Shortly after Scully died on August 2, 2022, at the age of 94, Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci used the Latin phrase eloquentia perfecta, or perfect eloquence, to describe Scully’s gift and well-honed craft. “Freshmen at Fordham, including Vin Scully, class of 1949, take a seminar class taught by the most accomplished faculty called eloquentia perfecta,” Verducci wrote. “It emerged from the rhetorical studies of the ancient Greeks, codified in Jesuit tradition in 1599. It refers to the ideal orator: a good person speaking well for the common good. It is based on humility: The speaker begins with the needs of the audience, not a personal agenda. Vin Scully was that ideal orator. A modern Socrates, only more revered.

“He was an amazing firsthand witness and chronicler of history. … And yet never did Vin place himself above the people and events he was there to chronicle.”

In a career spanning seven decades, Scully described some of the most memorable moments in baseball. He was erudite and eloquent, with exquisite timing and an ability to frame the drama as it unfolded. He could weave anecdotes about the players, literature, and history into the flow of the game, interrupting himself to describe a pitch without losing the thread of his tale or his listeners’ attention. But he also knew when to go silent and let the magical moment—and the roar of the crowd— speak for itself.

He received numerous awards throughout his career, including induction into the broadcasters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, an Emmy Award for lifetime achievement in 1996, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016. “The game of baseball has a handful of signature sounds,” Obama said at the White House ceremony. “You hear the crack of the bat, you got the crowd singing in the seventh-inning stretch, and you’ve got the voice of Vin Scully.”

The Early Years

Scully was born in the Bronx after his parents immigrated from Ireland. He grew up in Washington Heights and attended Fordham Preparatory School. After graduating in 1944, he served briefly in the Navy before enrolling in Fordham College at Rose Hill, where he majored in communications. In 1947, he became one of the original voices of WFUV, the University’s radio station. He penned a sports column in The Fordham Ram, worked as a stringer for The New York Times, and sang in the Shaving Mugs, a campus barbershop quartet. For two seasons, he played outfield for the Fordham baseball team.

Five decades later, on May 20, 2000, Scully returned to Rose Hill to receive an honorary degree from the University and deliver the commencement address. He told graduates that the “four-letter words” he associated with Fordham were “home, love, and hope.” And he didn’t put himself above his audience: “It’s only me,” he said, “and I am one of you. … I walked the halls you walked. I sat in the same classrooms. I took the same notes and sweated out the final exams; drank coffee in the caf and played sports on your grassy fields.”

But Scully’s favorite place to be was behind the mic. He called Fordham baseball, basketball, and football games for WFUV. And in a 2020 documentary on the station’s celebrated sports department, he joked that he would even call games to himself while playing for the Rams. He recalled listening to games as a kid and being “so thrilled by the roar of the crowd that first, I loved the roar. Then I wanted to be there, and eventually I thought I would love to be the announcer doing the game.”

The Voice of the Dodgers

After graduating from Fordham in 1949, Scully spent the summer at a CBS radio affiliate in Washington, D.C., before he returned to New York to speak with the network about working there. Just a few days later, he received a call from Red Barber, the legendary CBS sports director and broadcaster, asking him to cover a college football game that Saturday. By spring, the 22-year-old Scully had joined Barber in the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcast booth. When Barber left to work for the Yankees following the 1953 season, Scully became the team’s primary announcer, a position he held when the franchise moved to Los Angeles for the 1958 season and kept until he retired in 2016.

The highlights of his career are too numerous to recount in full, but in 1955, he called the final out of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ only World Series victory. He described Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, calling it “the greatest game ever pitched.”

He was behind the mic for another perfect game a decade later, by the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax on September 9, 1965. That game was not televised, but Scully’s descriptive, evocative call of the last inning helped listeners see and feel the drama. “And you can almost taste the pressure now,” he said after the second strike against the inning’s leadoff hitter, Chris Krug. “Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers through his black hair, then pulled the cap back down, fussing at the bill. Krug must feel it too as he backs out, heaves a sigh, took off his helmet, put it back on, and steps back up to the plate.” Moments later, Scully said, “And there are 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies.”

On April 8, 1974, the Dodgers traveled to Atlanta to play the Braves, whose veteran slugger, Hank Aaron, was one home run away from breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs. In the fourth inning, Aaron stepped up to the plate with Scully behind the mic to describe a drama that would resonate far beyond the ballpark. “It’s a high drive into deep left-center field. Buckner goes back to the fence. It is gone!” Scully said, then let the crowd take the mic for 26 jubilant seconds before remarking on Aaron’s historic achievement: “What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”

A dozen years later, Bill Buckner, the outfielder who watched Aaron’s recordbreaking home run sail just out of reach, would be at the infamous heart of another one of Scully’s most memorable calls. Now playing first base for the Boston Red Sox, Buckner and his teammates faced the New York Mets in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. They were up two runs and only one out away from breaking the so-called Curse of the Bambino, having not won a World Series since trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season. But the Mets staged a gritty comeback to tie the game in the 10th inning. Finally, the Mets’ Mookie Wilson hit a seemingly simple ground ball Buckner’s way. “Little roller up along first, behind the bag, it gets through Buckner!” Scully said, his voice rising. “Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it!” Once again, he let the crowd roar—this time for nearly two minutes, as viewers were shown the replay of Buckner’s error, a delirious New York crowd, the jubilant Mets, and the despondent Red Sox. “If one picture is worth a thousand words,” Scully said when he returned to the mic, “you have seen about a million.”

The ‘Patron Saint of WFUV Sports’

Scully’s iconic style made him an inspiration for generations of sports broadcasters who followed in his footsteps at WFUV and at Fordham, including Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, the voice of the Yankees for the YES Network, who called Scully “the greatest broadcaster who ever lived.”

“Every game was a master’s class as he turned an inning into poetry. And as great as he was, he was just as nice. Class, elegance, and grace were all part of his humble but regal being,” Kay wrote. “His loss is heartbreaking as his golden voice is silenced, but he will live forever as an example of what to try and be on and off mic. RIP Mr. Scully, and rest easy knowing how much you made a difference to all who met you and had the joy of listening to you.”

In the 2020 documentary on WFUV sports, Hall of Fame basketball broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, described what made Scully the best: “His vocabulary, his storytelling, his personality—everything. He just was perfect,” Breen said. “It made you … [want] to make sure you were always prepared anytime you went on the air.”

Bob Ahrens, WFUV’s sports director for 20 years before his retirement in 2017, said Scully always made time for the students. They usually interviewed him about once a year for the weekly One on One call-in show, and Ahrens said Scully hosted at least two workshops over the phone. “They can’t see him in person, and the control room is packed,” Ahrens said. “He loved FUV, he loved Fordham, and he was always willing to help out.”

