“They can’t all be ‘Ice Skating with Jackie Robinson‘” is a phrase often spoken in the downtown Brooklyn abode I share with my wife and daughter. In a marriage between two baseball media professionals, one a writer who was born into a lineage of Dodgers fans and the other an editor who spends her days seeking, weighing the merits of, and polishing stories for publication, it’s a line that has taken on a multilayered meaning.

The story itself is one told by Vin Scully, who called Dodgers games for 67 years, from 1950 — when Dem Bums were in Brooklyn, the perennial underdogs in a three-team city — through 2016, when they were nearing the six-decade mark of their move to Los Angeles. In it, Scully recalls the time he and baseball’s ultimate barrier-breaker raced on ice skates at a resort in the Catskill Mountains, despite the fact that Robinson, a California native who had starred in four sports at UCLA, had never been on skates; Scully, a New York native, had plenty of experience. “There aren’t very many people who can say, ‘I raced Jackie Robinson on ice,'” he concluded.

In the Jaffe-Span household, Scully’s story — which he told again and again over the years, adding details, including the fact that the baby with whom Rachel Robinson was pregnant was Sharon Robinson — serves as a reminder that that not every story can be the cream of the crop; that we should strive to bring our own work up to our highest standards while accepting that not all stories are created equal; and that the ritual of sharing stories elevates them, creating a community of their audience and a continuity over the years.

Vin Scully ice skating with Jackie Robinson. Vin was really a part of history pic.twitter.com/Gpg0JoHw0u

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) August 3, 2022

Scully called games for the first six of the Dodgers’ seven championships, and seasons in which Dodgers players won nine MVP awards, 12 Cy Youngs, and 15 Rookies of the Year. He covered 25 future Hall of Famers including those inducted as executives and managers during his tenure. With the exception of Robinson and perhaps Sandy Koufax, Scully looms larger in the franchise’s history than any of them. The Hall of Fame recognized him with the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasters in 1982; remarkably, Scully worked longer after winning the award than before.

Scully died on Tuesday, August 2, at the age of 94. In the aftermath of a day when baseball’s biggest trade in deadline history — the deal that sent Juan Soto to the Padres in exchange for six players — went down, the news of the beloved and iconic broadcaster’s death spread throughout the baseball world. On social media, seemingly everybody wanted to pay tribute to Scully, sharing his best calls, their own experiences with watching and listening to him through uncounted Dodgers and national broadcasts, and their encounters with the gracious and humble gentleman who in redefining his profession touched millions upon millions of people.

What follows here is an updated version of my own Scully story, first told at Sports Illustrated’s website back on September 30, 2016, as he headed into the final days of his illustrious career. I was lucky enough to listen to Scully for 37 years, intermittently in my youth but with increasing frequency over his final decade on the air thanks to cable television and MLB.tv. In our household, checking in on a Scully game three time zones away was itself a ritual, and I cherished the continuity it brought with my youth. I retell this in the spirit of “Ice Skating with Jackie Robinson” — this is the best I’ve got to offer, and I can’t think of any better way to pay tribute to the man who meant so much to me, part of a line of four generations of Jaffes who have pulled up a chair to hear him call a game.

…

On Aug. 10, 1979, the Jaffe family of Salt Lake City piled into our maroon-and-faux-wood-panel Chevy Caprice station wagon for a road trip to California. As dusk hit somewhere near the western Nevada border, my father tuned the radio dial and magically summoned a Dodgers game, called by a friendly-sounding voice: Vin Scully, who in those days alternated innings with partner Jerry Doggett.

I was nine at the time, nestled in the back of the station wagon. The previous summer, I’d become absorbed in baseball’s day-to-day flow for the first time, learning to read box scores, batting averages and division standings. My team, handed down from my father — who supplied a felt souvenir pennant for the bedroom I shared with my younger brother — was the Dodgers, and thanks to my collection of baseball cards, I could recite their batting order from memory: Lopes-Russell-Smith-Garvey-Cey-Baker-Monday-Yeager-pitcher.

My father’s own allegiance had been inherited from his father Bernard Jaffe, born in Brooklyn in 1908. Though he had greater access to Giants games at the Polo Grounds through a season ticket-holding friend, Bernie — a good enough ballplayer in his own right to (allegedly) have been offered a professional contract — fell for Dem Bums sometime in the late 1920s or early ’30s after seeing good-hit/no-field rightfielder Babe Herman get bonked on the head by a fly ball. Even after departing Brooklyn — first for the University of Maryland, then overseas to earn his medical degree (and to witness Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, foreshadowing his support of Robinson), and finally to Walla Walla, Washington, more than a decade ahead of the Dodgers’ migration — he passed on his love to his sons and grandsons.

Vincent Edward Scully was born in the Bronx on November 29, 1927, the son of Irish immigrants. His father, Vincent Aloysius Scully, was a silk salesman at an upscale clothing store who died of pneumonia when his son was four years old. After her husband’s death, mother Bridget Scully took her young son to Ireland to spend time with family. “My mother told me later that when we came back, I had a brogue you could cut with a knife,” Scully recalled in 2006.

With money tight at the Scully household, Bridget rented out two spare bedrooms, usually to merchant sailors. She eventually remarried one of them, an English sailor named Allan Reeve. The family moved to the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and Reeve worked as a doorman at an apartment on Central Park West. “To me, he was Dad,” said Scully. “I never thought of him as a stepdad. I had an ache because I never knew my father, and it was washed away by my dad.”

