LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Dodgers today announced that Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully will return to the broadcast booth for an unprecedented 61st season in 2010.
“For six decades, Dodger fans have been truly blessed to have Vin Scully on the air and we are honored that he will be back in the booth again next season,” said Dodger Owner Frank McCourt. “He has been the one constant over the years and I know that our fans will cherish every game he calls.”
Scully, who recently completed his record-setting 60th campaign with the Dodgers, will be honored prior to a game next season at Dodger Stadium. His 60 years of service constitute the longest tenure of any broadcaster in sports history.
“We have had two exciting seasons consecutively -- getting into the second round of the playoffs -- and when you get that close, you look to the next year as perhaps the one that you go all the way,” said Scully, who celebrated his 82nd birthday on Sunday. “I’m very excited and optimistic about 2010 and the direction we’re heading and we’ll take it year-to-year after that.”
Earlier this year, Scully was named as the top sportscaster of all time by the American Sportscasters Association, an honor that has been bestowed upon him by several other associations and polls. With accolades far too numerous to detail, Scully’s crowning achievement came nearly 30 years ago when he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982.
Scully began his baseball broadcasting career in 1950, and since then has gone on to call three perfect games, 19 no-hitters, 25 World Series and 12 All-Star Games. He was also at the microphone for Kirk Gibson’s miraculous Game 1 homer in the 1988 World Series, Hank Aaron’s record-setting 715th home run, Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 71st, 72nd and 73rd home runs and the scoreless-inning streaks’ of Dodger greats Don Drysdale and Orel Hershiser.
When Scully first began broadcasting, the Dodgers had yet to win a single World Series. Gasoline cost 27 cents a gallon, a postage stamp was just three cents and the minimum wage was only 75 cents per hour. Three years later, at the age of 25, he became the youngest person to ever broadcast a World Series game and in 1955, he had his most memorable moment behind the microphone, as he called the Dodgers' first and only championship in Brooklyn.
The following season, Scully once again found himself in the enviable position of calling what he would later say was the greatest individual performance he had seen -- Don Larsen's perfect game in the World Series, a broadcast which made national news again earlier this year when the MLB Network launched on January 1 with the rare footage of that game.
In 2010, Scully will continue to call all Dodger home games and the club's road games against NL West and AL West opponents. While Scully handles all nine innings of the team's television broadcasts, the first three innings of each of his games is simulcast on radio.
