A Goodbye and Thank You to Vin Scully

By Kaitlin Hurtado on October 6, 2016

Image via officialvinscully.com

Baseball may very well be a pastime for many, but for many more, it’s something you grew up with, something that’s a part of you — and Vin Scully is just one of those many more. In another world, Vin Scully is a stranger, an everyday man, but in this world, he’s the Dodgers’ announcer, the voice of my childhood, a friend.

I cannot remember my first baseball experience. I just know I was a Dodgers fan before I knew of any other baseball specifics — the infamous Giants-Dodgers rivalry, what abbreviations like ERA stood for, or even that there were two different leagues. I grew up in Los Angeles, California just like my father had, and I grew up in a Dodgers-loving household just like my father had.

I grew up in a home where spending afternoons and nights watching Dodgers baseball was the norm. When I moved away from home for the first time, I turned on the radio to lie on the floor of my dorm room when I was feeling the slightest bit of homesickness. Through that 19-year stretch, Vin Scully had been the soundtrack to it all. His voice had filled my living room and my dorm room, making both feel like home with his warm, comforting tone.

Last week, I sat on the couch of my first apartment, trying not to be overly emotional and cry as Vin Scully announces, “It’s time for Dodgers baseball!” one last final time in Chavez Ravine. It’s been a bittersweet season in general, knowing it’s his last as the voice of Dodgers baseball. His last game was even more of a bittersweet ending, knowing I wouldn’t hear his voice call another Dodgers game.

There have been countless tributes for the man in the past year. This past spring, the driveway to another home — Dodgers stadium’s Elysian Park Avenue — was renamed Vin Scully Avenue to honor the forever-Dodger.

This video shared by the Dodgers’ Twitter is enough to bring a tear (or in my case, many more) to any Dodgers fan’s eye as Vin narrates his love story with baseball that began when he was 8 years old. Eighty years from the exact day that he fell in love with the game, he announced his last game.

Vin claims himself as lucky: he got to love baseball and even got paid for it. I claim myself lucky to have been able to listen to 19 years of his 67-year-long career. His voice was one of comfort — tuning into a game was similar to sitting down with my grandpa to listen to him talk about anything and everything. I wish future fans could have the opportunity to fall in love with baseball with games accompanied with Vin’s voice, just as I had.

It’s hard to imagine a world of Dodgers baseball without Vin in it, but just as he mentioned in his final sign-off: “There will be a new day, and eventually a new year, and when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, ah, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodgers baseball!”

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