Vin Scully will return for a 66th season

A video was shown on the giant left-field screen in the middle of the second inning at the July 29 Dodgers-Braves game at Dodger Stadium. Hyun-Jin Ryu gave a message in Korean and the Korean fans applauded. Then Yasiel Puig said the same thing in Spanish and the Hispanic fans applauded. When Justin Turner gave the message in English, everybody in the stands stood and applauded. The message was that Vin Scully will be returning to the broadcast booth in 2015. Scully, who joined Red Barber and Connie Desmond in the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcast booth in 1950 and has remained with the team ever since, said, "It is just too hard to say goodbye. Naturally there will come a time when I will have to say goodbye but I've soul-searched and this is not the time." Scully calls all home games for television. The first three innings of each game are also simulcast on KLAC. Since 2012, Scully has called only those road games which take place in California and Arizona. Next season will be his 66th year with the Dodgers. Yay!

Vin Scully is a true legend in sports broadcasting!! For him to be broadcasting for 65 years, with one team (the Dodgers) and doing it now at age 86, is nothing short of miraculous and is a gift! I sure hope he can receive one more championship (this year!)
and that he will retire on a high note. Of course, his entire career is a high note!

I listen to other broadcasters today and Joe Buck on Fox and all I can say is that none of these people, even come close to the quality and neutrality Vinny maintains. On a scale of 1-10, Vinny is off the charts (an 11+).

GO DODGERS!!!!!!!!

What would have made everyone cheer at the same time would be if Magic Johnson got on the left-field big screen and said that the Dodgers and TWC had finally come to their senses and would charge the same carrying fees as other local cable sports channels, so that everyone could actually see and hear Vin Scully.

Do you know what a drag it is to have to wait to turn on a national broadcast and hear Joe Buck calling a Dodger game?

Vin is an MLB radio/TV legend. He could be 100 and still saying "It's time for Dodger baseball!" Kudos to him. I don't care about Joe Buck and his "comments". No one will replace Vin in the Dodgers booth. Sure, here in WA we had legendary Dave Niehaus (RIP) and his "my oh my" and "grand salami" but no one in the MLB media will be as legendary as Vin Scully.

-crainbebo

Vin Scully is amazing. He's been around so long, that I have repeated this statement mulitple time when his longevity comes up. So to put it in human perpsective: Vin Scully was announcing Dodger baseball in Brooklyn, I grew up in the 60s listening to him broadcast the Dodgers (then on KFI). I am almost 63.

Mister bebo, my wife is a Mariners fan. We pay for DirecTV's baseball programming so we can watch the Mariners games with the Mariners announcers...except for when they're playing the Dodgers or Angels and the games are blacked out so we're stuck with the Dodgers/Angels announcers. But I digress. Dave Niehaus, who also did play-by-play for the Angels and Rams and UCLA Bruins early in his career, was my wife's favorite announcer but I detested his style of broadcasting. Instead of being objective, he would yell and scream and go apoplectic every time a Mariner got a hit. And a grand slam would be called this way: "Get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma---it's grand salami time!" Yeah, "grand salami." Ugh! A good announcer should do three things: Describe what's happening on the field, give interesting statistics and share interesting anecdotes. At those three things, Scully has always been the best.

Lew, of course, is old enough to remember when the Dodgers were the Brooklyn Superbas and Scully broadcast their games against the Buffalo Bisons, Boston Beaneaters, Chicago Orphans and Detroit Wolverines.

This thread is about the Dodgers and one of their broadcasters. I hereby declare this to be an appropriate place to post my May 25 Rewind feature. There will be no LARadio.com on that date and, golly gee, I just can't let this go to waste:

LARadio Rewind: May 25, 2013. Former KABC traffic reporter Jorge Jarrín sings the National Anthem prior to the start of the Los Angeles Dodgers' game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Dodger Stadium. Since 1985, Jarrín had been known as Captain Jorge, reporting on traffic from Jet Copter 790. He was one of several KABC/KLOS employees to be laid off in 2011 after Cumulus Media took over ownership of the stations from Citadel Broadcasting. Jarrín moved to KLAC as co-host of the Dodgers' post-game radio shows. Since 2012, he and former player/coach Manny Mota have done play-by-play for Spanish-language telecasts of Dodgers games. Jarrín is now teamed with his father Jaime, calling Dodgers games for KTNQ. Jaime Jarrín, born in 1935 in Quito, Ecuador, has been the Spanish-language voice of the Dodgers since 1959. On the day when Jorge sang the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium, his father was being honored with "Jaime Jarrín Bobblehead Night."

Here is a nice story from the Santa Barbara Independent (April 9, 2015) about Vin Scully's "final season" and the plight of a 95-year-old World War II veteran who is upset because the Dogers' deal with Time Warner Cable prevents him from seeing the games on television:

http://www.independent.com/news/2015/apr/09/sports-vin-scullys-final-season/

Wait ... when did Vin announce this was his last season?

