Friday 31 August 2012

A Living Institution

Vin Scully is not a legendary base ball broadcaster, he is the legend of baseball broadcasting itself. If you want to know what it sounded like to hear the Don Larsen perfect game call in the 1956 World Series, one of the voices that broadcasted that game was Vin Scully's. If you want to hear one of the smoothest, most information packed modern broadcasts, listen to a Dodger home game, called by Vin Scully and only Vin Scully.

Now, I could probably point out that Vin has been baseball's great constant voice, and that he has been a Dodger employee longer than they have been the Los Angeles Dodgers. That, all by itself, is magical. Like Vin Scully, and his legacy, there's still more magic to come. Vin Scully remains happily unretired.

Vin is hardly phoning it in, either. In this season alone, he came up with a more descriptive term for the outfield shift, he learned about twitter, still thinks fast enough on his feet to lip read and edit a manager's profanity on the fly. He took a picture with Giancarlo Stanton. The young Mr. Stanton noted that meeting Vin was on his 'bucket list'. Are you an item on someone's bucket list? I didn't think so.

The baseball gods, (who control all that is uncertain in the game I love), can be fickle, but one would assume that they are pleased with having Mr. Scully as their standard bearer. Since he is not a player, the baseball gods cannot offer up a spectacular catch, or a walkoff win to Mr. Scully. They have given him the chance to call some of the greatest moments in the game. Perhaps not knowing what to get Vin this year, the baseball gods got him a bobblehead.



Now, that's really nice, but these aren't the baseball grandmas or baseball cousins working the magic here. Anybody can get a bobblehead made, but only the baseball gods can work the magic as you are coming down on the field to get the bobblehead.

From twitter:



And from the Dodgers Instagram account.

Yes, everything went exactly as well as you would expect for Vin Scully in Dodger Stadium. Plus a rainbow.




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