In the time since the April 2024 release of my book “Perfect Eloquence: An Appreciation of Vin Scully,” I get a recurring question from readers. It’s usually asked with trepidation, admittedly, since it might feel sacrilegious to even bring it up: Could the late beloved Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster be worthy of canonization?
St. Vinny?
Scully’s peers might call him the patron saint of sports broadcasting. But for heaven’s sake, what could be more out-of-left-field than the notion of a “sports guy” being raised to the altars?
In large part, this book was inspired by writing the Angelus cover story in August of 2022 that celebrated Scully’s Catholic life in the days following his passing. Angelus Editor-in-Chief Pablo Kay has one of the 67 essays in the compilation. It is based on interactions with Scully that led to takeaways that spoke to his love of family and his faith — and how those spread to kindness, humility, and compassion. His actions behind the scenes often left a deeper mark than his Hall of Fame-winning words.
After Scully’s 2022 funeral Mass at St. Jude the Apostle Church in Westlake Village, Ned Colletti, the onetime Dodgers general manager who also has an essay in the book, summed it up on a social media post: “Vin Scully — He showed us every day what true goodness looks like.”
During a recent two-week vacation through Italy, including visits to the Vatican in Rome, I was reminded by the 10,000 saints in the Catholic roll call of the difference one person’s faith can make. The opportunity to sit in prayer at the modest tomb of St. Francis of Assisi can get one thinking deeper about holiness, godliness, and blessedness.
On the 12-hour flight from Rome back to Los Angeles, I flipped open the plane’s video monitor menu and was moved to again watch the 2014 film “St. Vincent” available to watch. I decided to do so, figuring that my pilgrimage wasn’t quite over.
Bill Murray plays Vince MacKenna, a “misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic war veteran who lives next door” (according to IMDB) to a young boy with a single mom. They just moved in trying to get back on their feet. The boy has a class assignment in his new Catholic school: write an essay about someone in their lives who they consider saintly.
While the boy, Oliver, acknowledges all of MacKenna’s vices, he makes a virtuous case for Murray’s compassion and empathy toward others. Oliver declares him “St. Vincent of Sheepshead Bay” in Brooklyn. (Interesting fact: filmmaker Theodore Melfi said his “St. Vincent” script was inspired by his own experience when his adopted niece attended Catholic school in Van Nuys and got the “find a Catholic saint that inspires you” assignment).
In his homily at the canonization Mass of Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis in Rome last month, Pope Leo XIV said that both “used their gifts to bring others to God through their example, words, and actions.”
Based on the testimonies in “Perfect Eloquence,” those words could aptly describe Scully’s character.
It was one thing to hear the Fordham grad melodically describe a well-turned double play or an outfielder’s long throw to home plate. It was another to be in the same space with him at Dodger Stadium for a Sunday morning Catholic Mass, hours before a game, as he was the assigned lector proclaiming the readings before the Gospel. I could hear his devotion to his faith in his cadence and reverence. The same comes through when we can now all hear his recorded audio rendition of the rosary.
Sports writer Ray Ratto once said of Scully: “He was the poet laureate we, even those who hate poetry, all needed but maybe didn’t earn. He was God’s own larynx.”
According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, saints are those in heaven “officially canonized or not, who lived heroically virtuous lives, offered their life for others, or were martyred for the faith, and who are worthy of imitation.” Candidates first become “venerable,” recognized by the pope as “having lived a heroically virtuous life.”
Reading that, I couldn’t help but wonder: Would Scully’s cause have a better chance with someone like Pope Leo XIV, a devoted Chicago White Sox fan who likely heard Scully call games during his national broadcasting network days?
Not to get ahead of ourselves or anything …
Crafty people on Etsy.com have been creating their own Scully tribute prayer candles since his passing. They will likely come out again on ofrendas during the Dia de Muertos celebrations in early November — days which, in recent years, have coincided with the Dodgers’ latest efforts to lock up another World Series title.
In a review of “Perfect Eloquence” in the National Catholic Reporter, John W. Miller noted that “it’s no accident that the greatest practitioner of one of America’s most treasured secular liturgies was a faithful Catholic … with the same cadence and seriousness as a pastor greeting parishioners with ‘The Lord be with you,’ Scully welcomed listeners with, ‘It’s time for Dodger baseball.’… In ‘Perfect Eloquence,’ Scully’s friends tell stories of virtue and good habits befitting a saint.”
That is a point I’d encourage readers to at least consider.
I vividly remember in 2016 when Scully was invited to the White House as one of the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. To no surprise, he seemed genuinely embarrassed for all the fuss.
“I’m deadly serious — when I’ve been given a gift of 67 years of broadcasting, and then have to take a bow, I can’t think it’s something that I actually did,” Sully said. “It’s very nice and I deeply appreciate it, but. ... It’s not like I invented penicillin. I can’t stand in a spotlight as if I just saved a child from drowning. What do I have to do with a presidential award?”
The intent is far from trying to embarrass the Scully legacy, or his family, with any interpretation that this is treading on holier-than-thou terrain. This is more about trying to honor a feeling, somewhat difficult to explain, on the impact he has made on me and many others.
Still, against all odds, if Leo or one of his successors someday finds it appropriate to recognize Scully as someone who belongs to be a member of that heroically virtuous ballpark, we’d be thankful and take it as a win-Vin situation.