In 2008, he became the first recipient of WFUV’s Vin Scully Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting, a lifetime achievement award that Breen accepted last fall and Kay took home in 2018. “To be given an award with Vin Scully’s name on it is beyond anything I could have ever imagined,” Kay said at the awards ceremony. “He is the patron saint of WFUV sports, he is the patron saint of anybody who does baseball play-by-play. He is the best at what he’s done.”

Mike Watts, GABELLI ’14, who calls games for ESPN, Westwood One, and other networks, said that Scully inspired him to come to Fordham. “There is no WFUV sports without Vin Scully,” Watts said. “His name gave all of us credibility. To have the greatest at anything come from your school, your radio station, your program—it’s the light that all of us were following.”

‘Smile Because It Happened’

On October 2, 2016, Scully called his final game. Before heading to the playoffs, the Dodgers and the Giants—two teams with New York roots—concluded the regular season with a game in San Francisco. In the final inning, Scully said that he’d had a line in his head all year, a common, anonymous expression often mistakenly attributed to Dr. Seuss, he said. “The line is, ‘Don’t be sad that it’s over. Smile because it happened.’ And that’s really the way I feel about this remarkable opportunity I was given, and I was allowed to keep for all these years. … I have said enough for a lifetime, and for the last time, I wish you all a very pleasant good afternoon.”

—Kelly Prinz, FCRH ’15, is an associate editor of this magazine. Chris Gosier and Ryan Stellabotte contributed to this article.

The tournament, which spanned four days and also featured teams from the College of the Holy Cross and the University of Illinois Chicago, was named in memory of Fordham graduate Tom Konchalski, FCRH ’68, a New York City native widely regarded as one of the most trusted basketball scouts in the country. His four-decade career included assessments of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James as high school players.

“Not only was he one of the most universally respected people in the industry, he was also one of the most well liked,” said Ed Kull, Fordham’s athletic director. “He exalted the values of his Jesuit education every day of his life and I’m honored to help carry on his legacy with the Tom Konchalski Classic.”

On Feb. 9, 2021, one day after Konchalski’s death at the age of 74, New York Knicks broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, told viewers that while Konchalski “may not have been what’s called a household name, in basketball homes, he was legendary.”

“Tom was the most influential, the most respected, and the most loved high school basketball scout in the country,” said Breen, who recently received WFUV’s Vin Scully Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting. “He helped thousands of young men, thousands of high school basketball players, achieve their dreams of playing college basketball and beyond. And every single day, he did it with kindness and humility.”

In addition to honoring Konchalski, the tournament pays tribute to the memory of Jim O’Connell, a Hall of Fame basketball writer who served as sports information director for the Fordham Rams from 1976 to 1978.

When he died in 2018 at the age of 64, Syracuse University head men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim told Sports Illustrated that O’Connell—known to many simply as “Oc”—covered sports “in a positive way, always,” and “was always good to players, coaches, fans—everybody.” The tournament’s standout student-athlete takes home the Jim O’Connell Most Outstanding Player award, earned this year by Fordham graduate student guard Darius Quisenberry.

On Saturday, Nov. 19, the opening day of the tournament, Fordham also hosted a “Celebration of Basketball,” benefiting the Thomas C. Konchalski Foundation and honoring Bob Hurley Sr., the Hall of Fame coach who led St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, New Jersey, to 26 state basketball championships.

The Rams have started the 2022–2023 season with a 5-1 record, winning all five of their home games. They next face Harvard at the Rose Hill Gym at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 27. The game will feature a special halftime ceremony honoring the family of former Fordham athletic director Frank McLaughlin, FCRH ’69, in whose name the gym court will be named.

Fordham graduate Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, the lead voice for the NBA on ESPN and ABC, and the voice of the New York Knicks on MSG Networks, received the Vin Scully Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting. And Norah O’Donnell, anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, was honored with the Charles Osgood Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.

Fordham’s public media station, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this fall, also paid special tribute to two people: the late Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, longtime voice of the Dodgers, who helped define the station in its early years; and former news director George Bodarky, FCRH ’93, who helped shape the careers of hundreds of young journalists during his 20-plus years at the station.

In the ‘Same Breath as Vin Scully’

Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, voice of the New York Yankees for the YES Network, presented Breen with the Scully Award. He recalled sitting in the Rose Hill campus center cafeteria in the 1980s, eating french fries and talking with a fellow Fordham undergraduate about their post-college aspirations.

“There was a young man from Yonkers sitting there in a hideous reindeer sweater, and across from him was a young man from the Bronx, sitting there in a snorkel coat,” Kay said to laughter. “And we sat and talked about our dreams. And the kid in the reindeer sweater, who’s Mike Breen, said, ‘You know what, I really want to be the voice of the Knicks.’ And I sat there, and I said, ‘You know what, I really want to be the voice of the Yankees.’ … But since Mike is Tommy Topper, he didn’t just become the voice of the Knicks, he became the voice of the NBA.”

Kay saluted Breen for his remarkable career, which began at WFUV and includes calling 17 NBA Finals, the most of any broadcaster. He said Breen’s achievements and his character are why he “deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Vin Scully,” the award’s namesake, who always “carried himself with elegance and grace and class.”

“You could go to anybody, in any part of this industry—there is not one person, not one person that has anything bad to say about Mike Breen. So he and Vin Scully go together,” said Kay, a 2018 recipient of the Scully Award. “He’s that sort of guy. He just treats people the way he’d want his children to be treated. And that’s special in this industry.”

Breen, who became only the second Fordham graduate to receive the award, said it was a high honor because Scully was “the gold standard.”

“When you’re an aspiring broadcaster, you dream about a lot of things, but you never imagine receiving an award named after Vin Scully,” he said.

Breen said that as an undergraduate at WFUV, he did a little bit of everything at the station and learned the value of hard work. In addition to covering sports, he served as a late-night and overnight music disc jockey, which he said gave him “one of the most memorable nights of my entire life.” Breen was on the air Monday night, Dec. 8, 1980, when news broke that John Lennon had been shot and killed in Manhattan.

“I was told by one of the seniors, ‘Take phone calls, take requests, and just play Beatles music all night,’” Breen said. “And the phones rang off the hook, and they were talking about what John Lennon meant to them. One gentleman told me how he was about to commit suicide, but John Lennon’s song stopped him. Another told me he had a drinking problem, and John Lennon helped them through that. And it was the first time in my life I realized what music meant to people.”

Breen said the experience, and his background in news, made him a more versatile broadcaster, which helped him throughout his career. He also said that he wouldn’t be receiving the award without the support of so many people, including Kay, with whom he has had “43 years of the best friendship a man could have”; his MSG broadcasting partner, Knicks legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier, who attended the dinner; and his wife, Rosanne.