When he was eight years old, Scully discovered his love of baseball. From his 2020 retelling:

“I went by a laundry and in the window they had the line score of a World Series game. The Giants had lost to the Yankees that day, October the 2nd, 1936, by the score of 18-4. Well, when I saw the Giants having lost by such a heavy score, the little boy that I was, I felt so sorry for them and I became a rabid baseball fan, and especially for the Giants.

“And from October the 2nd, 1936, I had my life dedicated to baseball.”

The young Scully’s favorite player was Giants slugger Mel Ott; later, as a lefty-swinging outfielder at Fordham Prep and then Fordham University, he emulated the future Hall of Famer’s signature style, lifting his right leg before swinging.

Building upon his love of listening to college football broadcasts as a youth, when he was fascinated by the noise of the crowd, Scully pursued broadcasting for Fordham’s WFUV radio station, covering basketball, football and, in his senior year, baseball, having quit the team as a player. After graduating in 1949 and working at the CBS affiliate WTOP in Washington, D.C., Scully met Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber, who was additionally in charge of sports for CBS Radio. Barber assigned Scully to broadcast a college football game from Fenway Park in place of Ernie Harwell; with no room in the press box, he had to do it from the right field roof, which he did in the rain and snow without complaint. Barber’s satisfaction with his work led to Scully being assigned the Harvard-Yale game the following week. When Harwell left the Dodgers broadcast team after the 1949 season to join that of the Giants, the Dodgers hired Scully to be their third announcer behind Barber and Connie Desmond. The rest, as they say, is history.

The first memory of Scully that my father (Richard Jaffe, born in 1941) has dates to the 1953 World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees, the first of nearly two dozen called by Scully either on television or radio. In those days, the World Series was generally called by the announcers of the participating teams; Barber, the senior Dodgers broadcaster, had shared play-by-play duties with Yankees voice Mel Allen the year before. As the story goes, to do the 1953 Series, Barber wanted a higher fee from sponsor Gillette, but Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley refused to support him and put forth the 25-year-old Scully instead. In doing so, he became the youngest person ever to broadcast a World Series game, a mark that still stands. The Dodgers lost the 1953 series in seven games but beat the Yankees in seven in ’55. The Jaffes gathered around the radio to hear Scully and Allen call Brooklyn’s 2–0 win behind Johnny Podres‘ eight-hit shutout.

That night in the station wagon in 1979, Scully and Doggett painted a vivid portrait of the players and the action on the field, which included a parade of Dodgers runs against the archrival Giants, including six in the second inning, keyed by centerfielder Derrell Thomas’ grand slam. In the fifth, rookie Mickey Hatcher hit his first big league homer. In the ninth, staked to a 9–0 lead, Don Sutton wrapped up a five-hit shutout, the 50th of his major league career. By that point, I was under a quilt in near-total darkness, but I imagined I could see the frizzy-haired Sutton smiling as he was congratulated by his familiar-faced teammates — my 1979 Topps Dodgers set ($3 via an address in the back of The Sporting News) come to life. Thus began my 37-year relationship with the golden voice of Scully.

Growing up in Salt Lake City meant that Dodgers games on TV were limited to national broadcasts via NBC’s Game of the Week, ABC’s Monday Night Baseball, and the postseason, but occasionally I’d commandeer the family’s old Panasonic radio and replicate my father’s signature touch, finding Scully’s voice cutting through the static at the left end of the AM dial. So it was on Friday night, October 1, 1982, as Rick Monday’s grand slam backed Jerry Reuss’ three-hit shutout in a 4–0 victory over the Giants (again) to keep the Dodgers alive in a three-team NL West race, one game behind the Braves. The next day, the Dodgers eliminated the Giants via a 15–2 rout; the day after, a three-run homer by the Giants’ Joe Morgan provided the coup de gràce to the Dodgers. So it goes.

“Parrish, needless to say, is not superstitious. He wears No. 13. We have a reason for bringing that up, because we’re in the business of telling you what’s going on here, and not getting cute and superstitious. So the big story, really, with Detroit leading 4–0, is the fact that Jack Morris has not allowed a hit, and it’s going to start to build.” — Vin Scully, April 7, 1984

From 1975 to ’82, Scully not only did Dodgers games, but he also did golf, tennis and NFL games for CBS Sports, most famously calling the ’82 NFC Championship game in which the 49ers’ Dwight Clark hauled in “The Catch” to defeat the Cowboys. After that, Scully left CBS for NBC, where he joined the nationally televised Game of the Week broadcasts, paired with Joe Garagiola, who shifted to color commentary after doing play-by-play with Tony Kubek for so many years.

On the first Saturday of the 1984 season, I watched the pair call a game from Chicago’s Comiskey Park, pitting the reigning AL West champion White Sox against the hot-starting Tigers, who would win 35 of their first 40 games and breeze first to the AL East flag and eventually a World Series victory over the Padres. Nobody knew any of that yet, but that day, Tigers starter Jack Morris dominated the Sox, holding them hitless despite six walks. In the sixth inning, Scully famously laid down the law regarding the custom of not mentioning the no-hitter, one that every broadcaster who tiptoes around the subject would do well to remember, as they’ll never work as many as he did (as many as 21, though sources vary as to the exact count).

In fact, in the recording and transcript of Scully’s call of the ninth inning of Koufax’s perfect game in 1965, he begins by telling listeners, “Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth where he turned in a no-hitter. But tonight, September the 9th, nineteen hundred and sixty-five, he made the toughest walk of his career, I’m sure, because through eight innings he has pitched a perfect game.”

Morris’s gem was the only one Scully called for a national audience besides Don Larsen’s 1956 World Series perfect game alongside Mel Allen. Scully called three perfect games in all: those of Larsen, Koufax, and the Expos’ Dennis Martinez against the Dodgers in 1991.

