Vin Scully Back on the Air After 'Embarrassing' Fall

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Vin Scully told the story just as if he were on the air, with precision, humor and the voice that, more than any other, equals baseball.

And after five minutes Sunday morning explaining how he fell in his Los Angeles home Thursday night, bruising his elbow, opening a cut on the back of his head and sending him to the hospital, Scully ended the rare interview session.

Because, just as if he was on the air, Vin Scully insisted he wasn't the story. Baseball was.

We have a chance to watch the two best closers of all-time, and a player who may wind up the all-time home run king. But we are also in the presence of greatness in Vin Scully, who is better at his job than any player on the field.

His hospitalization threw a scare into Los Angeles greater than any fault line could, reminding us that Scully is 82 and we don't know how much longer we'll have him to listen to.

The tragedy of Harry Kalas' death is less than a year past, and the sorrow felt in Philadelphia over that would be multiplied and nationwide if something were to happen to Scully.

Some of us are old enough to remember him calling the NBC "Game of the Week" and the World Series. Those too young who are outside Southern California -- and without the Extra Innings TV package or mlb.tv -- don't know what they're missing.

"He's the voice of reason, isn't he?" said Dodgers pitcher Jeff Weaver, who grew up listening to Scully's broadcasts.

"Not only here, but across the country, I think people look forward to hearing him whenever he does a broadcast they can listen to. Everybody I knew growing up, everybody I talk to, sometimes their first question is, 'Have you met Vin Scully?' He's an icon, no doubt about it."

All the concern and well-wishes were "humbling," Scully said. After his interview in a side room at the Dodgers spring complex, Tommy Lasorda -- in full uniform -- came over and told Scully, "We want you around."

Scully had showed off purple splotches above and below his right elbow -- the swelling down from the size of an orange, he said -- and revealed he needed five staples in his head to close the wound.

"I will never go by that office-supply store again," he joked, "without thinking of what happened."

What happened, in the master's own words:

"My wife and I went to bed early, 7, 7:30, and we were reading -- quiet and peaceful," Scully said with the same gentle pace and intonation he would use for a story about the 1977 Dodgers during the fifth inning of a broadcast.

"And all of a sudden I felt one of these big bronchial coughs coming up, and I thought I would get to the bathroom. And I jumped up out of bed. And I got dizzy. And trying to keep the cough in until I got to the bathroom, I did something to myself. ...

"All of a sudden I blacked out. Woke up sitting on the floor, my wife calling 911, blood on the floor."

Scully had a vasovagal syncope, a neurological episode that caused him to faint.

"It could have been disastrous on a marble floor," he said. "I was embarrassed -- I am embarrassed -- because it's such a dumb thing to have happen.

"I'm embarrassed for all the fuss and feathers and everyone else. Somehow I did it to myself. I hope not to do it again. And that's really it.

"So from now on, I'm going to get up very slowly, instead of jumping out of bed, for sure. And I'm not going to bang my head against a marble floor -- again.

"Is there a movie, 'I Can Do Bad All By Myself'? That's what I did. All by myself. I just tore myself up."

Yes, 82-year-old Vin Scully threw in a reference to a 2009 Tyler Perry film.

The fall couldn't keep him from his first broadcast of the year, Sunday's Cactus League game between the Dodgers and Indians. This is Scully's 61st season calling Dodgers games; he has been at it so long that he won the Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award (and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame) the same year Tony Gwynn made his big-league debut.

"From now on I'm going to get up very slowly instead of jumping out of bed ..."
- Vin Scully His only concession to age is skipping trips east of the Rockies. When he calls a game, he works all nine innings on TV (radio simulcasts the first three innings), without a color man.

Not only can he carry a broadcast alone with his descriptions, analysis and stories, he is one of the few remaining TV play-by-play men who present a game without shill or spin.

But if last week's accident made him think about how much longer he will continue to work -- and allow us the privilege of listening -- he didn't let on.

"I was stunned," he said. "It really wasn't scary. I never felt I was in any trouble."

Asked if he has any restrictions as a result of his mishap, Scully said, "I'm supposed to cut back on dangling participles, and I'm not allowed to split an infinitive for at least another week."