Vin Scully and the brilliance of brevity

I was reading your piece on Vin Scully and couldn’t resist on chiming in. I grew up in L.A. as a rabid Dodger fan and an aspiring broadcaster, and Vin Scully is as important in my life as any public figure.

The thing I always point out about the utter brilliance of Vin’s call of Kirk Gibson’s homer in the 1988 series isn’t the moment where the ball left the yard. Dan Shulman quotes the “High fly ball …” line, but that’s not the brilliant part.

Vin, as he always has had a knack to do, also knows when NOT to talk. He let the video of delirious Dodger fans and shots of brake lights in the center field parking lot all speak for themselves, without saying a word for a good amount of time.

Then, after Gibson crossed home plate, Vin summed up the moment, and moreover the entire Dodger season, in one beautiful sentence: “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”

What few remember other than Dodger fans was how ridiculous it was the Dodgers were even in that World Series. Orel Hershiser, one swing from Kirk Gibson, Tommy Lasorda’s will, and a bunch of misfits that won that championship, knocking off the vastly more talented Mets and then the A’s.

And Vin, in the moment, captured all of that with one perfectly constructed, poetic sentence.