The best news I’ve heard all year:

Scully Will Return to Dodgers’ Booth Next Season
By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Vin Scully will return next season for for a 62nd year of calling Dodgers baseball.

“I’m just honored and humbled to continue my association with the Dodgers, which has been a major part of my life,” Scully said Sunday in a news release issued by the team.

Scully suggested last year that this might be his final season with the team whose games he started calling in Brooklyn in 1950. And on Saturday, when he told The Los Angeles Times that he would announce his future plans before Sunday’s game, he said: “I’d like to do that so everyone hears it at the same time. It’s the proper way to do it.”

For those who fret about the day when Scully, 82, is not behind a microphone for the Dodgers, the remark might have implied something more serious than announcing his return.

But he indeed will be back, calling all nine innings of the games on TV, with the first three innings of each game simulcast on radio. He works only home games and road games against the Dodgers’ opponents in the N.L. West. He cut back on his travel schedule several years ago, tiring of the loneliness of the road and the time spent away from his wife.

Scully has become the nearly-indispensable Dodger, a lyrical witness to the team’s history even as the great players and managers have retired. He has survived ownership changes; his presence is an antidote to the nasty divorce case between the current owner, Frank McCourt and his wife, Jamie, who was fired by her husband as the team’s chief executive last year.

“I’m as thrilled as our fans that Vin will be returning,” Frank McCourt said.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at 12:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.