“When you’re an announcer as long as I’ve been, you’re fortunate to have so many great partners,” he said. “I always believed announcers should never publicly say who their favorite partner is, but I’m going to break that rule tonight. And Clyde, unfortunately, you’re number two. You see, the best part about tonight is I get to share it with my favorite partner: my wife, Rosanne.”

Breen said those relationships and others have helped him and his family get through a particularly hard time recently after his house was destroyed in a fire. The Vin Scully award is the latest for Breen, who also has been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a recipient of the Curt Gowdy Media Award.

‘A Fierce Journalist’

CBS News senior national correspondent Anthony Mason, who served as emcee for the evening, described his colleague Norah O’Donnell as a “fierce journalist” when presenting her with the Charles Osgood Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. The award is named in honor of the 1954 Fordham graduate and WFUV alumnus who for many decades was the host of CBS Sunday Morning.

“We, her colleagues who sit next to her, have come to recognize a certain look Norah gets in her eyes when a senator or some such official is dodging or ducking or weaving or whatever,” he said. “And this steely veneer comes across Norah’s face. That’s when the question comes out that hits right between the eyes.”

O’Donnell wasn’t able to attend the dinner, but she sent video remarks that were played at the event. “I am so humbled and honored to receive this year’s Charles Osgood Award,” she said, “and thank you to Fordham University, where my mom went, and WFUV for your commitment to journalism,” which she said is more than “just a calling.”

“At its best, it has the power to make real change in the world that we live in, to give voice to those who feel like they have been silenced,” she said. “It is a privilege to do what we do.”

Mason said he was honored to participate in the event.

“I am what they said in radio, a ‘first-time, longtime’—I’m a first-time host [of On the Record] and I’m a longtime FUV listener and fan,” he said. “I became a fan somewhere around 25 years ago, when I moved out to the suburbs so we could raise our kids, and literally my car and my 45-minute commute and WFUV were my sanctuary from my crazy job.”

Honoring the ‘Patron Saint of WFUV Sports’ and an Influential Mentor

This year’s On the Record also featured two special tributes to broadcasters who helped shape the station and carry on its legacy—Scully and George Bodarky.

Scully, who died in August at the age of 94, was remembered through a video tribute produced by the WFUV sports department.

“Vin Scully is our patron saint. We revere Vin Scully. The ground he walks on is just golden,” Kay said at the dinner. “And we miss him … but his memory lives on, and one of the great things about Vin Scully is that his talent, which is exceptional, probably is only surpassed by the person that he was.”

Veteran sportscaster Bob Costas, who received the Vin Scully Award in 2013, took part in a panel discussion at the dinner. He said that one of the best things about being honored by WFUV was finding out about it from Scully himself.

“Everyone who won, they found out from Vin Scully—no one at Fordham told the winner until Vin had called them, and you heard that unmistakable voice, and he concluded his very gracious and warm comments always, ‘So Bob, welcome to the club,’” Costas said. “And joining any club of which Vin Scully is the charter member is a very good thing.”

Bodarky, the community partnerships and training editor at WNYC, was honored for his more than 20 years of service to WFUV, during which time he helped shape the careers of hundreds of young journalists, including NPR White House correspondent Scott Detrow, FCRH ’07, who presented him with the award.

“The thing about George is that dozens, maybe hundreds of people could be giving these remarks right now, telling you how George changed their life, how George taught them about broadcasting, how George opened the door to what became their career and their vocation,” he said.

Detrow said one lesson from Bodarky that has always stuck with him is that it is a privilege to tell people’s stories.

“He was talking to a student reporter one day, and he said, ‘What kind of interviews do you want to do?’ And the … student said, ‘I want to interview important people, I want to interview famous people,’” Detrow said. “And George said, ‘Those are actually the most boring interviews to do. They don’t want to tell you that much. What you want to do is interview people who have compelling stories—bring their stories to life, tell people about them.’ And I never forgot that.”

Bodarky said the honor wasn’t just for him but for all the journalists who came through the station. He asked those who had worked with him during their time at WFUV to stand up and be recognized.

“You are my success,” he told them. “You are the reason that I’m standing here tonight.”

Bodarky credited his mentors, including WFUV station manager Chuck Singleton, for helping him get his start in journalism as a Fordham undergraduate after he thought he wanted to pursue a law degree.

“This honor is also shared with my mom,” he said, “a single mother who raised two boys on her own, who always taught me to fly high and believe in myself, who I think without knowing it, taught me the importance of working hard, caring for others, and picking yourself up and dusting yourself off when times get tough.”

Bodarky said he’s grateful for the role he’s been able to play in so many journalists’ careers.

“When someone tells me that I played a role in their journalistic achievements, that they hear me in their head, guiding them when they’re on the air, writing a script, or doing an interview—that makes me feel present when I’m not present and that gives me the feeling of success,” he said.

The Next Generation

WFUV also recognized two young journalists, both of whom graduated from Fordham last May. Abigail Delk, FCRH ’22, received the WFUV Award for Excellence in News Journalism, and Alexander Wolz, FCRH ’22, received the Bob Ahrens Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism.

Singleton said that Delk not only produced award-winning feature stories for Cityscape, the station’s weekly public affairs show, but also “effortlessly managed her peers as editor.” Wolz was recognized for helping to turn all of the station’s sports “shows into digital, streamed programming, most notably New York’s longest-running sports call-in show, One on One.”

Breen said that Wolz and Delk are examples of students who are not just carrying on but enhancing WFUV’s legacy.

“Every Fordham student who decides to join this amazing radio station feels a responsibility to uphold the standards that all the previous students and student broadcasters have set—I felt it, I know Michael felt it,” Breen said, referring to Kay. “And I’ll say this to you two, and your fellow current students and broadcasters who are here tonight, you’ve not only upheld the standards, you’ve raised them. And I say bravo.”

Singleton said that this year’s dinner raised more than $137,000, bringing the total raised since WFUV launched the On the Record program to more than $1.1 million. That funding supports the station’s student training program, which this year includes more than 130 students.

“Vin Scully’s death marks the end of an era,” said Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham. “As members of the Fordham family, we grieve the loss of a wise and decent man who always spoke to our better natures—on the field and off. I know the University and WFUV communities join me in keeping Vin’s loved ones in our hearts and prayers today.”

Sometimes called the “Velvet Voice,” the iconic broadcaster was known for his elegant and evocative yet plainspoken approach to broadcasting. Listeners felt like they were joining a friend each broadcast as Scully welcomed them in with his usual greeting: “Hi everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you, wherever you may be.”