There were the usual "hints" when he announced last July that he would call this season, but I haven't seen any definitive statement by him anywhere (and you know that when that announcement does come, it will be all over the media).

Oh, wait ... that article is in the Independent. Wasn't much of a paper when I worked in Santa Barbara in the late 1980s, and apparently is still as sloppy, journalism-wise, now.

If I was guessing, Vin will be carried out of Dodger Stadium in a pine box. Or maybe something a touch more deluxe than that.

I, too, wondered where the Independent got the news that 2015 would be Scully's final season with the Dodgers. Last year when Scully announced he would return this year, he said it was with the approval of his wife Sandi. If she had wanted him to retire, he would have. George Putnam was on the air until he (Putnam) was 93. Vinny is 87. With your wife's approval, Vinny, we hope you'll be back in 2016. And 2017. And.....

I think Vinny is waiting for a championship before finally retiring. Hopefully the Dodgers will deliver this season, once and for all. 1988 was ages ago!

Thanks to the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable, the dulcet sound Vinny's voice, the official voice of Southern California summer in my mind, has been replaced with sounds of silence, with equivalent video to match. It is an act of criminal proportions. A pox on all of their houses.

When will the adults in fhe room stand up and put an end to this idiocy?

ChannelFlipper said:

Thanks to the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable, the dulcet sound Vinny's voice, the official voice of Southern California summer in my mind, has been replaced with sounds of silence, with equivalent video to match. It is an act of criminal proportions. A pox on all of their houses.

When will the adults in fhe room stand up and put an end to this idiocy?

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We finally found something to agree on, Flipper. I have gone beyond simple Vin Scully withdrawal to the point where I don't even check the sports pages to see how the Dodgers are doing.

As much as I would like to maintain an opinion that Guggenheim is trying to maximize their revenue by accepting Time Warner Cable's bloated offer (and I will go to my grave believing TWC was the bigger bad guy for their laissez-faire attitude of charging more than they had to know was going to be acceptable to the other providers, viewers be damned), they could always attach a memorandum to the deal reducing the revenue. But they won't, and that's why I second your motion for a dual pox.

This ex-Dodgers fan is tired of waiting in vain for this to be resolved. Very soon the DirecTV dish is coming down and a new broadcast antenna engineered for digital reception goes up. I'm close enough to Wilson to get consistently strong signals with an old antenna in the attic (so a new antenna should make those rock solid) and most of what I watch are old shows on the retro channels (MeTV, Antenna TV, This, Cozi, Retro, and -- starting Monday -- Decades) anyway.

As for Vin, I wish him nothing but the best. He's iconic and a class act who did not deserve to be caught in the middle of this mess.

I thought Scully still did the first 3 innings of Dodger games on KLAC. No?

Is this not Radio Discussions?

TheBigA said:

I thought Scully still did the first 3 innings of Dodger games on KLAC. No?

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Yes ... and no.

If the game is a home game at Dodger Stadium, or an away game at Petco Park (San Diego Padres) or AT&T Park (San Francisco Giants) then the first three innings on KLAC are a simulcast of the SportsNet One telecast with Vin.

At all other times (radio from the fourth inning onward, television at any venue other than the three mentioned), it's the second string announcing team ... who I cannot stand, because they think every second of airtime has to be filled by something coming out of one of their mouths. They never learned Vin's skill of knowing when to shut up and let the sound of the crowd in the park tell the story.

Is this not Radio Discussions?

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Oh, I'm sorry ... isn't this the Los Angeles television board?

K.M. Richards said:

At all other times (radio from the fourth inning onward, television at any venue other than the three mentioned), it's the second string announcing team ... who I cannot stand,

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So even if you could watch the Dodgers on TV, you'd only get Vin for certain games, right?

And Vin's real talent is on the radio, right? So why not listen to him on the radio? No need to suffer withdrawal.

I remember Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett calling Dodgers games on radio and I remember ads for Farmer John franks ("The easternmost in quality, the westernmost in flavor"), Roi-Tan cigars and Tareyton cigarettes on the telecasts. President Nixon signed legislation banning all tobacco advertising on radio and television, effective January 1, 1971. The last cigarette ad on American tv ran during Johnny Carson's Tonight show.

TheBigA said:

So even if you could watch the Dodgers on TV, you'd only get Vin for certain games, right?

And Vin's real talent is on the radio, right? So why not listen to him on the radio? No need to suffer withdrawal.

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1. It's the principle of the matter. This standoff between Time Warner and the other providers has gone on for more than a full season. Do you get that, A?

2. Vin still only does three innings on radio. If I'm going to listen to a game, I want all nine called by Vin and won't get that on radio.

3. I live in a part of the market where KLAC reception is far less than ideal when they are on the night pattern.

But I appreciate your comments, even if you do sound just like me at times.