The Best You Can Be (Vin Scully)
Rosh HaShanah Morning 5783
“Hi, there everybody, and a very pleasant good afternoon to you wherever you may be.” I have missed hearing the voice of the marvelous Los Angeles Dodgers’ announcer Vin Scully, who had an unbelievable 67-year career as the best sports broadcaster who ever lived. Hmmm. 67 years, that’s three score and seven in Biblical terms… The last day of the Jewish year 5776 was also the last day Vin Scully announced a Dodgers’ game. And this past summer he died at the beginning of the mournful month of Av, during a Dodgers-Giants game in the dog days of August, at the age of 92.
For some perspective, Vin Scully’s first game as an announcer was in the Jewish year 5710; Harry Truman was president of the United States. Scully started as the 21-year-old voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950, palling around and going ice skating with Jackie Robinson, and he retired nearly seven decades later with accolades from Sandy Koufax, Clayton Kershaw, and movie star Kevin Costner. Vin Scully was not only an incredibly talented and enjoyable broadcaster, he was a thoughtful, humble, and generous gentleman. And he was something more. He was an inspiration.
For six months of each and every year of my boyhood, from March through October, 162 games plus spring training and, when they got there, the playoffs and World Series, Vin Scully was the voice of spring, summer, and early fall. No one has ever told a story better than Vin Scully, rolling out the details gradually, interspersed among actual baseball events unfolding before him. No one has ever set a scene better than Vin Scully, laying out the drama inherent in what might seem like child’s play of ball, bat, and glove. He made it all magical, but realistically gritty, too, without forgetting his essential task to describe. He was just so good. He created magic.
As children, we listened to Vin Scully in our homes and on the way, and certainly when we would lie down at night…
Each evening I would sneak a transistor radio into my pillowcase and listen to the end of the Dodgers’ game, narrated vividly in Scully’s easy, lyrical baritone. He would slowly bring on the drama, until you’d find yourself clinging to every syllable: “Two outs, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded with Reds, the Dodgers lead by 2. Johnny Bench at the plate… he has already homered tonight, and he’s fouled off the last three pitches; what does a pitcher have left to throw, here? Mikkelson looks in to get the sign; toes the rubber, wipes his brow, and who wouldn’t?— and now he’s set. Checks the runners, and the pitch is a PALMBALL, swung on and missed, strike three, the Dodgers win!”
If I could deliver just one sermon that captivated everyone like Vin Scully did with a call like that, I could die happy. And if that sermon, or the Too Jewish Radio Show, reached just 10% of the people that Vin Scully did during a meaningless weekday ballgame… well, that would really be something, as Vin would say. Of course, I remember many Rosh HaShanah services in which the telltale earpiece from a transistor radio testified to the fact that a congregant was secretly listening to Vin Scully broadcast the World Series during High Holy Day services.
As a kid, I realized early on that my dreams of playing major league baseball would go unfulfilled. Growing up in my neighborhood, we would all have liked to have played for the Dodgers. But because of Vin Scully we also wanted to announce for the Dodgers. Every front yard game of baseball, over-the-line, or whiffle ball was accompanied by steady commentary from at least one of the kids pretending to be Vin Scully. It wasn’t enough to strike out a batter or hit a home run; you had to narrate it, colorfully, with detailed descriptions of pulling at your non-existent cap and marvelous anecdotes about your own surprising backstory. But you know what? Not only weren’t we going to play for the Dodgers. It turned out that we weren’t even close to successfully imitating the guy doing the announcing. Because he was special.
When you attended a game at, as Scully put it, “beautiful Dodgers Stadium in Chavez Ravine” the number of people listening to him on transistor radios was so great that you could actually hear him everywhere in the ballpark during games. Mind you, we were watching the game itself, we could see with our own eyes what was happening in front of us, but it only became real when we heard Scully describe it. I’m not sure this analogy isn’t sacrilegious, but it’s just a little like the Israelites hearing the 10 Commandments directly from God at Mt. Sinai and then telling Moses to get them in writing and bring them back and announce them formally before they would believe them. Only it was Vin Scully, like Moses a deeply humble man of great accomplishment, who was proclaiming the truth from the mountaintop high up in the grandstand.
No one has ever captured a moment of actual athletic greatness better than Vin Scully. I stood in a windy gas station filling my car in October 1988 and heard him narrate the drama of overmatched Dodgers’ star Kirk Gibson struggle up to the plate with two bad legs and fight off two-strike pitches from the best relief pitcher in history, Dennis Eckersley. And as the tension built nearly beyond endurance, he announced, “High fly ball into right field… she is gone!” and after the crowd roared and roared and roared—and several grown men in a gas station 120 miles away who did not know each other jumped up and down—it was Scully who captured it in one amazing sentence, “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!” Amazing.
So what could a redheaded baseball radio announcer from the Bronx—and a devout Catholic—possibly teach Jews on Rosh HaShanah here in Tucson, Arizona?
First of all, this: Vin Scully wasn’t a star player, manager, or owner. In fact, he wasn’t in any of the glamor roles we associate with sports. He was just the guy talking about the people who really mattered, and he sold gasoline and hot dogs along the way. Yet somehow, with his talent, dedication, humor, humility, and innate decency, he became as important as anyone who played or managed. In fact, more important. He elevated what he did, this commercial act of broadcasting, into a hugely popular, inimitable art form, a unifying voice in the community, a soundtrack for people’s lives, and he did it through excellence, consistency, and joy.