“High drive into deep left field, McReynolds watching, would you believe? A grand slam for Tim Raines! That has to be one of the most incredible stories of the year in any sport, the first day back.” — May 2, 1987

From the time he burst on the major league scene during the strike-shortened 1981 season — where he and the Expos ultimately ran into Fernando Valenzuela and the Dodgers, who had a date with the Yankees to avenge their ’77 and ’78 World Series losses — Tim Raines stood out as one of my favorite ballplayers thanks to his dazzling speed, and I gained a fuller appreciation of his skills via the Bill James Baseball Abstract annuals. Raines became a free agent after the 1986 season, but even at the height of his game, he got nothing but low-ball contract offers amid baseball’s collusion scandal. The rules allowed Raines to re-sign with the Expos, but he was ineligible to play until May.

Without benefit of spring training or a minor league stint, Raines stepped into the lineup on May 2, turning a Game of the Week against the Mets at Shea Stadium into the greatest comeback special since Elvis Presley’s. And of course, Scully had the call as Raines went 4-for-5, bookended by a first-inning triple off David Cone and a 10th-inning, game-winning grand slam off Jesse Orosco. Over the course of covering Raines’s Hall of Fame case 10 times, watching Scully’s call of that homer never got old.

“In the year of the improbable, the impossible has happened!” — Oct. 15, 1988

In the fall of 1988, I left Salt Lake City for Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and the overwhelming nature of college life soon made baseball a secondary concern. From the East Coast, West Coast scores were hard to come by, particularly if you no longer had a newspaper delivered to your door daily. I missed all but a few notices of Orel Hershiser’s 59-inning scoreless streak, and once the playoffs began, my first attempt to watch the NLCS went amiss as the Mets fan with one of the few TVs in our freshman unit couldn’t cope with the threat of her team being toppled by the upstart Dodgers, who had lost 10 of the 11 regular-season meetings between the two teams. Fortunately, I struck up an unlikely bond with a pair of oversized football players who owned the largest color TV on our floor, and they made no complaint when Game 4 — highlighted by Mike Scioscia’s game-tying ninth-inning homer off Dwight Gooden and Hershiser’s 12th-inning save in place of suspended closer Jay Howell — pushed toward 1 AM.

The NLCS was on ABC, and the ALCS between the A’s and Red Sox (which I had to forgo, lest I risk flunking my first wave of tests) was on CBS, but the World Series was on NBC, with Scully at the mic. My hosts didn’t have a strong rooting interest in the series, so I’m grateful they withstood my barrage of whoops, hollers and high-fives in the wake of the gimpy Kirk Gibson’s famous pinch-homer off Dennis Eckersley, which set the stage for the Dodgers’ five-game upset victory over Oakland. By now, Scully’s call is the stuff of legend, considered not just the pinnacle of his career — more famous than his calls of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run and Bill Buckner’s 1986 World Series error — but one of the greatest home run calls of all time.

“Sure, I’ll wait a minute.” — March 1989

On the heels of the Dodgers’ championship, my parents hatched a plan for my spring break, flying me down to meet them and my younger brother in Orlando, where after a couple of days at Epcot and Universal Studios, we would attend four straight games at Holman Stadium, the Dodgers’ spring training home in Vero Beach, Florida.

En route to the concession stand before one ballgame, I crossed paths with Scully himself, decked out in a cream-colored golf sweater. I asked for an autograph, then realized I had just a scrap of paper and no pen. Seeing how flustered I was, he agreed to wait while I fetched one from my mother, who was on her way to the restroom. Somehow, I not only got the pen, but Vin waited in place, and signed what might have been a golf scorecard or a ticket stub. I’ve long since lost that piece of paper — inevitable while moving half a dozen times in four years — and I never met Scully again despite being becoming a credentialed reporter, but I’ve never forgotten the man’s small gesture of patience and humanity toward a star-struck 19-year-old.

“And another drive into high right-center, at the wall … believe it or not, four consecutive home runs and the Dodgers have tied it up again!… They’re coming back in, the people in the parking lot have decided they better come back.” — Sept. 18, 2006

Three years after moving to New York City in 1995, I became part of a partial season ticket group for Yankees games, getting my fill of championship-caliber baseball on the local front while the Dodgers’ postseason dreams sputtered on the opposite coast. But starting in 2003, I began buying the MLB Extra Innings cable package (and later MLB.tv), checking in on Scully and company with increasing frequency. One of the greatest regular-season games I’ve ever watched, and my favorite of those called by him, was the epic finale of a four-game series that had seen the Dodgers slip from 1.5 games ahead of the Padres in the NL West race to half a game back following three straight losses. The Padres jumped all over starter Brad Penny for four first-inning runs, but by the third inning, the Dodgers clawed back to a tie against Jake Peavy, who unraveled after a first-inning confrontation with Dodgers first base coach Mariano Duncan.

The Padres pulled ahead late, carrying a 9–5 lead into the bottom of the ninth. In the non-save situation, manager Bruce Bochy called upon not Trevor Hoffman but Jon Adkins, who immediately served up back-to-back solo homers to Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew. As Adkins departed, Scully dropped a Dylan Thomas reference after Drew’s homer: “What is that line? Do not go gentle into that good night. Well, the Dodgers have decided they are not gonna go into that good night without howling and kicking.”

On came Hoffman, at that point three saves shy of Lee Smith’s all-time record of 478. Russell Martin launched his first pitch into left-center for another homer, and the camera cut to Martin’s jazz musician father, high-fiving everyone within reach in the stands. “The Dodgers are still a buck short,” Scully lamented, moments before Marlon Anderson connected with Hoffman’s next offering — the first time a team had hit four consecutive homers since the Twins did it in 1964, and Anderson’s second homer and fifth hit of the game.

