Vin Scully, who was noted for his mastery of the catchphrase and gift for storytelling during the 67 summers he served as the announcer for Dodgers baseball games, first in Brooklyn and then in Los Angeles, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles Angels. . It was 94.
His death was announced by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
For all of the Dodgers’ marquees since World War II, Mr. Scully has been the enduring face of the franchise. He was also a national sports treasure, broadcasting for CBS and NBC. He called baseball’s game of the week, the All-Star Games, the playoffs and more than two dozen World Series. In 2009, the American Sportscasters Association voted him No. 1 on their “Top 50 Sportscasters of All Time” list.
He began broadcasting at Ebbets Field in 1950, when he was a slim, red-haired 22-year-old graduate student at Fordham University and a protégé of Red Barber. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, fans in the cavernous Coliseum brought with them hand-held transistor radios, newly popular in the American market, so Mr. Scully could guide them through the pioneering days of major league baseball on the West Coast.
”I think of him as the master of radio and television,” the sports broadcaster Bob Costas once told The Arizona Republic, recalling listening to Mr. Scully with a transistor radio under his pillow as a child in Los Angeles in the early of the 1960s. “I consider him the greatest baseball announcer ever.”
Mike Ives contributed reporting.
A full obituary will follow.