The craft of Vin Scully

Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty ImagesI feel odd writing about Vin Scully because everything that was great about him can’t be captured on paper. He is a wordsmith but his skill and agility with language is all tone and cadence. It’s music and to read the words he spoke—still speaks—is on par with reading the sheet music of The Beatles.

His famous delivery of “Two and two to Harvey Kuenn…” is maybe the most simple delivery of information possible in terms of baseball play-by-play. It is the count and the batter. It is the situation at its most basic, but the way he delivers the information is poetic. It’s first stressed syllable falling into an iambic rhythm; or how he starts at a slightly…