After the Padres scored a run in the top of the 10th, Kenny Lofton worked a walk off Rudy Seanez to begin the bottom of the frame. “Ball four! And the Dodgers have a rabbit as the tying run,” said Scully. Up came a banged-up Nomar Garciaparra, back in the lineup for the first time since suffering a minor quad strain. It wasn’t quite Gibson caliber, but on a 3–1 pitch, Nomar connected. “And a high fly ball to leftfield, it is away, out and gone! The Dodgers win it 11 to 10. Oh-ho-ho, unbelievable!”

Showing the signature restraint that had first impressed me with his Buckner call, Scully let video of the jubilant Dodgers tell the story for nearly a minute and a half, as Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” began to play to the ecstatic crowd. Finally, he cut back in. “I forgot to tell you: The Dodgers are in first place!” Another minute of crowd shots and stadium noise passed, un-Scullyed, before he finally signed off: “I think we’ve said enough from up here. Once again, the final score in 10 innings — believe it or not — Dodgers 11, Padres 10.”

“And there is one out to go, one miserable measly out. 0-and-2 … got him! He’s done it!… Clayton Kershaw pitches a no-hitter a career-high 15 strikeouts… Kershaw made six pitches in the ninth inning, you talk about getting it over in a hurry.” — June 18, 2014

The final leg of Scully’s remarkable career became inextricably intertwined with the rise and sustained excellence of the Dodgers’ latest ace. The first time Scully called a Kershaw appearance was likely the first time most of us — Vin included — saw the team’s 2006 first-round pick in action. On March 9, 2008, a 19-year-old Kershaw broke off a hellacious two-strike curveball to the Red Sox’ Sean Casey, and even an 81-year-old announcer who had just about seen it all gasped in wonder: “Ohhh, what a curveball! Holy mackerel! He just broke off Public Enemy No. 1. Look at this thing! It’s up there, it’s right there and Casey is history.”

https://twitter.com/jay_jaffe/status/1255159792370438144

Kershaw didn’t break camp with the Dodgers that year but debuted on May 25, an occasion I wrote about for FanGraphs in 2020. By 2009, when he struck out 185 in 171 innings, the 21-year-old southpaw’s starts had become appointment viewing, especially when called by Scully, which increasingly meant at Dodger Stadium as he whittled his schedule. Through the end of 2016, Kershaw owned a 71–29 record with a 1.99 ERA in 137 starts at home, virtually all called by Scully save for the occasional absence or a nationally televised game.

Scully called 14 Dodgers no-hitters: four by Koufax, two by Carl Erskine and one apiece by Sal Maglie, Bill Singer, Valenzuela, Reuss, Kevin Gross, Ramon Martinez, Hideo Nomo and finally Kershaw, whose trio of Cy Young awards harkens back to those of Koufax, reminding us of Scully’s perfection in calling Koufax’s perfecto. On Kershaw’s night of near-perfection, he didn’t walk a batter or allow a hit; the only one of the 28 Rockies batters to reach base did so on an error by Hanley Ramirez. Corey Dickerson, the final Colorado batter of the night, was the victim of Kershaw’s career-high 15th strikeout.

That game, the lone no-hitter called by Scully in the era of social media and MLB.tv, will live on in the archives available with a few clicks of a button to anybody with a subscription; it was the game I chose when our staff offered readers some viewing favorites during the bleak days of March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic put the world on hold.

As Kershaw said later, “I think the coolest thing is thirty, forty, whatever years from now, hopefully I’ll get some grandkids of my own and show them… what it was like to have Vin call a game and what he meant to it. That’s pretty special that I’ll always have that.” Thankfully, we’ll all have that game, and so many more, to pull up once again.

“It has been such an exciting, enjoyable, wonderful season—the big crowds in the ballpark, everybody is talking about the ballclub and I really respect, admire and love the management—so everything just fell into place…. As a baseball man, and someone who has always loved the game, the situation and the conditions are perfect.” — Aug. 23, 2013

For my money, the happiest day of the year would come on some seemingly random day in late summer, when Scully would announce that he had agreed to come back for one more season. On August 28, 2015, the Dodgers made a big show of the announcement, playing a video of ownership partner Magic Johnson introducing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who silently revealed the news few words at a time via cue cards before Scully took a bow. The next day, however, Scully clarified by saying that in all likelihood, 2016 would be his final season.

That set the stage for a long goodbye, the tributes from all corners — other broadcasters, media (including Sports Illustrated, which put him on the cover of its May 16 issue), an endless parade of ballplayers visiting his booth to bid him farewell in person — arriving daily. Ever the professional, Scully gracefully accepted the accolades while attempting to focus on the action on the field, where the Dodgers overcame a slow start and a slew of injuries to take their fourth consecutive NL West title.

Against that backdrop, I added a title of my own: first-time father. My wife, Emma Span, then Sports Illustrated‘s senior baseball editor and now The Athletic’s MLB enterprise editor, gave birth to our daughter Robin just before midnight on August 26, 2016. Robin wasn’t even an hour old when she heard Scully for the first time; as we caught our breaths in the wee hours following her birth, I pulled up the Dodgers-Cubs game on my iPhone, as much to provide Emma with the soothing familiarity of Scully’s voice as anything, though what could be better for a newborn to hear than the reassuring voice of a kindly grandfather of 16 and great-grandfather of three? Even before Robin’s birth, staying up late to listen to Scully had been an important staple of life with Emma, a ritual for two night owls. We even watched him call a Kershaw start the night before our wedding, April 18, 2015.

