Guest Essay | Kathleen Clary Miller: Vin Scully’s Voice

He crooned for the Dodgers. His voice was more familiar in our Pasadena household than that of my own father, since Daddy worked hard at his own business and came home after I’d finished dinner.

I can still hear the iconic Dodger announcer even though decades have passed since those glory days of my youth that witnessed (and listened to) Sandy Koufax at the mound and Maury Wills stealing bases. And I owe it all to my mother, the avid Dodger fan unmatched by any other, who, while unmistakably adoring my father, engaged in an audio affair with Vin Scully.

We attended most every home game at Dodger Stadium, but even there she held her transistor radio to her ear to listen to Vin Scully so she could accurately record every play in her score book, spread open on her lap. She was not the only one. So many fans in attendance relied not only on the visual but also the audio. Despite the roar of the crowd, through it all streamed the voice of Vin Scully. I could hear it all around me, and that sound still echoes of home, those long, lazy summer days and nights where freedom from school meant everything. While my transistor remained tuned to KHJ or KRLA, Vinny sang from wherever my mother moved in the house, his voice as every-day and recognizable as my favorite deejays.

At some point in her devoted fan-career, Mama approached Vin Scully in the booth at Dodger Stadium and, brilliantly, requested that he autograph her transistor radio. Of course, he graciously and humbly complied, as was his manner with any encounter.

Somewhere in the jumble of marriage and moving, the passing of my mother and father, and the sale of our beloved family home in Pasadena, I came across the scrap of paper on which Sandy Koufax penned his name for her, but sadly I lost track of her truly priceless possession—the Vin Scully radio that was more important to her than fine jewelry. For me, the voice of another parent.