Vin Scully in 2013 at the Grand Marshal Announcement for the 2014 Tournament of Roses Parade.
Courtesy and photo by Floatjon, via Wikimedia Commons.
Vin "Vinnie" Scully is the veteran baseball announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers and considered by many to be the greatest baseball announcer of all time. His career in broadcasting began in Washington, D.C. at AM station WTOP. In 1950, the late Red Barber and Connie Desmond selected him to broadcast Brooklyn Dodgers games. Scully came with the Dodgers when they moved to Los Angeles in 1958.
Scully won the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Outstanding Sportscaster Award four times, the Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award, the "Ronald Reagan Media Award," a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star, the California Sportscaster of the Year (21 times), and, in 1982, induction into the broadcast wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
Scully's final home broadcast was on September 25, 2016 against the Colorado Rockies and, not long afterward, on October 2, 2016, broadcast his final game for Dodger fans in their game at AT&T Park the San Francisco Giants. His final message was:
"You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know in my heart that I've always needed you more than you've ever needed me, and I'll miss our time together more than I can say. But you know what? There will be a new day and eventually a new year. And when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, rest assured, once again it will be "time for Dodger baseball." So this is Vin Scully wishing you a very pleasant good afternoon, wherever you may be."
Not long after Scully entered retirement, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barrack Obama in a White House ceremony on November 22, 2016. His "microphone" was also retired by the Dodgers and is displayed along with the retired numbers of former Dodger players in Dodger Stadium.
Scully is a native of New York City where he was born on November 27, 1927. He served a few years in the U.S. Navy then went on to graduate from Fordham University in 1949 where he played basketball.
The box next to the press box from which Vin Scully broadcast home games in Dodger Stadium. Los Angeles Almanac Photo.