In her early weeks of life, Robin was exposed to several more hours of Scully. Sitting around with a newborn whose primary alternative to nursing, pooping, sleeping and crying is just being adorable while laying there in the arms of loved ones leaves plenty of time to watch baseball, and with the opportunities to listen to Vin dwindling, we checked in nearly every night the Dodgers were at home, no matter how lopsided the score. We stuck around through a 14–1 laugher over the Rockies, Kershaw’s final start at Dodger Stadium as called by Scully. It wasn’t nearly as stirring as the night before, with its hour-long pregame tribute, but who in their right mind would skip a Kershaw call, particularly given the team’s chance to clinch a division title?

“Swung on, a high fly ball to deep leftfield, the Dodger bench empties, can you believe it? A home run? And the Dodgers have clinched the division and will celebrate on schedule!” — Sept. 25, 2016

The Giants’ victory on that Saturday night over the Padres opposite the 14-1 rout prevented the Dodgers from clinching. As I had plans all over town with my family the next day, I couldn’t sit still for Scully’s final call from Dodger Stadium, instead catching bits and pieces throughout the afternoon. As fate would have it, I left our family dinner to head into Manhattan to tape a Fox Sports Extra TV spot; in doing so, I wound up at what was at that point one of the few wi-fi enabled subway stops in south Brooklyn. The readout on the platform told me that the next 4 train would arrive in eight minutes, which felt like an eternity until I pulled up MLB.tv on my iPhone, and found the Dodgers tied, 3–3, in the bottom of the 10th against the Rockies — the broadcast flowing smoothly despite the fact that I was underground. Between pitches, Scully even relayed the Padres-Giants play-by-play. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if…” I thought to myself as Enrique Hernández took his hacks against Boone Logan before going down swinging.

Up came light-hitting, seldom-used Charlie Culberson, who hadn’t homered in any of his previous 57 plate appearances that season or at all in the big leagues since Aug. 14, 2014 (two days before my engagement to Emma). As Culberson had already collected two hits that day — basically his monthly allotment — it seemed silly even to contemplate one more, let alone expect it. But somebody forgot to tell the shortstop, who launched Logan’s second pitch, an outside fastball, over the left field fence to seal the deal.

Pandemonium ensued as Culberson rounded the bases; Scully let the moment breathe. I could barely believe my dumb luck in witnessing the moment under such unlikely circumstances — a positive turn on an emotional day that had begun with the tragic news of Jose Fernandez’s death. My train arrived just as the broadcast cut to a commercial, so it wasn’t until later that I watched the coda: Scully serenading the Dodger Stadium crowd with a recording of him signing “Wind Beneath My Wings,” with shots of him (and many a Dodgers fan) getting teary-eyed.

Once Scully announced his retirement, I tried to avoid being maudlin when considering the approaching void; someone had to. Instead, I considered my luck to enjoy him as a part of my life for more than three decades, watching game after game while feeling as though he were talking just to me, whether describing the action in detail or digressing on Socrates Brito and hemlock, or ice skating with Jackie Robinson, or the defiant significance of every player wearing Robinson’s No. 42.

On the occasion of his retirement and now his death, that appreciation of has deepened. As viewers and listeners, we were truly fortunate to have shared the latter stages of Scully’s career via social media and MLB.tv, just as Los Angelenos did via newfangled transistor radios when he and the Dodgers first arrived in 1958. In our increasingly fragmented and polarized public lives, Vin brought us together for a few hours to find common ground. That was certainly true on Tuesday night, when the Dodgers broke the news of his passing.

pic.twitter.com/FloR9dBhZj

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 3, 2022

On the SportsNet LA broadcast, Joe Davis and Jessica Mendoza did a masterful job of paying tribute, sharing their stories and memories of Scully. In one of them Davis, who has done an admirable job as his successor, related his first encounter with Scully, shortly after being hired.

Dodgers’ broadcaster Joe Davis tells the story of how he accidentally ignored a phone call from Vin Scully shortly after he got the job as the Dodgers’ new play-by-play announcer in 2015. pic.twitter.com/d249OzgNID

— Kendall (@_kendallrjones_) August 3, 2022

At Oracle Park, the Giants paid tribute as well.

Handshake line for the #Dodgers with a man that called a lot of wins pic.twitter.com/gBbN1yK80c

— Juan Toribio (@juanctoribio) August 3, 2022

Nearly six years after her birth and Scully’s retirement, my daughter hasn’t become a full-fledged baseball nut, but she’s played a few seasons of tee-ball and has become a huge fan of Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, Mr. Met, and the Brooklyn Cyclones’ mascots Sandy the Seagull and Pee Wee, all while demonstrating some curiosity about the game and even some artistic flair. With two parents absorbed in the game for their professions, she’s also shown signs of rebelling against what we hold dear in favor of finding her own way, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Still, we do our best to explain the game, its rules and its important figures to her. That includes the remarkable Vin Scully, maestro of the microphone, and the way he connected three previous generations of Jaffes to the Dodgers and to baseball. “He’s the best announcer there ever was,” I explain, “and probably the best that ever will be.”

A lot happened on a frantic deadline day, so you wouldn’t be blamed for missing out on this trade between the Dodgers and Blue Jays that came together down the stretch. But we at FanGraphs are dedicated to covering every deadline transaction, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. This is a four-player deal, with each team involved receiving two of them. Here’s the basic breakdown:

Blue Jays get:

• RHP Mitch White
• INF Alex De Jesus

Dodgers get:

• RHP Nick Frasso
• LHP Moises Brito

First, let’s break down the Jays’ return. As expected, a great scramble occurred at the deadline for the limited amount of starting pitching available. Some teams, like the Yankees and Twins, emerged as clear winners. Others, like the Phillies, had to settle for the second-best but nonetheless decent options. Then we have the Blue Jays, who ended up with White. It’s understandable if this feels like a disappointing pickup, and while it’s better than nothing at all, with the right maneuvers, they could have done much better.

