http://www.hardballtimes.com/vin-scully-the-voice-of-our-game/

Nolan Arenado steps the plate, cueing Scully’s next revelation: that the third baseman boasts the highest rate of extra-base hits to plate appearances and the highest rate of RBIs per at-bat. “He has an RBI every five at-bats, and he’s on a tear in September. And on top of all that, he’s a terrific third baseman.” In a quick but lyrical transition, cold stats have surrendered to a warm salute. And while that salute has failed the factual accuracy of UZR, it does bear the stamp of Scully’s experience and the endorsement of his kindness. We trust he is right. Arenado really is a terrific third baseman, and the broadcaster’s assessment shares jurisdiction with sabermetrics. Scully is no antagonist. For him, the opposing team is never the enemy and always a collection of men who merit our respect. Even now, as Arenado digs in, we know biographies will arrive on that Irish tenor to further demystify the opponents, rescuing them from the sectarian contempt that can accompany each uniform while restoring their lives to the scope of shared experience. Those guys came from somewhere, he emphasizes. They do have moms and dads.

If luck is where preparation meets opportunity, then Scully just got lucky again. One wonders: Did his biographical anecdote foretell McCutchen’s double, or did McCutchen’s double come to animate the tale? Either way and once again, Scully has mingled live action and past events into seamless description, making the episode appear engineered from available parts of the timeline. In his booth, history is always happening, and the moment is always unique, even if it isn’t entirely different from moments that came before it. Face it: He has seen a lot of doubles off the bats of thousands of sons of advice-giving dads. No single instant occurs without precedent, and none occurs without consequence, but neither is it the end of the world. Andrew McCutchen just hit a double. We look back and then we move on, and still here we are, on this occasion. His stories leave room for the moments that make the stories important, and the moments never interrupt the larger narrative of the game within the game of baseball. They fit. Each pitch and each play is one small piece of the unfolding tale, one that embraces the transistor-radio days as well as each passing instant of Twitter feeds and player updates. The narrative that pulled us in has given us the biographies that draw us closer. We know who hit that double now — we know him better than before. This is important. The story doesn’t ignore us. It includes us. We are not observers; we are participants. We played ball too, in the yard with Dad. We put our passion inside it. We were part of baseball then, and we’re part of it now. We are not alone.