For many baseball fans, meeting Vin Scully is a lifelong dream.
Ray Charles once begged Bob Costas to introduce him to the voice of the Dodgers. Celebrated actor Bryan Cranston was downright giddy recently when he got to spend some time with Dodgers' legendary announcer. In a story in the Hollywood Reporter, Scott Feinberg likened hanging out with Scully to meeting the Wizard of Oz.
Scully's lore isn't lost on Washington Nationals pitcher Drew Storen, who went out of his way to meet Scully during the Nationals' trip to Los Angeles. Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post reports that Storen, whose father was a radio and television broadcaster in Indianapolis, scoured eBay for a 1957 radio microphone that he could get signed by Scully at Dodger Stadium. The antique resembled one he saw Scully using in an old photo.
Before Tuesday's tilt between the Nationals and the Dodgers, Nationals broadcaster F.P. Santangelo arranged a meeting between Storen and his idol.
“I was just trying not to talk, because I wanted to listen to him tell stories,” Storen said. “He just blows me away every night. I told him he teaches me stuff about guys on the team that I don’t even know. He just tells stories. He’s like the emcee of the game. When he says your name, it means you’ve made it.”
Storen, who says Scully's voice is "beyond soothing," has an interesting tie to the 86-year-old. On Aug. 6, 2010, Scully called the first save of Storen's career.