And yet, he said, again and again, that he felt incredibly lucky to do something he loved, to keep on fooling people into believing that he was good at what he did. He said and wrote about how fortunate and blessed he was, when he was the one who blessed so many of us.
There is a wonderful lesson in this. You see, everyone can’t be the Most Valuable Player. Everyone can’t hit the winning home run. Everyone can’t be the owner of the team, or the star of the movie, or the captain of the ship or the CEO or the major general. Everyone can’t play for the Dodgers—or even be their radio announcer. But everyone, each one of us, can elevate what we do through our dedication, decency, and excellence. Each one of us can do work that has meaning and do it well. Each of us can find our purpose. Every one of us can live a life that matters.
That means that each of us can take pride in what we do, each can value his or her work enough to be prepared, to care, to seek always to improve. And each of us can do what we do in our very own way. For we each have our own unique authenticity. We each have skills and talents no one else has. We each can make a positive difference in this world. If we do what we are good at doing well, with integrity and care and joy, we, too, will bring blessing to others, and we will be remembered.
Today we begin the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance. Teshuvah means repentance, but coming from the root word shuv; most of all, it means return. Teshuvah means return to the best that is within us. It means finding a way, over these ten days, to return to the best you that you can be.
That is the true lesson of Rosh HaShanah. We do not have to be the greatest scholar, or the most heroic leader, or the best-looking, or the thinnest person in any room. We do not have to be the greatest American hero. We do not have to be a superstar, or a movie star, or a major league ballplayer. We do not even have to be Vin Scully.
We simply have to be the best of ourselves. It is that person whom we are seeking today, on Rosh HaShanah, and whom we wish to reinvigorate over these Ten Days of Repentance. You see, if you can find the best version of yourself at this time of Teshuvah, if you can recommit to doing your work with energy and dedication, if you can find the joy in your life, you will also find a way to bring blessing to this shiny new year.
One more Vin Scully story—there are as many of those as there are Midrashim, I think, and this is an atypical but true story. It seems that a very rich, very push guy convinced the Dodgers staff to let him in to meet with the great Vin Scully in the radio booth where he was carefully preparing for the coming game. Scully, a perfect gentleman always, arose and shook the man’s hand, and the guy puffed out his chest and said with great arrogance, “I wanted to meet you because you are at the top and I am at the top. You are the number one broadcaster, and I am the number one building contractor!”
Scully said, who had exquisite manners, thought for a moment, and then said, “Is that so? That’s wonderful. I’d like you to meet some people.”
And he turned to the other people in and around the booth and said, “First, I’d like you to meet Steve. He’s the number one statistician. And John, he’s the number one caterer. And Esteban, he’s the number one janitor. And Rachel, she’s the number one usher.” This continued for several minutes, as Scully introduced all the employees standing there in an ever-widening circle. The man’s face went from pride to reddening embarrassment to outright humiliation.
Finally, much, reduced, he left the radio booth…
Because, of course, the point wasn’t that Scully was great because he thought he was great. He was great because he respected the goodness, even the greatness, in all those around him.
There is a famous Jewish story about this. Once, the great Hassidic Rebbe Zusia, came to his followers, his eyes red with tears, his face pale with fear.
"Zusia, what's the matter? You look frightened!" his concerned students asked.
"I just had a vision,” Zusia answered. “I learned the question that God will one day ask me about my life."
His followers were puzzled. "Zusia, you are pious. You are scholarly and humble. You have helped each of us. What question about your life could be so terrifying that you would be frightened to answer it?" they said.
Zusia turned his gaze to heaven. "I have learned that God will not ask me, 'Why weren't you Moses, leading your people out of slavery?' God will not ask me why I wasn’t the best Moses I could be."
His followers persisted. "So, what will God ask you?"
"And I have learned," Zusia sighed, "that God will not ask me, 'Why weren't you Joshua, leading your people into the Promised Land?' God will not ask me why I wasn’t the best Joshua I could be."
Again, they asked, “So, nu, what will God ask you?”
“And I have also learned,” Zusia moaned, “that God will not ask me, ‘Why weren’t you the Prophet Elijah, fighting against the injustice of the king and queen?’ God will not ask me why I wasn’t the best Elijah I could be.”
Finally, one of his followers approached Zusia and placed his hands on Zusia's shoulders. Looking him in the eyes, he demanded, "Reb Zusia, what will God ask you?"
And Zusia answered, "I have learned that God will say to me, 'Zusia, there was only one thing that no power of heaven or earth could have prevented you from becoming.' God will say, 'Zusia, why weren't you the best Zusia you could be?' And that is why I am distraught. I don’t think I have been the best Zusia I could have been.”
The best Zusia. Not the best Moses. Not the best Joshua. Not the best Elijah. Not even the best Vin Scully.
What we are asked to do over these Days of Awe, over this Rosh HaShanah and through to Yom Kippur, is rediscover the best version of ourselves. To find the person within who is open enough to learn, generous enough to give, caring enough to comfort, conscientious enough to do our work well and with pride. In a way, this is the greatest teshuvah that any of us can do: to find the Jew within us who will be true to the best that is within us. To find the human being we can be, the one who can do the mitzvot that will make our lives better, and so improve the whole world.
And, as Vin Scully told graduates of his alma mater once, “Don’t let the winds blow your dreams away,” he said, “or steal you of your faith in God.”
May he rest in peace. And may each of you find your own teshuvah, to return and repair yourselves to be the best you can be in this beautiful new year of 5783.