Vin Scully's is a rare voice

In the late innings of a long and distinguished career, the Dodgers' master storyteller is once again keeping fans glued to the radio.

Before the Internet, before cable television or even color TV, there was radio.

Back then, we sat by the speakers and listened to radio announcers make pictures with words. Using just a little bit of imagination, we could actually see the things they were describing to us.

Vin Scully is one of those master storytellers. He came of age in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the era before television took over sports coverage. In 1958, he moved to Los Angeles. Ever since, he's been telling us all about the adventures, triumphs and defeats of that band of blue-capped men known as the Dodgers.

On spring and fall nights 30 years or so ago, I'd plop a transistor radio on the dining room table of my south Whittier home and listen to Vin while I did my high school homework.

There would be the usual chorus of crickets outside, a cool breeze through the windows and Vin saying in his singsong baritone: "Dodger baseball is on the air," and "Why don't you pull up a chair and join us."

Back then, Dodgers home games were not on television, generally speaking. We Dodgers fans tuned to KFI-AM (640) -- and later KABC-AM (790) -- listened to Vin and heard the crack of bat striking ball. And sometimes, too, we heard the bounce of a foul landing in the stands near Vin's broadcast booth.

We listened and we were there at Dodger Stadium.

Eventually Vin would tell us what the weather and the sky looked like over Chavez Ravine, much like he did Thursday afternoon when the Dodgers played the Phillies in the first game of the National League Championship Series.

"A canopy of blue and bright sunlight in left field. . . . It's one of those lovely days in Los Angeles, when you look beyond the palm trees to the mountains. . . . It's really priceless here."

In this transient, ever-changing city, Vin's voice is a rare constant.

A lot of the voices that have united us as Angelenos over the years are gone now. Chick Hearn is no longer with us, nor is the late, great Times columnist Jack Smith. But Vin is still going strong on the AM dial.

"We've arrived at the bottom of the ninth inning," he said near the end of a recent playoff game. "And it has been a stormy ride indeed."

Vin is 81 now, and in the late innings of a long and distinguished career. These days, a lot of people are listening to him religiously again -- in part because both the Division Series and the League Championship Series have been available only on cable and satellite TV. A lot of us Angelenos -- myself included -- don't have either.

As one Dodgers fan wrote to The Times' Jerry Crowe: "Once again the poor, infirm and cheap are robbed of seeing the playoffs on regular TV."

But really, the blank television screens in our cable-less L.A. homes are a gift.

On Thursday, I plugged in a radio, sat out on my deck on a warm autumn evening and listened to the man whose voice is like that of a Boy Scout leader spinning tales by the campfire.

"No score, bottom of the first, we're just getting started."

Listening to Vin call a playoff game is like listening to Bernstein conduct Beethoven. Take his Oct. 8 call of the Dodgers' late-inning victory over the Cardinals, which was a work of art.

Cardinals' outfielder Matt Holliday made a crucial error in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs, and it started a dramatic Dodgers rally. On television, they showed the replay of his gaffe again and again.

On radio, we had Vin to tell us what it looked like, and what it meant.