“We have lost an icon,” Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement. “The Dodgers’ Vin Scully was one of the greatest voices in all of sports. He was a giant of a man, not only as a broadcaster, but as a humanitarian. He loved people. He loved life. He loved baseball and the Dodgers. And he loved his family. His voice will always be heard and etched in all of our minds forever.”

Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, voice of the Yankees for YES Network, wrote in a statement that we “lost the greatest broadcaster who ever lived.”

“Every game was a master’s class as he turned an inning into poetry. And as great as he was, he was just as nice. Class, elegance and grace were all part of his humble but regal being,” Kay wrote. “His loss is heartbreaking as his golden voice is silenced, but he will live forever as an example of what to try and be on and off mic. RIP Mr. Scully and rest easy knowing how much you made a difference to all who met you and had the joy of listening to you.”

In a career spanning seven decades, Scully voiced some of the most historic calls in the game, including Don Larsen’s and Sandy Koufax’s perfect games in 1956 and 1965, respectively; Hank Aaron’s 715th career home run to break the record set by Babe Ruth; and Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run in the 1988 World Series.

He received numerous awards throughout his career including an induction into the broadcasters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016.

“The game of baseball has a handful of signature sounds,” President Obama said at the White House ceremony in 2016. “You hear the crack of the bat, you got the crowd singing in the seventh-inning stretch, and you’ve got the voice of Vin Scully.”

Scully’s career began at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. He graduated in 1949 and is known as the “patron saint” of WFUV Sports, getting his start at the radio station as a student at Fordham College at Rose Hill. His work has inspired generations of students to become sports broadcasters.

He received an honorary doctorate from Fordham in 2000 after giving the commencement address and a lifetime achievement award from WFUV that is now named in his honor. Scully was inducted into the University’s Hall of Honor in 2011.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president emeritus of Fordham, called Scully one of Fordham’s “greatest heroes” as he awarded Scully with the Ram of the Year award in 2014.

“From the heart, I want you to know you are for Fordham an example of a man for others, a man whose life has been a life of integrity, of service, of great devotion to the University,” Father McShane said at the ceremony. “You could not be a better ambassador for us. Everyone at Fordham loves you as much as we revere you.”

Bob Ahrens, who worked as the WFUV Sports director for 20 years before his retirement in 2017, worked with Scully for years through the station.

“He loved Fordham, he loved FUV,” Ahrens said. “He was a Fordham guy through and through. He had a love for the school. He always wanted to know how the teams were doing.”

The Early Years

Scully was born in the Bronx after his parents immigrated from Ireland. He grew up in Washington Heights before he attended Fordham Preparatory School. He graduated in 1944 and served briefly in the Navy before returning to Rose Hill to study communications.

At Fordham, Scully had a sports column in The Fordham Ram student newspaper, worked as a stringer for The New York Times, and sang in the Shaving Mugs, a campus barbershop quartet. He also briefly played outfield for the Fordham baseball team.

When he gave the commencement address at Fordham in 2000, Scully told the graduates that the words he associated with Fordham were “home, love, and hope.”

“Home, because I spent eight years here on this campus, and it really was my second home. Love, because I loved every minute of it, and some of my closest and dearest friends in all the world were my classmates and teammates. And hope, hope came from a five-letter word called a dream,” he told the students.

Scully told the graduates that “I am one of you.”

“I walked the halls you walked. I sat in the same classrooms,” he told the graduates. “I took the same notes and sweated out the final exams; drank coffee in the café and played sports on your grassy fields.”

But Scully’s favorite place to be was behind the microphone. He called Fordham baseball, basketball, and football games for WFUV, 90.7 FM, which launched in 1947. In a 2020 documentary for WFUV Sports, Scully joked that he would call games to himself while playing in the outfield.

“I used to be so thrilled by the roar of the crowd that first, I loved the roar. Then I wanted to be there, and eventually I thought I would love to be the announcer doing the game,” he said in the documentary.

When Scully received the Ram of the Year award in 2014, he recalled sitting in the Fordham Prep auditorium next to his classmate Larry Miggins.

“We were talking about what we hoped to do when we finished school,” Scully said after accepting the award. “Larry said, ‘I’d love to be a major league ballplayer,’ and I said, ‘I’d love to be a major league broadcaster.’ And we both kind of chuckled.”

Scully recalled how a few years later, on May 13, 1952, he was behind the mic in the broadcast booth at Ebbets Field when Miggins came to bat for the Cardinals.

“It was so hard to speak. The Dodgers had a left-handed pitcher named Preacher Roe from Ash Flat, Arkansas. Preacher Roe was going to face my buddy Larry Miggins, and I’m going to describe whatever happens,” Scully said. “And Larry Miggins hit a home run.”

The Voice of the Dodgers

After graduating from Fordham, Scully spent the summer working at a CBS radio affiliate in Washington, D.C., before he returned to New York to speak with the network about working there. Just a few days later, he received a call from Red Barber, the legendary CBS sports director and broadcaster, asking him to cover a college football game that Saturday.

In less than a year, Scully joined Barber on what were then the Brooklyn Dodgers’ broadcasts. When Barber left to work for the Yankees following the 1953 season, Scully became the Dodgers’ primary announcer, a position he held until he retired in 2016.

During his long career, Scully recorded some of the most memorable calls in baseball history. He had been in the Dodgers job for less than five years when Don Larsen took the mound in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series and pitched a perfect game, the only one in a World Series.

“Got him! The greatest game ever pitched in baseball history by Don Larsen, a no-hitter, a perfect game in a World Series. Never in the history of the game has it ever happened in a World Series,” Scully said on the broadcast.

Less than 10 years later, Scully would be behind the mic for another perfect game, this time with Sandy Koufax on the mound. Scully’s call of the last inning featured his descriptive, evocative style.

“And there are 29,000 people in the ballpark, and a million butterflies,” he said, after the first batter.

As Koufax was one out away from a perfect game, Scully said, “I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world.”

In 1974, the Dodgers traveled to Atlanta and faced Hank Aaron, who was one home run away from breaking Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs. In the fourth inning, Aaron stepped up to the plate and made history, with Scully behind the mic.

“It’s a high drive into deep left center field, Buckner goes back to the fence, it is gone!” Scully called before letting the crowd take the mic for almost 30 seconds of celebration.

He then remarked on the historic achievement: “What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol and it is a great moment for all of us.”

Bill Buckner, who almost caught that home run, would be at the heart of another famous—or infamous—Scully call.

Now playing first base for the Red Sox, Buckner and his team were attempting to break the famous “Curse of the Bambino,” having not won a World Series since trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season. In 1986, the Red Sox faced the New York Mets in the World Series, and in Game 6, the Mets’ Mookie Wilson hit what looked to be a simple ground ball down the first base line.

