The Los Angeles Dodgers have gone through almost whiplash
inducing change over the past six months, from bankruptcy, to being
directed by MLB for a bit, through a new ownership group that seems
to have more money than most moderate-sized countries. For a time
the Dodgers seemed more like a soap opera — “As the McCourts Turn”
— than a major league franchise.
These new guys, including basketball charmer Magic Johnson, have
shown no reluctance to spend that money, this month
picking up high-ticket players Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford,
and Josh Beckett from the Red Sox. The team had already acquired
Hanley Ramirez from the Marlins and Shane Victorino and Joe Blanton
from the Phillies. They seem to be intent on making the New York
Yankees look like small market pikers.
For all the new names and faces in Dodger blue, many Angelinos
are most pleased about a returning Dodger who has been with the
team forever (or nearly so). Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers
and one of baseball’s troubadours, announced this week that he’ll
return to the broadcast booth for 2013.
The soothing tones of the Old Red Head will, God willing, soften
Los Angeles nights for at least another summer. This is good news
because Scully has been turning baseball games into poetry for more
than half a century. If you don’t like baseball after hearing Vin
describe a game, you never will.
When Scully first broadcast Dodger games in 1950, partnered with
Red Barber, Dodger players were not millionaires named Adrian,
Josh, Shane, Andre, and Matt. They were more modestly compensated
guys with names like Oisk, Newk, Peewee, Jackie, and Duke. They
played in a small band-box of a park called Ebbets Field in a
small, tightly-populated place called Brooklyn. Most of them rode
public transportation to work.
The Dodgers are putting up a spirited race for the NL West crown
with their new hired help. And their prospects for next year are
good. These happy Dodger prospects influenced Scully to sign up for
yet another year.
“They want to win and they want to win now, so I want to hold on
with two hands and see how far they’re going to take this ball
club,” Scully said. “Put it all together — the little boy in me,
the opportunity to see how far these owners take it — it would be
pretty hard to walk away from.”
Scully says he still loves the game and would miss his friends
at the ballpark if he retired. And he would miss those dramatic
moments of the game, some of which baseball fans associate with
Scully’s call of them: Kirk Gibson’s dramatic pinch-hit, walk-off
home run ending the first game of the 1988 World Series (“In a year
that has been so improbable, the incredible has happened”), and
Hank Aaron’s record-setting 715th home run off of Dodger lefty Al
Downing. He broadcast no less than four no-hitters by Sandy Koufax,
including a perfect game in 1965.
The moments keep coming, which helps keep Scully energized. New
Dodger Gonzalez homered in his first at bat as a Dodger last
Saturday. In a media conference Sunday when Scully confirmed that
he was re-enlisting yet again (he doesn’t have enough sleeve now
for all his hash marks), he spoke of this event thus: “Every now
and then there’s something like last night that you just can’t
possibly think of.”
So after 64 seasons and more than ten thousand games, baseball
still moves the man who many, including me, consider the best
baseball announcer ever. Vin ended his media conference with a
Scullyism.
“I have to go to work now,” he said apologetically. “I have to
go over my carefully prepared ad-libs.” So the Dodgers
institutional memory is still on the job. And baseball fans lucky
enough to be within the sound of Scully’s voice have a connection
to the past, and can enjoy Scully’s soothing, jargon-free,
un-hyped, erudite but accessible narratives on baseball nights.
Alone among sportscasters, Scully works alone. So there’s no beefy
“color-guy” in the booth with Scully, prattling on as if he’s more
afraid of a few seconds of dead air than of a hard-hit foul ball
heading for the broadcast booth.
Almost invariably Scully starts with, “Hi again, everybody, and
a very pleasant good evening to you, wherever you may be.” Then the
magic begins. Scully and his work truly are to be celebrated.
