What lawyers can learn from Vin Scully

Spring officially began on March 21, but for many in California it really starts Friday, when the Los Angeles Dodgers play their home opener against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium. (The Giants' home opener is April 8 against the Arizona Diamondbacks.)

For many Angelenos, the sight of their beloved boys-in-blue, sprinting on a sparkling diamond under a brilliant sky, is the sure and sweet sign that seasons change, even in perpetually sunny and warm Southern California. This 2014 campaign marks Vin Scully's 65th year as a Dodger broadcaster. For literally generations of baseball fans in Southern California and around the world, Scully's rich tenor voice and lyric descriptions have provided the poetry of sprintime, the soundtrack of summer.

When Vin Scully first took his seat in the Dodger broadcast booth and invited fans to pull up a chair, the Dodgers played in Brooklyn, major league baseball was newly intergrated, Hawaii and Alaska were not yet members of the Union, Earl Warren was still the governor of California, Brown v. Board of Education was nearly half a decade away, and current Chief Justice John Roberts was not even born. And it goes without saying that email, the Internet, ediscovery, and the era of global law firms lay far off in a future that was inconceivable on that afternoon in the spring of 1950. But despite all of the changes in the game, in the nation, and in the legal profession, Scully's unparallelled excellence endures.

Can lawyers learn anything from Vin Scully? I think they can. In fact, while an icon like Scully can offer lessons to those in almost any profession, lawyers in particular can benefit from three key lessons that Scully's career illustrates.

First, words matter. Lawyers, like broadcasters, make their living with words. Like broadcasters, litigators ultimately are storytellers. No one in the history of broadcasting has equalled Scully's ability to tell a story, paint a verbal picture, or turn a phrase. Indeed, Scully's call of the final inning of Sandy Koufax's 1965 perfect game is often studied as an example of fine writing and it is full of unforgetably evocative descriptions. Observing Koufax walking alone behind the pitcher's mound, standing solitary in the middle of the diamond, Scully described the mound that night as the "loneliest place in the world." Conveying the mounting tension of the crowd, he noted that "there's 29,000 people in the park and a million butterflies." Scully's comment after Kirk Gibson's miraculous pinch hit home run in the 1988 World Series was similarly concise and classic: "In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

And while these Scully descriptions are rightly celebrated, his broadcasts regularly are decorated with less remembered but no less remarkable gems. Once after the Dodgers announced a left handed pinch hitter, the opposing manager brought in a left handed pitcher from the bullpen, only to have the Dodgers respond by substituting another pinch hitter who batted right handed, removing the left-handed player before his at bat. Scully's comment: "They also serve who only stand and wait." Last season, describing the sunset streaked clouds in the sky at game time, Scully observed: "It looks like a child took a painbrush, dipped it in red, and scraped it across the sky." And, when an opposing player was out with a bruised knee and was listed as "day-to-day," Scully simply noted: "Aren't we all?"

The ability to spin such glorious verbal gossamer on the spur of the moment reflects Vin Scully's obvious love of language. He loves words, plays with them, treasures them. Any careful listener to Scully frequently will hear the explicit invoking and implicit evoking of a wide range of literature and poetry, everything from Milton to "The Music Man," from Scripture to Shakespeare. We lawyers should love words too, and we likewise should allow our writing to be shaped by those who have used words best. Without those roots and those wings, our prose becomes too plain and workmanlike, too literal and unimaginative, too dry and bogged down by formula and legalese, too much - as Scully himself once described statistics - something that is used for support and not for illumination.

Our writing should sing. Any good song requires pacing and pauses, and Vin Scully also knows the value of silence. After Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run record, Scully said nothing for almost a full two minutes, simply letting the crowd roar. We lawyers also need to learn when to be quiet, when we should leave things unsaid, when silence is our most eloquent tool.

Second, honesty and objectivity matter. Scully is famous for not being a homer. In fact, he does not even describe himself as a Dodger fan. Rather, he sees his role as honestly and accurately describing what happens in the game. He regularly will say that the Dodgers have not been playng well, that a hitter is having a tough year, that a star's statistics are in decline. For Scully, there is no sugar-coating the reality of what happens on the field. Scully's honesty has earned him the trust and respect of generations of fans.

Indeed, in 1998, a Los Angeles Times article described Scully as "the most trusted man in Los Angeles." At the same time, though, Scully's criticism always focuses on the players as players. His treatment of the players as people, by contrast, is always sympathetic and contextual, even as his description of their play on the field is unflinching. While lawyers represent clients and are not neutral reporters, we nevertheless ignore our profession's obligations and impoverish its purposes when we reduce being a lawyer to being a "homer" for our clients and allow our advocacy to degenerate into mere "spinning." We too have an obligation toward the facts. We too can present those facts fairly and compellingly without allowing that presentation to degenerate into personal hostility or ad hominem attacks.

Third, being the voice for something or someone matters. Vin Scully's long career reminds us that that being "the voice of" a person or group is noble and ennobling. We live in the age of the celebrity lawyer and a relentless focus on the business of law. It seems that we lawyers sometimes forget that cases and transactions ultimately are about our clients and not about ourselves. With Scully, it is never about Vin Scully himself. Rather, it is always about the players, the team, and the game. And yet, paradoxically, the steadfastness and excellence with which he has been the voice of the Dodgers has led Scully to become revered and widely beloved, much more so than many other local and national broadcasters who came, and went, with greater flash and ego. Even in this age where lawyers are urged to think of themselves as their own legal brand, it seems that relentless self-promotion is not the only path to success.

In sum, words matter and we should treasure them. Facts matter and we must be faithful to them. Speaking on other's behalf matters and ultimately is the reason our profession exists. By emodying these three important truths, Vin Scully's career offers valuable and timeless lessons for lawyers. So, if you are one of the thousands of lawyers who will be at Dodger Stadium today - or will have an eye on the television or an ear to the radio - taking a moment to reflect on Vin Scully's career can transform an afternoon of playing hooky into a productive meditation on what it means to be a true professional.