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In the March issue of Golf Digest, Dodgers broadcaster (and former CBS golf announcer) Vin Scully talks about his love of the game and of just being out on the course. "The crack of the bat in baseball is a gorgeous sound," he tells Guy Yocom. "But you don’t quite get the full effect unless you’re very close to the field, because the roar of the crowd often gets to you before the crack of the bat does. In golf, there is all that delicious silence, so the sound of a top pro hitting the ball is so pure. The feeling the pro gets—that sweet sensation that goes through the hands, up the arms and into the heart—the sound gives the fans a taste of that."
Scully shares some favorite experiences on the course at Bel-Air Country Club with the late columnist Jim Murray and others, such as Sandy Koufax. He also shares some of his fears about retirement and why he's coming back next month for his 63rd season with the Dodgers at age 84.
Some people die twice: once when they retire, and again when they actually pass away. Fear of the first one is a big incentive for me to keep working. Players, writers, people who work at the ballpark and front office, when I quit I know I’ll never see them again. I’ve never been the type to come to the ballpark and hang out; I’ve gone to one game in the last 60 years that I wasn’t working. I keep working because I don’t want to lose my friends.
Scully also reveals he's a reader: when he moved from Pacific Palisades to Hidden Hills in the Valley, he donated close to 400 books to the library. "For a realistic view of baseball at the major league level, get 'Three Nights in August' by Buzz Bissinger," he says. And this quip about having bad teeth through the years: "if I were to write my autobiography—which I will never do, by the way—I would title it, 'My Life in Dentistry.'"