At the very least, White has experience starting in the majors. Prior to the trade, he served as the Dodgers’ five-and-dive starter and put up admirable results, with a 3.47 ERA and 4.06 FIP in 46.2 innings. That’s partially because his team seldom lets him face the order for a third time, but it’s also the point: For four or five innings, White does his job on the mound and then heads back to the dugout. With José Berríos and Yusei Kikuchi still in search of consistency and Hyun Jin Ryu out for the season, White’s presence provides some respite for the Blue Jays.

Repertoire-wise, White throws up to five pitches, though only three of them are noteworthy. The four-seam fastball, his primary offering, has about league-average velocity (93–95 mph) and is characterized by poor shape. He’s weirdly gotten a ton of outs with it this season despite the lack of movement, though whether that’s due to luck remains to be seen. The slider, his secondary offering, is genuinely great, featuring two-plane break and solid velocity for a breaking ball (84–86 mph). Opposing hitters agree; when swinging at it, they’ve whiffed 33.8% of the time so far. White will sometimes remind us of his low-80s curveball, but he often lacks proper feel for the pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

After getting ahead of the trade deadline frenzy by acquiring Luis Castillo on Friday, the Mariners spent Tuesday adding some depth around the roster, picking up Curt Casali and Matthew Boyd from the Giants in exchange for a couple of minor leaguers, right-handed reliever Michael Stryffeler and catcher Andy Thomas. In a separate deal, they also grabbed Jake Lamb from the Dodgers for a player to be named later or cash considerations.

Last week, Justin Choi broke down the adjustments that have led to a breakout season from Seattle’s full-time catcher Cal Raleigh. His excellence this year has helped the Mariners to a cumulative 1.6 WAR from their backstops, the 12th-highest mark in the majors. Unfortunately, nearly all of that production and then some has come from Raleigh alone. Luis Torrens has been the primary backup and one of the worst players in the majors this season, accumulating -0.7 WAR across 42 games. A year after hitting 15 home runs and putting up a 101 wRC+, he has sunk to a pitiful .208/.262/.225 slash line (46 wRC+) without a single home run, which is awful even by the lower standards for catchers.

With Tom Murphy sidelined for the year with a shoulder injury and no other options in the organization, Torrens’ struggles have forced the Mariners to ride Raleigh pretty hard. Since being recalled from Triple-A on May 7 following Murphy’s injury, he has played in 65 of Seattle’s 76 games, starting 55 of them, and has gotten exactly one full day off since June 24, when he sat out the second game of a double-header on July 13.

Casali is currently on the IL after suffering a strained oblique in early July but is in the middle of a rehab assignment and should be activated soon. When healthy, he has been a perfectly serviceable backup backstop for the Rays, Reds, and Giants, accumulating positive WAR in every season of his career except for his rookie campaign back in 2014. Over the last two seasons in San Francisco, he’s put up a .218/.317/.357 slash line (89 wRC+) and 0.8 WAR. He strikes out a little too often but has some power and can take a walk, and he’s a capable defender behind the plate, earning positive framing marks over the last three seasons, though that skill has fallen off a bit this year, down to -2.9 runs in just over 300 innings behind the plate. His familiarity with Castillo from his time in Cincinnati was also a big factor in acquiring him. Read the rest of this entry »

It should have worked out for Joey Gallo in the Bronx. A fly ball-launching lefty with the ability to hit the tar out of the ball when he made contact, he seemed primed to thrive at Yankee Stadium, particularly after the mechanical work he did to lower his average launch angle paid off with his second All-Star appearance in 2021. Instead, Gallo struggled mightily to the point that his departure ahead of the 2022 trade deadline became a foregone conclusion. On Tuesday, the Yankees sent the 28-year-old slugger to the Dodgers in exchange for 23-year-old righty prospect Clayton Beeter.

Gallo is hitting just .159/.282/.339 with 12 home runs and an 82 wRC+ in 273 plate appearances. Of the 139 American League hitters with at least 200 PA, his batting average is second-to-last, ahead of only the Rays’ Brett Phillips (.147). Likewise, only Phillips’ 40.9% strikeout rate surpasses Gallo’s 38.8% rate, the highest of his career. Meanwhile, Gallo’s power (.180 ISO) and patience (14.7% walk rate, fifth among the same pool) merely confine his on-base and slugging percentages to the bottom quartile of the group. Since being acquired last July 29 alongside lefty reliever Joely Rodríguez in exchange for pitcher Glenn Otto and infielders Ezequiel Duran, Trevor Hauver, and Josh Smith, he has hit .159/.291/.368 (88 wRC+) with 25 homers in 501 PA as a Yankee, with only solid defense keeping his WAR in the black (0.9).

“I feel bad,” Gallo told The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler recently, having clearly read the handwriting on the wall once the team acquired left fielder Andrew Benintendi from the Royals last week. “It’s something I’m gonna have to really live with for the rest of my life. It’s going to be tough. I didn’t play well, I didn’t live up to expectations. And that’s a tough pill to swallow.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the trade deadline. It’s the best time of the year for baseball chaos, rumor-mongering reporting, and of course, the main event: a million trades featuring relievers you’ve heard of but don’t know a ton about. The difference between a blown lead in the seventh inning of a playoff game and an uneventful 4-2 win might be one of these unheralded arms. Heck, they could be a better option but still give up a three-run shot in a crushing loss. Or they could be a worse option! There are no guarantees in baseball. Still, here are some relievers who contending teams think enough of to trade for and plug into their bullpens.

