Vin Scully
PERFECTING the PERFECT GAME
Koufax’s fourth and last "no-hitter" was pitched against the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium Sept.9 1965 I was there! ( It was his first and only Perfect Game)
We were all young, especially the men on the field.
A perfect ballgame is called a no hitter. The opposing teams’ score is zero. This means that each Cub batter up must swing without a hit or let a called strike pass him by. During Sandy’s career, he threw 2,396 strike outs.
A perfect game isn’t perfect until it is over! We don’t even think that it might be a perfect game. As the game plays out with accumulating strikeouts, some fans might think about a no hitter. Tension slowly mounts and there is a rising expectation. You can hear it in Vin Scully’s voice, in the reaction of fans and of the press in the press box.
In the Press Box: I was seated behind and above Vin Sully and on his right, Jerry Dogget. I couldn’t see Koufax on the mound. I could see Vin and Jerry’s faces when they spoke to each other off the mike. During the early innings, I could see that Vin Scully was already anticipatating a perfect game! There was a buzz in the press box. I saw Vin turn to Jerry, they were wondering whether or not Sandy was thinking. What they were thinking! Vin did not want to add
to Sandy’s emotional load! Vin was considering what to say and when to say it.
Here, I must explain an engineering phenomenon. This marvel is what makes Vin Scully the director of a chorus of tens of thousands of voices in the stands!
The Press Box has become the stage!
Most fans or families of fans are using small transistor radios. They are paying, Dodger customers, but they want to hear Vin Scully tell them what they are seeing. How important it is, what will happen next and who will do it! (And through Vin’s voice, how excited to be!)
It wasn’t planned that way. Mr. Scully is speaking to millions of KFI listeners who cannot see the game!
In Dodger Stadium tens of thousands of tiny radios are all tuned to 640 KHz and the man in the press box, Mr. Scully!
With this power to emotionally drive these fans, Vin also has the responsibility not to affect the game itself! Or, particularly, this young pitcher on the lonely mound.
By the seventh inning Mr. Koufax has become noticeably nervous and bobbles a pitch that could have ended the perfect part of this perfect game! It was then that Mr. Scully said the words that we have saved for you. Saved because he called the station to ask that the rest of the game be recorded. (There was confusion in the KFI recording room. The engineer grabbed up a partially used disk for this historic recording and didn’t date it or add his own initials.) Mr. Anthony and now his engineer, saved this disk with Vin Scully ‘s interesting word picture of this perfect game. These excerpts were used in KFI Sportscasts that September day in 1965.
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Dodger fans didn’t know the cost, in pain for Sandy to pitch this perfect game. Or that his famed left arm was beginning to fail him at the time. Most fans expected that after four perfect games, they surely, would see more to come.
No human arm was designed to pitch 100 plus miles per hour, even once. Sandy Koufax’s arm had thrown the baseball, thousands of times in his rather short career, which was ending with his painful, sacrifice. This was to be young, Sandy Koufax’s last, ever, perfect game. No Fan knew or wanted to know, that Sandy had ‘thrown away’ his perfect arm. (We don’t speculate on that difficult choice. The choice Sandy made that imperfect afternoon, many years ago. )
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