Dr. Odd

Vin Scully is the best baseball broadcaster in the history of Major League Baseball. Here are the best Vin Scully quotes.

• Let’s all take a deep breath as we go to the most dramatic ninth inning (1956 World Series : Don LarsenPerfect Game) in the history of baseball. I’m going to sit back, light up, and hope I don’t chew the cigarette to pieces.
• Almost all of us growing up have played baseball on some level. It has an inside track with people. It has a unifying effect.
• I really love baseball. The guys and the game, and I love the challenge of describing things. The only thing I hate — and I know you have to be realistic and pay the bills in this life — is the loneliness on the road.
• Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support, not illumination.
• Two and two to Harvey Kuenn, one strike away. Sandy into his windup, here's the pitch:
• Koufax into his windup and the one-two pitch: fastball, fouled back out of play. In the Dodger dugout Al Ferrara gets up and walks down near the runway, and it begins to get tough to be a teammate and sit in the dugout and have to watch. Sandy back of the rubber, now toes it. All the boys in the bullpen straining to get a better look as they look through the wire fence in left field. One and two the count toChris Krug. Koufax, feet together, now to his windup and the one-two pitch: fastball outside, ball two. (Crowd booing on the tape.)
• You can almost taste the pressure now.
• He's (Tom Glavine) like a tailor; a little off here, a little off there & you're done,take a seat.
• Sandy Koufax's Perfect Game on September 9, 1965
• O and one the count to Chris Krug. Out on deck to pinch-hit is one of the men we mentioned earlier as a possible, Joey Amalfitano. Here's the strike one pitch to Krug: fastball, swung on and missed, strike two. And you can almost taste the pressure now. Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers through his black hair, then pulled the cap back down, fussing at the bill. Krug must feel it too as he backs out, heaves a sigh, took off his helmet, put it back on and steps back up to the plate. Tracewski is over to his right to fill up the middle, (John) Kennedy is deep to guard the line. The strike two pitch on the way: fastball, outside, ball one. Krug started to go after it and held up and Torborg held the ball high in the air trying to convince Vargo (the umpire) but Eddie said no sir. One and two the count toChris Krug. It is 9:41 p.m. on September the ninth. The one-two pitch on the way: curveball, tapped foul off to the left of the plate.
• Forget it. (his most popular home run call)
• 9th Inning Word-for-Word Transcript
• There's a little roller up along first, behind the bag! It gets through (Bill) Buckner! Here comes (Ray) Knightand the Mets win it! - 1986 World Series (Game 6)
• I'm going to sit back, light up, and hope I don't chew the cigarette to pieces.
• I really love baseball. The guys and the game, and I love the challenge of describing things. The only thing I hate - and I know you have to be realistic and pay the bills in this life - is the loneliness on the road.
• I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world. Sandyfussing, looks in to get his sign, "O" and two to Amalfitano. The strike two pitch to Joe: fastball, swung on and missed, strike three. He is one out away from the promised land, and Harvey Kuenn is comin' up.
• It's a great time of the year... if you can stand it.
• Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.
• Sometimes it seems like he's (Bobby Bonilla) playing underwater. Source: On-Air Radio Broadcast (1998)
• It's a passing (the last NBC Game of the Week on October 9, 1989) of a great American tradition. It is sad. I really and truly feel that. It will leave a vast window, to use a Washington word, where people will not get Major League Baseball and I think that's a tragedy. Source: The Sporting News (October 9, 1989)
• It's easier to pick off a fast runner than to pick off a lazy runner.
• Sometimes it seems like he's (Bobby Bonilla) playing underwater.
• Football is to baseball as blackjack is to bridge. One is the quick jolt. The other the deliberate, slow-paced game of skill, but never was a sport more ideally suited to television than baseball. It's all there in front of you. It's theatre, really. The star is the spotlight on the mound, the supporting cast fanned out around him, the mathematical precision of the game moving with the kind of inevitability of Greek tragedy. With the Greek chorus in the bleachers! Source: Los Angeles Times (June 20, 1976)
• Andre Dawson is listed as day-to-day (pause). Aren't we all?
• I guess my thermometer for my baseball fever is still a goose bump.
• 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 ninth, 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. He has struck out eleven, he has retired twenty-four consecutive batters, and the first man he will look at is catcher Chris Krug, big right-hand hitter, flied to second, grounded to short. Dick Tracewski is now at second base and Koufax ready and delivers: curveball for a strike.
• The Dodgers are such a .500 team that if there was a way to split a three-game series, they'd find it.
• On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of twenty-nine thousand one-hundred thirty nine 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.
• I would come home to listen to a football game — there weren't other sports on — and I would get a pillow and I would crawl under the radio, so that the loudspeaker and the roar of the crowd would wash all over me, and I would just get goose bumps like you can't believe. And I knew that of all the things in this world that I wanted, I wanted to be that fella saying, whatever, home run, or touchdown. It just really got to me.
• He (Bob Gibson) pitches as though he's double-parked.
• Ladies and gentlemen, the Brooklyn Dodgers are the champions of the world.
• I love the challenge of describing things.
