loved Scully’s voice and he was determined to learn the language, so he began listening to him narrate Dodgers games, enrolling in nightly nine-inning lessons with a velvet-voiced instructor.

“I actually asked my father, ‘What word did you learn?’ ” Fabiola said. “The word he learned? Ambidextrous!”

As used by Scully, ambidextrous became a baseball term to describe switch-hitters who could bat right- or left-handed.

Scully would then always add explanations that made sense to Salvador and those broadcasts became his “gateway to ‘American culture,’ where he could have a conversation with other fans about baseball and feel included,” said Fabiola, an ethnic studies and women’s studies teacher at Glendale Community College.

But being an English-speaking baseball fan didn’t shield Salvador from harassment and discrimination when he returned from fighting in the Vietnam War, a torment that has stayed with him.

So when Salvador, his earphones draped over his shoulders, met Scully years later, the famous broadcaster didn’t just smile for a picture. He hugged Salvador. And he paid him the tribute he was due.

“He said, ‘Thank you for your service,’ ” Fabiola recalled. “And then he said, ‘I know you didn’t get the respect you deserve.’ That’s why, if you look closely at that picture, he’s holding back tears.”

There are a million such Scully stories and countless listeners for whom his exquisite broadcasts became a template for learning English.

Novelist Susan Straight’s 87-year-old mother, Gabrielle Watson, started listening to Scully when he moved from Switzerland to Riverside when she was 19, studying and imitating his pattern of speech so well that soon no one could tell she hadn’t grown up in the United States.

Watson’s favorite story to tell: The one about the time her daughter covered a game at Dodger Stadium, met Scully and told him her mother loved him.

And then there’s Armando Delgado, who moved to East L.A. from Mexico in 1987 when he was 7 or 8. He credits Scully for his English education too.

Because his parents worked evenings, for years he spent that time in the tiny bedroom of his grandfather, Abelardo Delgado, watching and listening to Dodgers baseball.

“If you want me to watch you, you’re gonna watch Dodger games,” Abelardo told his grandson. “And you have to sit and listen, because that’s how I watch the game.”

Young Armando had only one complaint: Abelardo listened to Jaime Jarrín’s Spanish call on the radio, but he preferred Scully on the telecast. He and his grandfather would gradually increase the volume on their respective devices until neither could make out anything being said.

Eventually, they agreed to keep the volume on both devices at a moderate level, and so Armando grew up watching games — including Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit game-ending home run in the 1988 World Series — while listening to them called in both Spanish and English.

“I think that’s the beauty of the Dodgers,” Armando said. “Not just the way they embrace different cultures, with Jackie Robinson and going on to Fernandomania, but the voices they gave us. They gave us such beautiful voices, both in English and Spanish.”

And beautiful memories of “heavenly” evenings spent which his grandfather, acutely resonant Tuesday as Armando thought of Scully and Abelardo, who died Jan. 8.

Bryan Quintas spent Tuesday night thinking of his dad, Silvio, who’d immigrated from Argentina when he was 8 or 9, learned to speak English and love baseball — even more than soccer! — listening to Scully.

Silvio died when Bryan was in college, so news of Scully’s death Tuesday hit him doubly hard: “Vin is just so connected to my dad.”

Silvio became a school teacher and modeled baseball fandom for Bryan, who also fell deeply in love with the game, studying baseball almanacs, collecting thousands of baseball cards and spending hours in front of the mirror, mimicking the batting stances that Scully was describing so precisely.

He could do Gary Sheffield, Dave Roberts, and Bryan’s favorite, Shawn Green: “Left-handed stance, right foot slightly flared out, hands held high on his pine-tar stained bat...”

As much as Bryan loved those descriptions, he also recognized the respectful way Scully worked, refusing to Anglicize Roberto Clemente’s name as other broadcasters did when they called him Bob, and referring to Wilver Stargell by his preferred actual name.

“He had such a sense of respect for people when he didn’t have to,” Bryan said. “It wasn’t a mandate, there was no social media — and even when social media came alive during the end of his career ... he never made a mistake that would even consider anybody to think any less of him.”

That genuine decorum also always resonated with Jared Ravich. The senior software engineer for Major League Baseball began his career helping freshen up game notes for Scully. As a Dodger-rooting kid living on the East Coast, Ravich used to listen to Scully late at night via Armed Forces Radio on a tiny transistor radio.

“Anyone who’s lived in L.A. knows when you walk into a room as a total nobody and it’s full of people who are well known, your expectation is never, ‘Wow, everyone here is going to be really, really nice to me,’ ” Ravich said. “But from Day 1 in that press box, there were so many extraordinary people there who were super nice to me. And I think that’s why it’s the Vin Scully Press Box. Not because he was so great at his job — which, obviously, he was — but because that culture came from him.”

From him to everyone tuned in.

“You could just tell the genuine love he had for humanity and for the fans,” Armando Delgado said. “That’s one of the things that sticks with me, how much he loved us fans. I remember being able to get that concept at an early age and it made me want to love him back. I was born a big softie in that I believe in people, but he augmented that in me.

“He transcended baseball; he was life.”