In 1978," Smith writes, "the past year's plot reran: pennant, Classic loss, Porter on CBS, and Vin's Series MIA." (Translation: The Dodgers won the 1978 pennant, lost the World Series to the Yankees, Ross Porter called the games on CBS radio, but Scully did not broadcast them on ABC television.)
More important, there are only fleeting references to the wrenching tragedies in Scully's life, including the death of his first wife, Joan, in 1972, and the 1994 death of his eldest son, Michael, in a helicopter crash. The tantalizing question that millions of Los Angeles Dodgers fans have posed over the years -- Who is Vin Scully, really? -- remains unanswered.
