He narrated a succession of big events of baseball history, and knew when to remain quiet.
Mr. Scully was at the microphone in 1955 when the Brooklyn Dodgers won their only World Series championship, and in 1956 when Don Larsen of the Yankees pitched a perfect game against the Dodgers in the World Series.
When Sandy Koufax retired all 27 Chicago Cubs batters at Dodger Stadium on Sept. 9, 1965, Mr. Scully placed his stamp on the moment:
“On the scoreboard in right field, it is 9:46 in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter, he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flurry. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that K stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.”
When Hank Aaron of the Braves hit his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s record, on April 8, 1974, in Atlanta against the Dodgers, Mr. Scully said simply: “To the fence. It is gone.”
He then walked to the back of the broadcast booth, took his headset off, had a sip of coffee and waited as the roar of the crowd resounded.
Finally, he returned to the microphone: “What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the State of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”
When a gimpy Kirk Gibson pinch-hit a game-winning home run for the Dodgers against the Oakland A’s in the opener of the 1988 World Series at Dodger Stadium, Mr. Scully observed, “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”