“Little roller up along first, behind the bag, it gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it,” he said. “If one picture is worth a thousand words, you have seen about a million.”

And in 1988, with the Dodgers in the World Series, outfielder Kirk Gibson had hurt both of his legs in the prior series and wasn’t sure if he was going to play. But with two outs in the ninth, a man on base, and the Dodgers down a run, Gibson was called on to pinch hit. He limped up to the plate, and then a miracle happened, which Scully captured poetically.

“High fly ball into right field, she is gone!” Scully said. “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”

A Lasting Influence

Scully’s iconic style has made him an inspiration for many generations of sports broadcasters who followed in his footsteps at WFUV and at Fordham.

“His vocabulary, his storytelling, his personality—everything. He just was perfect,” ESPN NBA announcer Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, said in the 2020 WFUV Sports documentary. “It made you … [want]to make sure you were always prepared anytime you went on the air. You might have had two exams that day or [been]having trouble at home that day—it didn’t matter. You had to have a certain standard for WFUV that began with Vin Scully.”

Ahrens said that Scully always made time for the students and the station. The students usually interviewed him about once a year for the weekly One on One call-in show, and Ahrens said he hosted at least two workshops with the students over the phone.

“Vin’s on the phone, they can’t see him in person, and the control room is packed,” he said. “He was always generous with his time when he had it. And he didn’t have to, but he loved FUV, he loved Fordham, and he was always willing to help out.”

Ahrens remembered shortly after he took the job in 1997 he reached out to the Dodgers to try to set up a time for students to interview Scully. The Dodgers’ media team took his number and said they would try to see what they could do.

“I was in the newsroom, and we had a PA system and the [front desk manager]hops on the PA system and says, ‘Bob Ahrens, Vin Scully on the phone,’” he said, with a laugh. “You can imagine the whole newsroom turned silent.”

WFUV Sports named its lifetime achievement award after him—the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting—which Kay took home in 2018.

“To be given an award with Vin Scully’s name on it is beyond anything I could have ever imagined,” Kay said at the awards ceremony. “He is the patron saint of WFUV Sports, he is the patron saint of anybody who does baseball play-by-play. He is the best at what he’s done.”

Ryan Ruocco, FCRH ’08, who calls Yankees games on YES and basketball games on ESPN, wrote that “Vin was truly one of one.”

“It’s impossible to put into words the impact Vin Scully has had on broadcasting, our Fordham/WFUV family, and the sport of baseball,” Ruocco wrote. “His storytelling and excellence behind the mic was matched only by his grace, generosity, and kindness.”

Scully impacted even those who didn’t step behind the microphone. Pitcher Nick Martinez, who attended the Gabelli School of Business for three years before he was drafted in the 2011 MLB draft, had the chance to meet Scully in 2015.

Martinez said he was “awestruck at first.”

“And then once we got talking, I thought it was extremely cool just being able to talk about our campus and our school, and some of the other guys that came before me. He was sharp, naming some of the guys that were on the [Fordham] team currently, and how we just had a couple guys drafted. I just thought it was extremely cool that we had that connection,” he recalled.

Mike Watts, GABELLI ’14, who calls games for ESPN, Westwood One, and other networks, said that Scully and his legacy at WFUV inspired him to come to Fordham.

“There is no WFUV Sports without Vin Scully,” Watts said. “His name gave all of us credibility. To have the greatest at anything come from your school, your radio station, your program—it’s the light that all of us were following.”

To congratulate Breen on the honor, a number of fellow Fordham and WFUV alumni appeared in a video from Fordham athletics, sending kind words and paying tribute by reciting one of his signature calls: “Bang!”

Congratulations to Mike Breen FCRH ’83 who will be presented with the @NBA Naismith Hall of Fame Curt Gowdy Award tonight.

Many @FordhamNYC greats got together to show their appreciation for all that Mike has done for our community. pic.twitter.com/SMbb9VASeW

— Fordham Athletics (@FordhamRams) May 14, 2021

The fundraiser? An online auction, the third such event hosted by the Fordham College Alumni Association (FCAA), with a novel twist this year: celebrity alumni. Several offered virtual face time to the highest bidder, helping to propel the event far beyond its usual total.

The auction “gets bigger and better every year,” with all proceeds going toward scholarships and grants for students, said Debra Caruso Marrone, FCRH ’81, the association’s president.

It’s one of several events sponsored by the FCAA each year, complementing the broader efforts of the Fordham University Alumni Association, the Office of Alumni Relations, and other groups that serve students and the alumni community.

Founded in 1905, the FCAA is the University’s oldest alumni organization, and primarily serves Fordham College at Rose Hill students and alumni.

Contacting Celebrity Alumni

The idea of featuring celebrity alumni in December’s auction was driven in part by the pandemic, which put the kibosh on, say, auctioning off event tickets. “We really had to pivot,” said Christa Treitmeier-Meditz, FCRH ’85, who spearheaded the effort to reach out to various prominent alumni.

In the end, they were able to auction off a virtual comedy writing lesson with Saturday Night Live writer Streeter Seidell, FCRH ’05 (someone bought that for his wife, an aspiring comedy writer, Treitmeier-Meditz said). They also got help from some prominent alumni thespians: Golden Globe winner Dylan McDermott, FCLC ’83, contributed a virtual meet, and Golden Globe winner and former Oscar nominee Patricia Clarkson, FCLC ’82, contributed a virtual master class and a post-pandemic in-person engagement—dinner out and tickets to the next Broadway show she appears in.

People also contributed various items, memorabilia, or experiences, such as a master cooking class or a trip around Manhattan by yacht. “It’s everything and anything,” Treitmeier-Meditz said. “The Fordham alumni community is very generous.”

Other planned events were canceled due to the pandemic lockdown last year: a sit-down for a dozen alumni with John Brennan, FCRH ’77, former CIA director and counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama, and an event with sportscasters Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, and Mike Breen, FCRH ’83.

Through such events, the association has raised money for various funds, including a summer internship fund for journalism majors, recently renamed for Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner who died in 2020. A new scholarship fund named for Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, is for students who reach new heights of academic achievement after arriving at the University.

The association provides other important support such as funding for undergraduate research and for student travel, noted Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill. “I’m so pleased to see how that support has grown over the past several years,” she said. “I am grateful for their commitment to the college, to our alumni, and to the larger Fordham family.”

The association’s Giving Day gift—a matching gift—was split between two scholarship funds: the FCAA Endowed Legacy Scholarship, a need-based scholarship for legacy students, and the Rev. George J. McMahon, S.J., Endowed Scholarship, awarded to students at Fordham College at Rose Hill and the Gabelli School of Business.

