Tonally, he's a tenor. Spiritually, he's Frank Sinatra.
Across seven decades, Vin Scully has bewitched baseball fans with That Voice — full of swing, moxie, and sonic opulence. He uses it like a horn, to serenade an antebellum sport that is too slow by half and make musical the specter of grown men mostly standing around for three hours.
In short, the kid can really sing.
"I hear boogie-woogie," says Chris Sampson, vice dean for contemporary music at USC's Thornton School.
Indeed, two USC music professors, asked by The Times to analyze the musicality of Scully's famous purr, found that the Dodgers broadcaster brings to mind the same cadences and rhythmic hooks heard in great songs.