Goodbye Vin
Aging is inevitable. I feel it every morning as I take my blood pressure medication, my cholesterol medication, my anti-depressant, my PrEP. I feel it with every death of a legend. With the death of Vin Scully, it’s just hitting harder.
I did have the privilege of seeing Vin for the better part of four years while I covered the Dodgers for LAist. I still remember the first day I went to cover a game at Dodger Stadium. Not only did I have to pull over on the way to throw up from the panicky butterflies in my stomach, when I was pissing in the pressbox bathroom, Vin walked up to the urinal next to mine and greeted me with a, “Hello there.” It was the only time I nearly passed out in a bathroom outside of a gay bar.
Every home game Vin was scheduled to broadcast, we saw each other. He told stories. Well, all of you know the stories he told. And he elaborated on them and even more. He talked about his lifelong fear of actor Bela Lugosi after watching Dracula as a kid. He talked about once getting Babe Ruth’s autograph on a ticket stub but having his mom throw it out.
Vin was one of the rare people I’ve ever met who was both greater than fiction and humble to a fault. When you first see him in person, you lose your breath in his elegance. Then he greets you, and he makes you feel like a friend. You are gobsmacked first that you are talking to Vin fucking Scully, and then from the fact that he is that exception to the rule that you should never meet your idols: he never disappointed.
Rather than repeat all the tributes that have been written and said, I will just say that we (and I mean my fellow Angelenos) have lost our uncle, our grandpa who soothed us when we were going through shit, taught us about life, literature, archaic expressions. I still say “the best laid plans of mice and men,” and “hoisted by his/her own petard.”
Events and people pass, and so does our youth. We are no longer that nine-year old watching Gibson hit the homerun over the right field wall and hearing, “She is… GONE!” We are no longer that 30-year old who first heard Vin’s voice in person and nearly passed out. Like our youth he’s gone forever except in our hearts. I’ll miss him, and I wish him a very pleasant good evening wherever he may be.