Vin Scully returns to Dodgers’ booth; missed first no-hitter

Vin Scully is back in the booth Wednesday after missing two games because of bronchitis. And being Vin Scully, he was embarrassed.

Embarrassed because he blamed himself for getting sick. He was certain Arizona air conditioning had done him in. Scully said it’s been a bane to his health for years but he felt he’d learned to manage it. He would turn it on when he left his hotel room for the game, and then turn it off when he returned.

But on May 14 he returned from the Dodgers game at Chase Field, crawled into bed and noticed something unusual.

“It’s cold in here,” Scully thought. “But I was under the blankets and said, ‘What the heck.’ ”

He’s convinced it was a very unwise decision. The following day he felt some light nasal congestion. The next day his sinuses began to ache. The next brought a cough.

“It’s just a process,” he said. “And then eventually the cough dropped into bronchitis.”

His cough became so severe he could not lie down.

“There was no way to sleep,” Scully said. “I was holding my ribs. I thought they would fly out of my chest.”

Back in Los Angeles he began medication, but improvement was slow. And, yes, he was home when Josh Beckett threw his no-hitter in Philadelphia on Sunday. In his 65 years as the team broadcaster, it was the first Dodgers no-hitter he had missed.

“That’s the first one I didn’t witness,” he said.

Scully, 86, also doesn’t live in a Time Warner Cable area, though he said he saw most of the game in highlight packages.

For his career, Scully has covered three perfect games, 13 no-hitters by the Dodgers and 22 no-hitters overall.

“The only other one I missed was Tom Browning’s perfect game (against the Dodgers) in Cincinnati, and I can’t even remember why I missed that,” he said.

Scully said he turned the corner physically when he received a second round of stronger medication from his doctor, who made a house call on Memorial Day. The cough has mostly subsided, though he still has some head congestion.

“The worst is behind me,” he said. “Air conditioning. I thought AC stood for After Christ.

“It’s embarrassing. Because in my mind, it’s all because of me.”