Sometimes it’s good to recognize the people God gives us as gifts. Men and women who bless us by living lives of excellence. Vin Scully, voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team for 67(!) years was such a man. Vin passed away recently at age 94, having retired just a few years ago at age 88. Here are a few snippets from Jason Gay’s tribute, published in the Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2022.

There was nothing like Vin Scully, and never will be again. Better than the ballgame itself. Scully…was not just a defining broadcaster, not just the narrator of a franchise’s seismic journey from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, not just the melody of a baseball era, but eras. 

He called Hank Aaron’s 715th (“There’s a high drive to deep left center field…”) He called Kirk Gibson (“And look who’s coming up…”) He called Bill Buckner (“Little roller up along first…”) He called Don Larsen’s perfect game (“Got him! The greatest game ever pitched!”) and Sandy Koufax’s as well (“2-2 to Harvey Kuenn, one strike away…”)

He also called doubleheaders and snoozers and blowouts all the spaces in between that make a baseball season such an epic. Scully at the microphone was an event unto itself, so much so he called many games by himself. He had a novelist’s command of language, a gift with metaphor (“He pitches as though he’s double parked,” he said of Bob Gibson) and, critically, he knew when not to speak, and let a moment breathe. (Note his wordless treatments after Gibson’s and Aaron’s iconic home runs.)

I recommend the article in its entirety.

But what struck me were these two paragraphs:

When I met him in 2016, I asked him if he felt lucky to have arrived in baseball when he did. He shook the question off like a veteran fastballer. 

“Oh, no, not lucky,” he said. “Lucky is too cheap a word. I really feel blessed. I truly believe God has given me these gifts. He gave it to me at a young age, and he’s allowed me to keep it all these years? That’s a gift. I say this because I believe it: I should spend a lot more time on my knees than I do.”

God has people everywhere doing all kinds of things to enrich our world.

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. (1 Peter 4.10, NIV)