Over the course of his 67 years in the broadcaster's booth, Vin Scully's concise, poetic style has become as iconic, as indicative of the Dodgers as their blue and white caps.
Scully began calling Dodger games in the early 1950s, back when the team was still in Brooklyn and their name (for Trolley Dodgers) made sense. In 1953, at the age of 25, he became the youngest person to ever call a World Series; two years later, he called the Fall Classic again, as the Dodgers won their only championship in Brooklyn. When the team packed up and headed west in 1958, Scully came with.
The Dodgers met with quick and easy success under the sun. Sandy Koufax ruled the mound, a new stadium was built (shadily), and championships were won in 1959, 1963, and 1965. Scully was there for it all. His call of the ninth inning of Koufax's only perfect game is held up as arguably the single greatest bit of sports broadcasting in the history of the medium.
Scully, a transplant, ingratiated himself with Angelenos. Players, managers, and owners have come and gone, but through it all, he's been there. A 1964 Sports Illustrated profile states that his "voice is better known to most Los Angelenos than their next-door neighbor's is," that "millions of southern Californians have Vin Scully with their supper."
He is a titan, a walking civic landmark on par with the Hollywood Sign and LA's scattered, smoggy skyline. As apple pie is to America, Scully is to Los Angeles. He put it best himself, in a piece for Los Angeles magazine:
The first few years I was here, the Mets were not in existence. It's 1958, '59, '60, '61, and we'd go to Philadelphia, and I would take the train to New York to visit family and friends. They would say, How do you like it? I would say, It's really nice, and they would say, It's got smog and earthquakes and so on. The first few times I would argue and say, No, it's not that bad. By the fourth year they would start up and I'd say, You're right, and tell your friends to stay right here. And that's when I knew I was an Angeleno. As God is my judge.
Go Dodgers. —Ian Grant
· Maps to the Stars [Curbed LA]
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