Yankees Acquire Scott Effross
Scott Effross wasn’t supposed to amount to anything in the big leagues. A 15th-round pick in the 2015 draft, he kicked around the Cubs system for years, frequently old for his level and rarely posting knockout numbers. Then in 2019, on the suggestion of pitching coach Ron Villone, he started throwing sidearm. Three years later, he’s carving through hitters in the majors.

“Carving” might undersell it. Since his 2021 debut, Effross has been one of the best relievers in the game. In 57.1 innings, he’s compiled a 2.98 ERA and 2.45 FIP. He’s striking out 29% of opposing batters and hardly walking anyone. With his new low arm slot, he’s adopted what I like to think of as the sidearmer’s basic arsenal: a sinker, a slider, and a break-glass-in-case-of-lefty changeup. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, the Dodgers acquired steady 36-year-old reliever Chris Martin from the Cubs in exchange for utilityman Zach McKinstry, who has spent most of the season at Triple-A Oklahoma City.

This is Martin’s seventh major league organization (Red Sox, Rockies, Yankees, Rangers, Braves, Cubs, Dodgers), but his journey has been even more winding and complex than that. Martin was a draft-and-follow by the Rockies in 2005 but blew out his shoulder during his sophomore year at McLennan Junior College in Texas and needed labrum surgery, so he went unsigned. He was again passed over in the 2006 draft and spent parts of four years in Independent Ball before signing with the Red Sox. He was traded to the Rockies as the secondary piece in a deal for Jonathan Herrera (Franklin Morales was the headline prospect), and then was traded to the Yankees for cash not long after that. He threw 20 innings for the Yankees before spending two seasons in Japan with Hokkaido. There, Martin learned a splitter from a then 21-year-old Shohei Ohtani before returning to MLB with Texas. He was a Braves deadline acquisition in 2019, and was with Atlanta in ’20 and ’21 before signing with the Cubs this past winter. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is nearly here and once again, team behavior will be affected by 40-man roster dynamics. Teams with an especially high number of currently-rostered players under contract for 2023 and prospects who need to be added to the 40-man in the offseason have what is often called a 40-man “crunch,” “overage,” or need to “churn.” This means the team has incentive to clear its overflow of players by either packaging several to acquire just one in return, or by trading for something the club can keep — international pool space, comp picks, or, more typically, younger players whose 40-man clocks are further from midnight — rather than do nothing and later lose some of those players to waivers or in the Rule 5 Draft. Teams can take care of this issue with transactions between the end of the season and the 40-man roster deadline in November, but a contending team with a crunch has more incentive to do something before the trade deadline so the results of those deals can bolster the club’s ability to reach the postseason.

In an effort to see whose depth might influence trade behavior, I assess teams’ 40-man futures every year. This exercise is done by using the RosterResource Depth Chart pages to examine current 40-man situations, subtracting pending free agents using the Team Payroll tab, and then weighing the December 2022 Rule 5 eligible prospects (or players who became eligible in past seasons and are having a strong year) to see which clubs have the biggest crunch coming. I then make an educated guess about which of those orgs might behave differently in the trade market as a result.

Some quick rules about 40-man rosters. Almost none of them contain exactly 40 players in-season because teams can add a player to the 40 to replace one who is on the 60-day injured list. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra spots for injured players and have to get down to 40 precisely, so if they want to keep some of their injury fill-ins, they have to cut someone else from the 40-man to make room. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers have been so good for so long that whatever numbers they put up seem to elicit a blasé response at best. Oh, their 116 wRC+ is good for third in the league? Ho-hum. It’s been that way for a while, and I wouldn’t blame you for not thinking about the Dodgers, or even refusing to. You’d like someone else to seize the throne; after all, baseball is at its best with several contending teams, not select superpowers.

But let me implore you to consider the Dodgers again. The mere fact that they’re great isn’t interesting; it’s how they’re great that is. While the pitching is playing a crucial role, I’m going to focus solely on the hitting, because that’s where this team stands out.

To lay some groundwork: Over at Baseball Savant, there’s a tool called Swing/Take runs, which shows the run value players accrue on pitches in each zone. The distinction goes beyond simple balls and strikes; down-the-middle strikes, for example, correspond to the “Heart” zone, and borderline strikes correspond to the “Shadow” zone.

We can look at these run values by team, too. Quick: what do stellar offenses do against down-the-middle pitches? Crush them, that’s what. To wit, the Yankees have accrued a league-leading 26 runs against such pitches. It makes sense; the Yankees make sense. The Dodgers, however, do not make sense:

It’s not just a quirk from this season: A vast majority of players, and thus teams, are regularly in the red when they swing against seemingly easy pitches. The Yankees are actually an outlier in that regard, and it’s part of why they’ve been successful. But the Dodgers aren’t merely missing out on down-the-middle pitches. Nay, they’re atrocious against them. On the graph, they’re in the same neighborhood as the Nationals, who own the league’s 22nd-best offense by wRC+, and the Athletics, who own the very worst. This is… strange. Read the rest of this entry »

In the wake of Freddie Freeman’s starring role in the Braves’ championship run, the sequence of events that landed him in a Dodgers uniform was swift and shocking. Three months later, the 32-year-old first baseman still appears to be searching for closure, but for all the drama and the concerns about where his loyalties lie, he’s remained exceptionally productive even while the Dodgers’ offense has cooled off.