• Swung on and missed, a perfect game.
• I don't like to be alone, but I do cherish the moments that I'm alone with a good book.
• He (Bob Gibson) pitches as though he's double-parked. Source: Baseball Digest (September 1972)
• The roar of the crowd has always been the sweetest music. It's intoxicating.
• How good was Stan Musial? He was good enough to take your breath away. Source: On-Air Radio Broadcast (1989)
• It was typical of him (Ted Williams) to become a Marine Air Corps pilot and see action and almost get shot down. He was a remarkable American as well as a remarkable ballplayer. His passing so close to a national holiday seems part of a divine plan, so we can always remember him not only as a great player but also as a great patriot.
• Good is not good when better is expected.
• The only difference between a winning team and a losing team is one game. The winning team can win two out of three games…the losing team can only win one out of three. Source: Journalist Bill Lang
• It's a mere moment in a man's life between the All-Star Game and an Old-Timer's Game.
• I've told several writers this, and, again, I get back to it, but if you want to make God smile, tell him your plans.
• One and one to Harvey Kuenn. Now he's ready: fastball, high, ball two. You can't blame a man for pushing just a little bit now. Sandy backs off, mops his forehead, runs his left index finger along his forehead, dries it off on his left pants leg. All the while Kuenn just waiting. Now Sandy looks in. Into his windup and the two-one pitch to Kuenn: swung on and missed, strike two. It is 9:46 p.m.
• The Dodgers defensively in this spine-tingling moment: Sandy Koufax and Jeff Torborg. The boys who will try and stop anything hit their way: Wes Parker, Dick Tracewski, Maury Wills and John Kennedy; the outfield of Lou Johnson, Willie Davis and Ron Fairly. And there's twenty-nine thousand people in the ballpark and a million butterflies. Twenty nine thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine paid.
• The Dodgers are such a .500 team that if there was a way to split a three-game series, they'd find it.Source: On-Air Radio Broadcast (1990)
• If I can get a story about a player, I would give you a ship load of numbers, batting averages and all just for that one precious story. That's the kind of thing that I love to do.
• Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day (pause). Aren't we all? Source: On-Air Radio Broadcast (1991)
• As long as you live keep smiling because it brightens everybody's day.
• A lot of people in the ballpark now are starting to see the pitches with their hearts. The pitch was outside, Torborg tried to pull it over the plate but Vargo, an experienced umpire, wouldn't go for it. Two and two the count to Chris Krug. Sandy reading signs, into his windup, two-two pitch: fastball, got him swinging.
• So Harvey Kuenn is batting for Bob Hendley. The time on the scoreboard is 9:44. The date, September the ninth, nineteen-sixty-five, and Koufax working on veteran Harvey Kuenn. Sandy into his windup and the pitch, a fastball for a strike. He has struck out, by the way, five consecutive batters, and that's gone unnoticed. Sandy ready and the strike one pitch: very high, and he lost his hat. He really forced that one. That's only the second time tonight where I have had the feeling that Sandy threw instead of pitched, trying to get that little extra, and that time he tried so hard his hat fell off — he took an extremely long stride to the plate — and Torborg had to go up to get it.
• There's a high bouncer over the mound, over second base, Mantilla's up with it, throws low and WILD...HODGES SCORES, WE GO TO CHICAGO. (crowd noise for a nice long while) The Cinderella team (1959 Los Angeles Dodgers) of the National League.
• He's (Tom Glavine) like a tailor; a little off here, a little off there & you're done. Take a seat.
• It's a wonderful feeling to be a bridge to the past and to unite generations. The sport of baseball does that, and I am just a part of it.
• Sandy Koufax has struck out twelve. He is two outs away from a perfect game.
• It's a mere moment in a man's life between the All-Star Game and an old timer's game. Source: On-Air Radio Broadcast (1980)
• All year long they looked to him (Kirk Gibson) to light the fire and all year long he answered the demands. High fly ball into right field. She is gone! [pause] In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.
• Losing feels worse than winning feels good.
• Here is Joe Amalfitano to pinch-hit for Don Kessinger. Amalfitano is from Southern California, from San Pedro. He was an original bonus boy with the Giants. Joey's been around, and as we mentioned earlier, he has helped to beat the Dodgers twice, and on deck is Harvey Kuenn. Kennedy is tight to the bag at third, the fastball, a strike. "O" and one with one out in the ninth inning, one to nothing, Dodgers. Sandy reading, into his windup and the strike one pitch: curveball, tapped foul, "O" and two. And Amalfitano walks away and shakes himself a little bit, and swings the bat. And Koufax with a new ball, takes a hitch at his belt and walks behind the mound.
• When I was very small, maybe 8 years old, we had a big radio that stood on four legs, and it had a cross piece underneath it, and I used to take a pillow and crawl under the radio.
• (Thirty-eight seconds of cheering by the crowd.)
• When he (Maury Wills) runs, it's all downhill.
• I said to him, 'Joe (Garagiola), you played a long time, but I've broadcast as many games as you've played, and then some. So if you're gonna talk inside baseball," you tell the fans the "inside baseball." But don't tell me.'"