[symple_heading style=”” title=” By Hans Laetz | City News Service” type=”h3″ font_size=”” text_align=”left” margin_top=”30″ margin_bottom=”30″ color=”undefined” icon_left=”” icon_right=””]
Vin Scullytook a cue from a producer at 1:05 p.m. Sunday and for the last time said the line that millions of Californians could recite by heart:
“It’s ti-i-i-ime for Dodger Baseball, live from Dodger Stadium. Sportsnet L.A. presents the Dodgers, as they take on th Colorado Rockies.
“Hi everybody, and a very pleasant Sunday to you, wherever you may be. We’re at Dodger Stadium for the final home game of the regular season.”
And with the humility and grace that has been Vin Scully’s trademark over 67 seasons, he did the entire opening segment of today’s potential division-clinching game game without once mentioning it would be his last home appearance.
But from the start of the game, Scully was saluted by players — who all tipped their hats towards the booth from the box at home — and the fans — who carried hundreds of signs and thousands of pictures of him.
Early in the game, the camera captured one child holding a sign that said “thanks, Mr. Scully, for a lifetime of memories.”
“Oh bless your heart,” Scully said. “You folks have given me a ton of memories I will treasure on this so-called job.
“I have never worked in my life.”
The broadcast returned from one commercial break with Sportsnet LA showing a picture of Scully’s predecessor at the Dodgers’ mic, the legendary Red Barber, in a New York radio studio with one Babe Ruth, a one-time Dodgers coach.
And he told a story about it.
Scully recalled learning how to call a game from the legendary Barber.
“I remember, Red saying to me, ‘I don’t want you to listen to me,’ but I was listening (to him),” Scully recalled of the experience six decades ago in Brooklyn.
“And all of a sudden my friends said, ‘you know, you’re dropping your Gs, and I said ‘what do you mean?’ And they said ‘you are starting to talk Southern.”‘
Scully recalled being a kid, and being given a free Yankees ticket by the Police Athletic League in the stands at the Polo Grounds. He remembered running with other kids to a commotion in the upper deck in right field.
“And like very other kid I ran over to the commotion. Arenado fouls it back, two and one.
“And there in the middle, and just the way you would picture him, polo coat and cap, there was Babe Ruth — not signing autographs.
“Two-two pitch, very high to Arendao, three and two.
“What he was doing was, he said ‘no no no singatures,’ and he handed out business cards, and on the business card there was his autograph.
“I got one,” Scully related.
“And I lost it.”