There’s No Change in the Booth

Vin Scully goes through one of these ownership changes every 48 years or so.

The last one was in 1950, after his first season as a Dodger broadcaster. That’s when Walter O’Malley bought the team.

“Here I was, a young kid still living with my parents in New Jersey, and the No. 3 announcer on a team that included the great Red Barber and Connie Desmond,” Scully said. “And Walter O’Malley himself called me at home to assure me I still had a job with the Dodgers.”

That was the beginning of a long relationship.

“You can say I’m married to my job, but you can say that about a lot of people,” Scully said. “I’ve also been married to the O’Malleys. Walter was like a father to me, and Peter has been like a brother. Of course I don’t know Terry [Peter’s sister] as well as I do Peter, but I regard her as a sister.”

He realizes he won’t have that kind of relationship with Rupert Murdoch and his people. Corporations aren’t family.

But corporations do recognize valuable commodities, and Scully is certainly that.

“Vin Scully will be a Dodger as long as he wants to be,” Fox spokesman Vince Wladika said.

The Hall of Fame broadcaster has been called the franchise. He has been called the team’s MVP--most valuable person. A number of years ago, he was once voted “most memorable personality” in Dodger history by the fans.

So it should be somewhat comforting to those fans to know that Scully says he’s not going anywhere.

According to Ed Hookstratten, Scully’s agent, the announcer signs a new deal with the Dodgers every year, and he plans to continue that practice. Scully, believed to be 70, said he isn’t even thinking about retiring.

“Sitting around with nothing to do for 40 days or so during the strike year [1994] made me realize if I retired I’d be bored,” Scully said. “I love golf, but not every day.

“My health is good, I feel good, I don’t think I’m slipping. I feel like I can go on forever. There’s nothing that would make me even think about retiring.

“And announcing Dodger games is all I want to do. I’m through doing football or golf or anything else on a network level. I’m happy doing what I’m doing.”

This week, he also decided to give up doing the World Series on radio. Hookstratten said Scully turned down an offer from ESPN Radio, the new carrier of the Series.

Scully wants as much time as possible to spend with his five grandchildren. And although he travels in his work, he still enjoys traveling with his wife, Sandy, during the off-season.

One might think the travel connected with his job or the loneliness of the road might lead him to retirement sometime soon. But that’s not the case.

“Traveling doesn’t bother me,” Scully said. “I travel well. I think it’s because I enjoy reading so much. I also don’t mind spending time alone in my hotel room reading.

“You know what bothers me, though? It’s when I sit in my hotel room and know the meter is ticking, that time is running out on me,” he said. “Maybe that’s the Irish in me. I want so badly to make the most of every moment I have left in my life.”

If Scully is a little melancholy, you can’t blame him.

The sale of the Dodgers by the O’Malley family, the whole process from beginning to end, has hit him hard.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” he said. “This is a time of great sadness for me.”

He knew, however, that the day would come when the Dodgers were sold to a large corporation.

“Walter O’Malley said 35 years ago that someday teams would be owned by corporations rather than individuals,” Scully said. “He’d say, for example, that U.S. Steel might someday own the Pittsburgh Pirates.”

A more recent memory than his talks with Walter O’Malley is the call he got from Peter O’Malley on Jan. 4, 1997. O’Malley asked Scully to meet him in his Dodger Stadium office the next day, a Sunday.

“I knew it had to be something very important,” Scully said.

Scully drove to Dodger Stadium the next day wondering what it might be.

“I got there and of course the place was empty,” he said. “Peter and I may have been the only people there that day.

“He told me that the following day he was going to announce that he and Terry were putting the Dodgers up for sale. We sat in his office and talked for at least two hours. He mainly went through the reason for selling.

“It really hit me on the way home. It was like being kicked in the stomach. The Dodgers without the O’Malleys. It was hard to imagine.”

Almost as hard to imagine as the Dodgers without Scully. At least that isn’t going to happen for a while.