Serving on the board is a labor of love, Caruso Marrone said. “We’re doing something good: we’re raising funds, we’re helping students go through school,” in addition to bringing alumni together at events, she said. “The members of our board [are] of various age groups, various backgrounds, various careers, [and] we all come together and do this work and enjoy it immensely. We have just a great group of people who are dedicated to Fordham.”

Each of these announcers shares a common heritage. They all got their start at WFUV, Fordham University’s public media station, which has been launching the careers of sports broadcasters for more than seven decades. Now, some of the history of the station has been preserved in a documentary titled Off the Air: The Legacy of WFUV Sports.

Evan Jaenichen, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior and the video coordinator at WFUV Sports, came up with the idea for the documentary and pursued it as the capstone project for his new media and digital design major.

“I had started at WFUV last year and loved it so much,” said Jaenichen, who brought the idea to Bobby Ciafardini, the station’s sports director, and to Bob Ahrens, who retired in 2017 after two decades as sports director.

Ahrens helped put Jaenichen in touch with some of the most recognized voices to come out of the station, including Scully, FCRH ’49; Breen, FCRH ’83; Tony Reali, FCRH ’00, the host of ESPN’s Around the Horn; Bob Papa, GABELLI ’86, the radio voice of the New York Giants; and Chris Carrino, GABELLI ’92, radio voice of the Brooklyn Nets.

Vin Scully, the Dean of Fordham-Trained Sportscasters

The story of the station’s sports legacy begins with Scully, who said he used to call Fordham baseball games to himself while he was playing in the outfield at Rose Hill. He later called Fordham sports games on the air for WFUV, which was founded in 1947, his sophomore year. Scully says in the video that he was always enamored with the game.

“I used to be so thrilled by the roar of the crowd that first, I loved the roar. Then I wanted to be there, and eventually I thought I would love to be the announcer doing the game,” he says.

Scully retired in October 2016 after 67 seasons as the voice of the Dodgers. He was inducted into the broadcasters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, and has received many other accolades, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has inspired generations of broadcasters who have stepped up to the mic at WFUV.

“His vocabulary, his storytelling, his personality—everything. He just was perfect,” says Mike Breen, who recently became the third Fordham graduate to win a Curt Gowdy Media Award from the basketball Hall of Fame. “It made you … [want]to make sure you were always prepared anytime you went on the air. You might have had two exams that day or [been]having trouble at home that day—it didn’t matter. You had to have a certain standard for WFUV that began with Vin Scully.”

New York’s Longest Running Sports Call-In Show

In the years after Scully’s graduation, the sports department continued to grow, particularly during the 1970s, when Malcolm Moran, FCRH ’75, introduced One on One, which has become known as New York’s longest running sports call-in show.

“It was so much fun because I think for a lot of sports fans around the tri-state area, they had no way to express themselves like this,” Breen says in the video.

In the late 1980s, broadcaster Marty Glickman, who was best known for calling New York Knicks, New York Giants, and New York Jets games on the radio, became an adviser to the students at the station.

“I knew of Marty Glickman—at the time he was the Jets play-by-play announcer—[but]I didn’t know how impactful he would be on my life at the time,” Carrino says. “Marty’s voice is in my head every broadcast that I do. His mantra was ‘consider the listener.’”

Making It to the Major Leagues

After Glickman, Ahrens took over in the late 1990s as WFUV’s first full-time executive sports director.

“We were so fiercely and proudly student-run that we weren’t sure exactly what to make of a professional executive producer,” Reali says in the video, joking that when Ahrens told him he could cover Yankees’ games, that was all it took to convince him of the benefits of learning in a professional environment.

“I thought if we’re going to do this the right way, we should go to the major league games and train the students how to be broadcasters and how to do interviews,” Ahrens says. “I called the Mets and the Yankees. The Mets offered us one game, no clubhouse access … and [in]what was probably stupid at the time but became a very bold move, I turned it down.”

He followed up with a call to the Yankees and, after a discussion with the team’s media relations director, WFUV was granted a credential.

“We went from there to the Giants and the Jets. The following year, we went to basketball and hockey on an as-available basis and then a year later we had everything,” Ahrens says.

Current students say working at WFUV provides invaluable experiences—such as covering the Super Bowl, interviewing legendary players and broadcasters, and hosting live shows—not available to students at traditional college radio stations.

“It’s a real broadcast that’s actually going on at 90.7 FM to the entire tri-state area, so that’s one of the biggest audiences that any radio station can reach,” said Brianna Leverty, a Fordham senior.

Jaenichen said WFUV has helped him develop his love for storytelling. While he’s not sure exactly what professional path he wants to pursue after graduation, Ciafardini, his current sports director, thinks projects like this could be in his future.

“I think Evan is amazingly talented and the work that he has put out is a prime example of what he’s capable of doing,” Ciafardini said.

Jaenichen said it’s inspiring to know that the broadcasters he interviewed for the documentary were once in his shoes.

“It was a huge thrill to talk to people I’ve looked up to my whole life,” he said. “You realize that they’re just like you and they came exactly from where you are.”

Watch Off the Air: The Legacy of WFUV Sports

Breen began calling Knicks games in 1992, first on WFAN radio before moving to TV at MSG Network in 1997. He has stayed at the network since then, partnering with Knicks legend and Hall of Fame player Walt “Clyde” Frazier to form a fan-favorite broadcasting duo. Since 2006, Breen has also been the lead play-by-play announcer for ESPN’s and ABC’s nationally televised NBA games, including the NBA Finals, which he has called for a record 14 straight seasons.

A native of Yonkers, New York, Breen got his start in broadcasting as an undergraduate at Fordham.

“One of the main reasons I went to Fordham was WFUV,” he told FORDHAM magazine in 2012, referring to the University’s public media station, which has been a training ground for generations of well-known sports broadcasters starting with Vin Scully, a 1949 Fordham graduate. “I can’t think of anything that could have better trained me for my career.”

Breen recently told the New York Post that his signature on-air call—“Bang!”—was something he first tested at Fordham.

“When we weren’t doing games, I was in the stands as a student,’’ Breen said. “When a Fordham player made a shot, I would scream, ‘Bang.’ I tried it on air as a student couple of times. I said, ‘This doesn’t work. I don’t really like it.’ … Then I went back to it when I started doing TV and felt it was a nice, concise way in a big moment. You say a one-syllable word and the crowd rises and you don’t have to scream over it. One easy word. I’m from the Vin Scully … school of conciseness. It worked with a big, loud crowd.”

Breen is the third Fordham graduate and fourth member of the Fordham family to earn the Hall of Fame’s Gowdy Award, which recognizes members of the electronic and print media for “outstanding contributions to basketball.”

