What Made Vin Scully So Great?

And what does it teach us about engagement?

What Made Vin Scully So Great?

Do you like watching old baseball broadcasts?

I’ve always liked it. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve enjoyed spending my free time with videos of old games.

I’ve mentioned before my fascination with game 6 of the 1986 World Series. There were other old games that I’d watch from time to time. As a child, I became familiar with the styles of Al Michaels, Jack Buck, Bob Costas, and even Sean McDonough, who I’ve never cared for.

But only Vin Scully really stood out.

I was never sure why. I thought it had something to do with his voice. Maybe he made the game feel a little bit more dramatic. Maybe he made it feel more interesting. Maybe the players simply played better when he was behind the microphone.

Well, I can now say that I’ve done a brief study on the subject. I did a brief comparison between the top of the first inning of both game 2 of the 1988 World Series and the second game of the 2023 World Series.

I know that FOX has better technical skills. The graphics are top notch. The recording of the old NBC broadcast was grainy and dated, and the sound was a bit warbled. You can see that in clips featured in the video above.

It wasn’t perfect, but it did the job. Both games came a day after dramatic first games — two of the best in the history of the World Series, as a matter of fact. That provided me with a good basis of comparison

Here’s what I’ve learned:

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Engagement From The Start

Vin Scully’s opening line surprised me. After all the hype of the pregame show, Vin Scully started off talking about what the weather was like in Los Angeles.

Now, the weather was actually newsworthy, believe it or not. It was over 90 degrees in late October. In fact, the heat had resulted in a cloud of fog and mist that hovered over the city that afternoon. In the end, it didn’t have much to do with the game itself — but it could have been a factor.

I looked through a few random Vin Scully NBC Game of the Week broadcasts, and saw similar things. Scully liked talking about the weather right off the bat.

I suppose it provided a direct connection to the viewer. We all know what the weather is, of course. It’s a little bit harder for us to imagine how Kurt Gibson felt as he hit that mammoth home run.

Interestingly, I couldn’t find any examples of Vin Scully taking that approach on the radio — and I’ve got dozens of old Scully radio broadcasts, ranging from the 1950s to the 1990s. Frequently Scully didn’t have much time to do an opening line on the radio. He usually came in after a few innings, and had to get to the action right away.

Joe Davis, meanwhile, started the second game of the 2023 World Series off with a line that was something like, “Who said this was going to be a bad series?”

I don’t think that’s the best strategy, actually. It seems strange to me that you’d start things off with a negative statement instead of something positive. I suppose he was trying to make a joke — but it came off awkward at best in my mind.

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Focus On The Present

Joe Davis and John Smoltz spent a lot of time talking about the Adolis Carcia home run.

To be fair, Scully and Joe Garagiola also spent a bit of time talking about the Gibson home run. And, honestly, it would have been really strange if the subject were avoided altogether.

The difference, though, is that Scully wound up that discussion with a phrase sort of like, “We put all that behind us and get ready for the task at hand today.”

Now, I don’t think Scully and Garagiola were great examples of sticking to the game at hand. In fact, if you read what critics in the newspapers and magazines said throughout the 1980s, you’ll find that they came under criticism from time to time for focusing too much on stories about the old days instead of focusing on the game in front of them.

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Keep It Simple

When Scully introduced Oral Hershiser in 1988, he told fans scoring at home to look for strikes and ground balls. That would show that Hershiser was pitching his game.

John Smoltz, meanwhile, went into a strange description of the strike zone as “field goal posts.” I’ve got no idea what he was referring to. It’s certainly a unique analogy, one that I haven’t come across in 40 years of watching the sport, not to mention all the film I’ve seen from before I was born.

Fans have a hard time understanding strained analogies from other sports. However, it’s not hard for even the most casual baseball fan to know what a strike is, or what a ground ball is.

By the way — this level of engagement would be helpful to the sabermetric crowd as well. You can talk about the fancy stuff all you want — but make sure you bring us back to something we all understand.

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Speak WITH The Audience, Not AT The Audience

This is the hard one.

FOX has always had a problem. FOX baseball broadcasts have always been about turning ordinary players into superhumans.

Now, this is a general trend. You can find exceptions. Smoltz, for example, mentioned that he felt nervous when Jordan Montgomery would use every second of the pitch clock before delivering. That sort of emotion is good — it helps fans connect to the player in a way that is understandable.

But there were a lot of examples of both FOX broadcasters turning the players into superstars.

• Fox made a point of talking about stars that aren’t delivering — focusing on what a boost it would be to their teams if they came through. That’s understandable — but why not talk about the difficulty of performing under huge pressure on the biggest scale instead? Ordinary people can relate to pressure better than the role of being a team leader.

• Garcia’s home run was treated as more evidence of his superstar status. Fox spent several minutes talking about what a great player he was. But the feeling, though, was that the home run was to be expected and was automatic — again, as if the player were a superhero instead of a man trying to play a difficult game.

• Smoltz tried to explain how both the Rangers and Diamondbacks had come back from difficult positions to advance to the World Series. However, his phrasing — “Golly, I hope we’ll see them again” — came off as degrading and almost insulting to fans of both teams. It’s a good example of talking down to the audience.

Scully’s style was to talk with you like you were an old friend sitting in a chair with him. He took great pains to explain the difficulties of the ins and outs of the game. His description of Gibson’s home run focused on watching Gibson try to stretch through the aches and pains while on the bench. Rather than Gibson turning into Superman, Gibson was Gibson the Everyman — somebody we can relate to.

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Relax

Finally, if you want to do it like the big boys do, you need to relax.

Davis and Smoltz never sound relaxed together. It’s always formulaic. Davis calls the play, Smoltz gives some sort of analysis, and then Davis says a word or two in response before calling the next play.

Scully and Garagiola were a real treat to listen to. They’d talk with each other, crack jokes (Scully in particular had great wit, and Garagiola was known for his sense of humor going back to his playing days), would make popular culture references on the spur of the moment, and seemed like the sort of people you’d want to spend the afternoon with.

FOX broadcasts feel like sitting in a board room. NBC’s old broadcasts, in contrast, feel like going to grandpa’s house for the afternoon.

But what do you think? Did I miss something? Am I completely off my rocker?