There will be a little less of Vin Scully to go around in 2015, and that’s bad news for all baseball fans.
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According to reports, the legendary broadcaster plans to scale back his announcing schedule by 25% next season, no longer going on road trips outside of Los Angeles.
The 86-year-old Scully quit going on long road trips awhile back, but this season he still got out to Arizona, San Diego and San Francisco.
The plan next year for Scully is to only call Dodgers home games and road games against the Angels in Anaheim, at least early in the season.
If the Dodgers are in contention late in the year, Scully reportedly may consider going up to San Francisco or down to San Diego.
When you’re Vin Scully, you get to make your own schedule. Less Scully is not a good thing, but considering that the guy is pushing 90, we should just be grateful we get any Scully at all.
In this era of jazzed-up, graphics-laden broadcasts, show-off announcers and over-abundant outside-the-game nonsense, a Scully-called game is an exercise in sublime minimalism.
Scully calls the game all by himself, no partner getting in his way. Listening to him describe the action is like bathing in a cool, slow-moving stream of words.
And of course there are the stories. After so many decades in the game, Scully has an anecdote for every occasion, and sometimes he can go off on bizarre tangents like injecting a discussion about Jack Ruby into an otherwise normal game situation.
The best thing about Scully is that he’s never forced. He never lays on the eccentricity for effect. He remains, purely and simply, Vin Scully.
He’ll be back next year, again, but there will be a little less of him to enjoy.