John Andariese, FCRH ’60, one of Breen’s former Knicks broadcasting partners at MSG Network (and a star player at Fordham during the late 1950s), received the honor in 2014. Malcolm Moran, FCRH ’75, who was a sports reporter and columnist at The New York Times for nearly 20 years, and later wrote for USA Today, among other newspapers, won the award in 2007. Like Breen, Moran, who is now the director of the Sports Capital Journalism Program at Indiana University, got his start at WFUV. And legendary broadcaster Marty Glickman, who mentored and advised students at WFUV for 12 years, from 1988 to 2000, won the award in 1991.

Does it feel odd to get a lifetime achievement award with, hopefully, a lot of career left?
Yes! I’m wondering if someone is trying to tell me something. A few days prior to the Scully Award, I was inducted into the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame. I guess it’s a good thing to get them while I can still enjoy them.

Did you always know you wanted to go to Fordham and then become a sports broadcaster?
I knew I wanted to be a Yankees announcer since I was nine years old, and when my sister Debbie attended Fordham and told me about WFUV, I knew that it was the best place for me to pursue that dream. I actually wanted to be the Yankees first baseman, but I realized I couldn’t hit and didn’t enjoy getting hit by the baseball.

Are fears about the future of baseball overblown, or is the game actually in danger of losing its place as America’s pastime?
It’s not overblown. The game pace is too slow-moving. I love it the way it is, but I am not the future of the game. You have to capture young people who have come from a “microwave” society. They want things happening instantly, and baseball is not that. They need to figure out how to appeal to the younger audience while keeping the integrity of the game in place.

Why are there still so few female MLB announcers?
I wish I knew. I think sports is slow to change. And it’s not so much the decision-makers, although they have to take some of the blame, but rather the viewers and listeners who complain when something is different in their broadcast. But people like Suzyn Waldman and Doris Burke and Sarah Kustok are changing all that.

You’ve said that the “stick to sports” idea doesn’t make sense, because the political elements of sports are there, so they need to be talked about. Do you feel like, on the whole, people understand that now more than they did five years ago?
I think people have selective outrage. They want you to stick to sports when you give an opinion that they don’t agree with. Now, I would rather not go into things other than sports, but when the president brings sports into the equation, it’s hard not to talk about that.

When it comes to journalism, you expressed your disgust with last year’s layoffs at the New York Daily News. How do you convince young sports journalists—and young journalists in general—that they shouldn’t jump ship and think about another industry?
It would be hard to be honest and tell them that. The print industry is not exactly thriving, and I think that’s a bad thing for this country. If we don’t have a free, independent press, then those in power simply cannot and will not be checked. That’s dangerous. I would tell all these kids that if you become proficient at writing, there will be a job for you in the industry, either in print or behind the scenes in TV. And, of course, a good writer can always go to a thriving website, like The Athletic, and earn a good living.

How has having two young children changed the way you approach your work?
It has put it all into perspective. In the past, I was a workaholic and would take any job or new opportunity. My workaholic past certainly played a role in my present success, but now I’m happy with what I have professionally because I’m so happy personally.

What has it been like for both you and your friend from Fordham, NBA announcer Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, to succeed in the ways you have?
He is one of my best friends in the world. We are the same two guys who used to sit in the campus center at Fordham and tell each other about our dreams. He wanted to be the Knicks’ announcer and I wanted to be the Yankees’ announcer. The fact that we were privy to each other’s dreams and know how starry-eyed we were makes it sweeter to enjoy each other’s success.

You’ve been a mentor to Ryan Ruocco, FCRH ’08, and many other young announcers. What do you enjoy most about your role as a mentor?
I just like to provide whatever help I can give to a young person. I never really had that entrée into the business when I got out of college, so if I can provide a little help or lift to someone, that would be awesome and would maybe provide a couple of more speakers who have kind words at my funeral.

How did you develop your style as an announcer? Did that come out of those who taught or mentored you?
I think it happened organically and was a combination of those I listened to growing up, those I spoke with along the way, and those I worked with. You end up becoming an amalgamation of hopefully the best of the people you came across in your life.

What’s the most memorable game you’ve ever called?
Probably Game 1 of the 1998 World Series, when the Yankees scored seven runs in the seventh inning against the Padres at Yankee Stadium. After the grand slam by Tino Martinez, the stadium was literally shaking and I just leaned back and took it all in. It was pretty special.

Recalls Schultz: “He brought Bob in and said, ‘This is Bob Ahrens. This is the man who’s going to take this department to the next level.’ It didn’t take too long before we realized that Bob was bringing our standards to a level that they had never been at.”

A High Standard for Success

Indeed, over the next two decades, Ahrens ran a sports department that’s been widely praised for training future broadcasters in a professional environment.

He insisted that the staff operate to pro standards, he says, not only because it’s good training but also because WFUV reporters are credentialed to cover the local pro teams alongside the rest of the city’s sports media. That mindset has paid off: During Ahrens’s tenure, WFUV produced the likes of ESPN host Tony Reali, FCRH ’00; CBS Sports’ Spero Dedes, FCRH ’01; and Ryan Ruocco, FCRH ’08, of ESPN and the YES Network, continuing Fordham’s long tradition of launching the careers of sports broadcasters.

In 2014, the station paid tribute to Ahrens by establishing the Bob Ahrens Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism. The award is given annually to a member of the WFUV sports staff who has excelled on and off the air and demonstrated strong leadership ability.

Ahrens retired earlier this year as the station’s executive sports producer, and now, as WFUV transitions to its next chapter, he is passing the torch to a familiar face: Schultz.

A Return to Rose Hill

Schultz says when he first heard about the opening at WFUV, he didn’t imagine himself as a candidate. “The first thing that popped into my head was, ‘They have to do it right, because he’s built such a legacy here that has to be protected and built upon.’”

But as he began to think about what he believed the ideal candidate would look like—an on-air background, teaching experience, and a connection to WFUV—he realized he had all three. His broadcasting career included stints with Army athletics, two minor-league baseball teams, and an ESPN Radio affiliate, and he’d taught at Marist College and the Connecticut School of Broadcasting.

He threw his hat into the ring and got the job, and since this summer he’s been working with Ahrens, who’s staying on through the end of the year as a consultant, to ensure a smooth transition.

“It’s always gratifying to see one of your former students get the job,” Ahrens says. “Rick was basically in my first group. It’s sort of like bookends.”

Schultz says that working with Ahrens has been helpful in ways both big and small, from learning how the station operations have changed since his own Fordham days to quickly tracking down a phone number he may need.

“It’s very important to me for the students to understand that I was in their position 20 years ago, and I know what it’s like to be sitting there and have someone new come in,” Schultz says.

