Another baseball season has begun and I still miss not hearing his voice and seeing his smile.
We knew Vin Scully couldn’t be replaced, that he was an original. He didn’t pattern himself after any of the great sportscasters. He was the pattern.
It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s been eight years since he called his last Dodger home game in 2016 — a walk-off home run win. Somehow, Vin had scripted the perfect goodbye.
When former Los Angeles Daily News sportswriter Tom Hoffarth said he was compiling stories for a book about Vin, I thought he was a little late to the game.
It had been two years and many tribute books since Vin passed away at 94 in 2022. What could he possibly find that hadn’t already been written about Vin? Was there one more accolade to be squeezed out of his remarkable life that was missed?
Turns out there were plenty.
“Perfect Eloquence — an Appreciation of Vin Scully” puts him behind the microphone for another season.
It opens the gates early and allows all his fans into the press box to watch him warm up for another start — taking all the stats and old scorecards he stored in the back of his mind for 67 years, and turning them into flesh and blood stories we never knew.
Vin earned the respect, and yes, love, of the toughest crowd in the game — the sportswriters sitting just a few yards away from his booth covering the game. You don’t get anything by this crew.
When they put you up on a pedestal, you belong there.
“I often dined with Associated Press reporter Beth Harris in the Dodger Stadium press cafeteria,” wrote former Los Angeles Daily News sportswriter Jill Painter Lopez. “Lucky for us, we were usually done about the same time as Vin.
“I can’t count the number of times he skipped ahead of us to open the door with a ‘Hello, Jill. Hello Beth.’ We were giddy every single time. It never got old.
“On the day of his final home game, I went to Mass that Sunday morning in the Dodgers’ press…
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