Freeman spent 15 seasons in the Braves’ organization, 11 as their regular first baseman (five times an All-Star, once an MVP), and last fall helped them win their first World Series since 1995. While most of the industry assumed he and the Braves would find a way to remain together once he reached free agency, on March 14 the team pulled off a blockbuster to acquire Oakland’s Matt Olson, abruptly closing the door on the Freeman era and underscoring that by quickly agreeing to an an eight-year, $168 million extension with the ex-Athletic. The suddenly jilted Freeman agreed to a six-year, $162 million deal with the Dodgers on March 16, returning him to his native California via the team that faced his Braves in the NLCS in each of the past two seasons. For as celebratory as the occasion should have been, in his introductory press conference Freeman described himself as “blindsided” by the Olson trade, adding, “I think every emotion came across. I was hurt. It’s really hard to put into words still.”

“I thought I was going to spend my whole career there, but ultimately sometimes plans change,” he said.

It didn’t take long for Freeman and the Braves to cross paths again. The two teams squared off for a three-game series in Los Angeles starting on April 18, with the first baseman punctuating the reunion by homering in the first and third games of the series and going 4-for-11 as the Dodgers took two of three. Not until last weekend did the two teams meet in Atlanta, providing the Braves with the opportunity to present the former face of the franchise with his World Series ring. Ahead of the ceremony on Friday, a teary-eyed Freeman said in his press conference, “I don’t even know how I’m going to get through this weekend,” and had to pause several times to collect himself when discussing his time with the Braves. After the team paid tribute to him, and manager Brian Snitker presented him with his ring, Freeman teared up again while addressing the Atlanta crowd:

Freddie's message to @Braves fans had us all crying. ?? pic.twitter.com/2a9GijKOni

— MLB (@MLB) June 25, 2022

It was, perhaps, a bit much for the Dodgers to stomach. In discussing the Freeman tribute with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Clayton Kershaw hinted at his teammates’ impatience when he said, “It was very cool (to see Freeman’s reception Friday night)… He’s obviously been a big contributor for our team. And I hope we’re not second fiddle. It’s a pretty special team over here, too. I think whenever he gets comfortable over here, he’ll really enjoy it.”

Freeman didn’t homer during the series but he he did survive the weekend, going 4-for-12 with three walks and an extra-innings RBI double in Sunday’s rubber match as the Dodgers again took two out of three. Read the rest of this entry »

In a season that has already produced two no-hitters (as well as two that would have counted as such before Major League Baseball tightened its definition of the feat), this week produced two near-misses on consecutive nights. On Tuesday night in St. Louis, the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas came within one strike of no-hitting the Pirates, and on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson fell two outs short of no-hitting the Angels. It’s fair to say that we’ve never seen anything quite like this.

Had either Mikolas or Anderson pulled off the feat, they would have joined Tylor Megill and four Mets relievers, who combined to no-hit the Phillies on April 29, and the Angels’ Reid Detmers, who no-hit the Rays on May 10. In the first of several coincidences that run through this tale, Detmers was actually Anderson’s opposite number on Wednesday, though he exited in the fourth inning after being roughed up for four runs. The Pirates, as it turns out, were already held hitless in a game on May 15 by the Reds’ Hunter Greene and Art Warren, but because they scored the game’s only run and didn’t need to bat in the ninth given that they were at home, the effort did not count as a no-hitter based on a 1991 ruling by MLB’s Committee for Statistical Accuracy.

(In the other non-no-hitter this year, six Rays pitchers held the Red Sox hitless for nine innings on April 23, but a seventh pitcher allowed a hit in the 10th inning.)

The 33-year-old Mikolas started the nightcap of a day-night doubleheader against a team that owns the NL’s weakest offense (3.42 runs per game) and its second-lowest batting average (.220). He only got as far as the second inning before allowing his first baserunner; with one out, he hit Canaan Smith-Njigba in the left foot with a slider, then erased him when Diego Castillo grounded into a 5-4-3 double play. Mikolas need another double play in the third after leadoff hitter Hoy Park reached on an error, as third baseman Brendan Donovan, who fielded his grounder, pulled Paul Goldschmidt off first base with a high throw. Yu Chang followed by working a seven-pitch walk before Michael Perez grounded into the needed 4-6-3 double play and Tucupita Marcano struck out, one of six punchouts on the night for Mikolas.

That 20-pitch third inning was the St. Louis righty’s most labor-intensive of the night. By comparison, Mikolas needed only 10 pitches in the fourth, which began with another error by the Cardinals’ defense; this time, Bryan Reynolds‘ fly ball glanced off the glove of left fielder Juan Yepez. He took second on the error, then came around to score after groundouts by Jack Suwinski and Daniel Vogelbach.

By that point, the Cardinals had already plated seven runs, and Suwinski’s grounder began a string of 17 consecutive batters retired that carried Mikolas to within one out of completing the no-hitter. He passed the 100-pitch mark while facing Castillo, who led off the eighth inning by battling for eight pitches before striking out. By the end of the frame, Mikolas had matched his MLB career high of 115 pitches, set on May 29 in a 5.2-inning grind against the Brewers (Lord knows how high he went during his three years in Japan).

Mikolas needed just two pitches to dispatch Perez on a grounder to start the ninth, and six more to get Marcano to fly to right. Facing Cal Mitchell for the final out, he fell behind 2–0, then got a called strike on a fastball and a swinging strike on a down-and-in curve. Mitchell fouled off another fastball, then hit a deep fly ball to center field. Gold Glove winner Harrison Bader leaped in pursuit of the ball but just missed as it went over his head and bounced off of the warning track and over the wall for a ground rule double. Mikolas exited to a hearty ovation from Busch Stadium’s 33,977 fans, leaving Packy Naughton to record the final out. Read the rest of this entry »