Bay Area’s broadcasting greats salute Vin Scully, their idol

Athletics radio announcer Ken Korach was 7 years old the first time he heard the voice of Vin Scully, an experience that helped shape his professional future.

“I grew up in Los Angeles, so I started listening to him the day they left Brooklyn,” Korach said Tuesday night while processing the death of a man who broadcast Dodgers games for 67 years. “There are so many memories. He had a big influence on me.”

Giants analyst Mike Krukow had a similar story.

“I was a kid in Southern California going to bed with a transistor radio,” Krukow said during the Giants’ postgame wrap on KNBR. “I was sleeping on it, listening to him teach me baseball.”

The baseball world is mourning the loss of Scully, who died Tuesday at age 94, and that includes local announcers who revered his work on radio and television, not just with the Dodgers but the NFL for CBS, as well as professional golf. Fans of the 49ers remember it was Scully who called “The Catch,” the most significant play in franchise history.

“He called the Dwight Clark-Joe Montana touchdown,” Giants announcer Duane Kuiper said. “He was more than just a baseball announcer, but that’s how we knew him.”

Scully called the final game of his career on Oct. 2, 2016, a Giants-Dodgers game at Oracle Park. On Tuesday night, after the news of Scully’s death, Krukow, Kuiper, Jon Miller and Dave Flemming took turns saluting him on the Giants’ postgame show following a 9-5 loss to the Dodgers.

“Dodgers and Giants fans were so lucky because he was so intertwined with us, with this, and so to have the Dodgers and Giants playing and to have a chance to remember our friend who we’re going to miss forever is a pretty special thing,” Flemming said. “There’s never been anybody like him and there never will be another person like Vin Scully.”

Forty-Niners play-by-play announcer and KNBR host Greg Papa grew up on the East Coast, but Scully’s influence was huge for announcers everywhere.

“You didn’t have to grow up in Southern California to hear Vin Scully,” Papa said Wednesday. “I think he’s very simply the greatest broadcaster that’s ever been.”

While growing up, Krukow had his eyes on being a big league pitcher, and it was Scully who provided the ultimate validation on June 8, 1977, at Dodger Stadium.

“I wanted to hear Vin Scully say my name on the radio. That was planting a flag,” Krukow said. “It was the bottom of the first inning, I trot out to the mound, and transistor radios were all through the ballpark and as I’m warming up, Vin Scully starts talking about me. And I could hear it. It was unbelievable. It was the warmest thing that ever happened to me on a baseball field. It was incredible.”

As a youth, Miller remembers hearing Scully’s understated home run calls and wondering why there wasn’t more to it.

“When the Giants hit a home run, Russ Hodges would say, ‘Bye, bye baby,’ and Lon Simmons would say, ‘Tell it goodbye,’” Miller said. “Vin would say, ‘She’s gone’ and I remember thinking as a 10-year-old, ‘She’s gone? Is that all he’s got?’ No wonder he’s working in a jerkwater town like L.A. He’ll never get out of that town. That was one thing I was right about.’”

Miller, who does an accurate Scully impression that the announcer always took in good humor, eventually shed his youthful provincialism as an aspiring announcer.

“I was driving home from my grandmother’s in Oregon and heard him do a game start to finish,” Miller said. “He made me interested in the players in the game. I was just fascinated with the whole thing, how he weaved stories into the game.”

Korach met and interviewed the man who had been a soundtrack in his life for a 1997 A’s pregame show.

“It was one of the most thrilling moments of my life,” Korach said. “I’m not exaggerating. I couldn’t believe I was sitting next to him and the voice that had come out of the radio all these years was on a pregame show. I was nervous, but he is so gracious he made you feel comfortable. He deflected his celebrity.”

Papa made it a point to observe Scully in the booth to pick up pointers and add to his craft and marveled at his ability to paint word pictures.

“Vin was a poet. It almost sounded like he scripted it. He was incomparable to anybody else,” Papa said. “I don’t think I missed a single Vin Scully broadcast. I recorded on VCRs. His baseball work is untouched. He never paused, he never stammered. His football work was extraordinary and he made the transition from radio, from working by himself to working with partners.”

When the Dodgers held a “Vin Scully Day” before his final homestand, Korach felt compelled to attend, getting the day off from his A’s duties.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Korach said. “It was a pilgrimage. I can’t even begin to tell you how much he meant to me.”

Papa remembered a visit with Scully in 2004 before a Giants-Dodgers Father’s Day broadcast. Papa was feeling depressed over being away from his family and it was as if Scully was reading his mind.

“He said, ‘The biggest regret I have in my life is being away from my family’ and going on and on about everything I was feeling,” Papa said, his voice cracking at the memory. “I don’t think I said a word. I just sat and listened to him. It was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment coming from someone I respected so much, the greatest that’s ever done it. For him to be feeling the same regrets about the balancing act we have to have between what we do for a living and what requires us to be away from home was incredible. Above all the games I heard him call, it’s the quality of the man that struck me that day.”