“My message to the students over the past few months has been, ‘The great thing about WFUV is that this is your station.’” In other words, he’s there to help guide the students, not drastically change things. “I think when something’s working, you try as best as you can not to mess it up,” he says.

But Schultz says he’s also learning how to develop his own style and priorities. He says there’s room for growth in social media and video, and that he’d like to collaborate more with the news side of WFUV.

A “Perfect Fit” to Carry on the Tradition

Mike Breen, FCRH ‘83, the play-by-play announcer for the New York Knicks on MSG as well as the NBA on ESPN, says that Ahrens has been a “magnificent” mentor to members of the FUV sports department.

“He’s as dedicated to his job and to the students that he helped as anybody I’ve ever seen,” Breen says. “And because Rick came up through the system, and knows what the system’s about, it seems like the perfect fit for him to follow in Bob’s footsteps.”

More than 20 years ago, Schultz followed in Breen’s footsteps. As a high school student, he reached out to Breen to discuss the broadcasting business, and Breen told him about his experiences at WFUV and about Fordham’s strong tradition. Schultz says Fordham was the only school he applied to, and now, as he returns to Rose Hill, he’s reflecting on the icons who came before him at the station.

“It’s still kind of surreal for me to be sitting in this office looking at the portrait of Marty Glickman on the wall and the Bob Ahrens Award on the other side of the wall, and to be sitting here taking that next chapter of WFUV Sports,” he says. “It’s still something that really strikes you every day.”

—Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06

In the end, the Dodgers walked away with the win, Koufax with his place in baseball’s Hall of Fame, and the commentator, Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, with the hearts of sports fans everywhere.

Scully hit a home run of his own in May, when he delivered the commencement address to the University’s Class of 2000. With the grace of a natural storyteller, Scully seamlessly blended anecdotes and advice, all in the honeyed voice that is so familiar.

“I am one of you,” he told the graduates. “I walked the halls you walked. I sat in the same classrooms. I took the same notes and sweated out the final exams; drank coffee in the café and played sports on your grassy fields.”

Scully said that the words he associates with Fordham are home, love, and hope. Fordham was home to him while he was a student at Fordham Prep and the University. He made lifelong friends there and loved every minute. And it was at Fordham that he began to pursue his hopes and dreams.

“Leave some pauses and some gaps in your life so that you can do something spontaneously rather than just being led by the arm,” he said. “And, above all, dream. Don’t ever stop dreaming. Dream for yourselves and dream for us because out of your dreams will come hope that we will have a better world and a better moral climate.”

Vincent Edward Scully’s story began in the Bronx, where he was born to a hardworking couple from County Cavan, Ireland. The Scullys sometimes walked young Vin in his baby carriage across Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.

“My mother once told me that she would say, ‘Vincent, I dream that someday you’ll study here,’” Scully has said. The dream was prophetic: In the 1940s, Vin won a partial scholarship to Fordham, where he majored in communications.

Outside the classroom, Scully wrote a sports column for The Ram student newspaper, was a stringer for The New York Times, and was a member of the Shaving Mugs, a campus barbershop quartet. He announced football, basketball, and baseball games on Fordham’s WFUV. A weak-hitting outfielder on Fordham’s baseball team, Scully managed to hit one home run during his college career. But the moment was marred somewhat when the Bronx Home News ran a photo of him in his moment of glory above a caption that identified him as “Jim Tully.”

Still, despite other interests, the young man had his heart set on broadcasting. Scully told the graduates that as a boy he would crawl beneath his family’s four-legged radio console during broadcasts of sporting events so that he could hear the roar of the crowd “wash over me.” Appropriate for the boy who would become the Voice of the Dodgers and, for many, of baseball itself: In the past 51 years, Scully has called Hank Aaron’s record-breaking 715th home run, three perfect games, 18 no-hitters, 25 World Series, and 12 All-Star games.

Scully graduated from Fordham in 1949 and spent that summer at a CBS radio affiliate in Washington, D.C. At 23, he returned to New York to talk to the network. Later that week, his mother came to him with wonderful news.

“She was flustered and excited,” Scully recalls. “‘You’ll never guess who called!’ she said. I said, ‘Who?’ She replied, ‘Red Skelton!’”

Actually, it was Red Barber, the network’s legendary chief sportscaster. Barber said CBS radio’s college football announcer was ill, and the station needed Scully to cover a game that Saturday between Boston University and the University of Maryland. Less than a year later, Scully landed a job on the Brooklyn Dodgers’ broadcasting team.

Scully also became a CBS and NBC announcer for baseball, football, and golf, and one of the most accomplished broadcasters in sports history. Inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, he has won myriad sportscasting awards, hosted his own TV show, and played himself in films, commercials, and even on Sony PlayStation’s MLB 2000 baseball video game. Last season, he served as the emcee at Major League Baseball’s All-Century Team induction ceremony during the World Series.

But Scully admits that in 1950, he still had a lot to learn, despite being hired by the Dodgers for $5,000 a year. “Red taught me two important lessons that I still carry to this day: Trust your instincts and allow the crowd to help you tell the story,” Scully says.

Scully has long been known as much for his thoughtfulness, modesty, and gentlemanly demeanor as for his ability to paint word pictures for his audience.

New York Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, says he was impressed with Scully’s graciousness when they met in the New York Mets press box. “He’s blazed a path for a lot of Fordham student broadcasters who are now in the business,” Kay says. In fact, Scully can be considered the dean of a Fordham tradition in sports broadcasting that includes Ed Randall, FCRH ’74; WPIX sports anchor Sal Marchiano, FCRH ’63; Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, the Voice of the Knicks; and Nets and Giants play-by-play announcer Bob Papa, GABELLI ’86.

Scully’s masterful delivery combines dugoutese and diamond pathos with a touch of poetry. He paraphrases Admiral Perry’s immortal words after a poor Dodger performance: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” He describes bases loaded, no puts for the opposing team with the word, “The Dodgers have the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.”

“He’s simply the best announcer in baseball history,” contends ESPN and San Francisco Giants announcer Jon Miller. “In high school, I once picked up a Dodger doubleheader on the radio while I was driving 10 straight hours to visit my grandmother in Oregon. Vin kept me interested the whole way. It’s more [than the fact that]  he knows the game and does his homework; he has an innate sense of when and how to use information.”

Today, Scully, 72, says he believes that sports announcing was his destiny. The “Velvet Voice” has logged millions of miles traveling from ballpark to ballpark, and countless hours of broadcast time, but he has no plans to retire.

“I love what I’m doing, and I’ll continue to do it as long as I’m healthy,” he says. “I still get goosebumps when there’s a big play.”

—Bill Glovin