Vin Scully has already left a legacy as he begins farewell season with Dodgers
LOS ANGELES – There is a corner of the world without hate or envy or gluttony and with a reasonable amount of compassion and levity, which isn't to say it is perfect there. Surely it is not.
Except, and here's the thing, one day they took a thoroughfare named after the heavens and improved on it by naming it for this corner of the world. If it's still not perfect we're getting a little closer.
Elysian Park Avenue becomes Vin Scully Avenue, and if only the man himself could widen that thoroughfare maybe more people would have seen him clap his hand over his heart before Tuesday afternoon's first pitch, a gesture that caught most square in their throats.
It's getting on toward time to say goodbye, so close now that three generations of Dodgers fans would drag a finger down his sleeve, linger in a smile and tell him again about what a time they had.
Remember how you always said hello, Vin? Do you?
"Hi everybody and a very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be."
Remember those friends we had?
"Swung on and missed, a perfect game!"
And that night that we were so proud of?
"A black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep South …"
Remember that?
That thing Monday did with the flag?
"And Rick will get an ovation and properly so."
It feels like we're running out of summers. The game has changed everywhere but in his telling of it. Those are still human beings out there, still ballplayers. They have flaws and stories and sometimes they do things we've never seen before, and then there's no sense putting a number by it when a few moments of quiet observation will do.
Yeah, we're maybe running out of summers, and the men who led Vin to the field Tuesday afternoon are gray and bent. Their legs seem heavy. The game is so distant now and yet there, under their feet, all around them. Vin is 88 years old and has done something other than call Dodgers games for all but about 20 of them. Those years he spent falling in love with the idea. The rest, remembering why.
On the final Opening Day of his 67th season, he stepped into the eighth-floor elevator at Dodger Stadium just after 10 a.m., the eighth floor being where the employees punch in and punch out and have their lockers. He wore a dark blue suit, a starchy white shirt and a striped tie. Sandy, his wife, was with him. They rode to the fifth floor and the doors opened to a crowd of people, three generations of Dodgers fans who would hear his voice, "Well, hello!" break into applause and think about the times they had, the people they knew.
Like Fernando, remember him?
"If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!"
Like Gibby, right? Ol' Gibby?
"In a year that's been so improbable, the impossible has happened!"
"And there is one out to go. One miserable, measly out. Got him! He's done it!"
Like the man he passed in the press box, who none of them would know.
"How are you? Happy New Year!"
Pick a night, really. Pick a good cry, a good laugh. Pick a summer he ran along with them, or made the best of. And then find an afternoon at the beginning of the last of those summers, Vin in the right-hand batter's box, the stadium rising behind him like a wave he rode in. Nearby stood Peter O'Malley and Magic Johnson, then Sandy Koufax and Don Newcombe, Maury Wills, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Bill Russell and Tommy Lasorda. Clayton Kershaw strode across the diamond to join them.
Vin touched his heart and the people roared, because every one of them felt that tap on theirs, just as it was intended.
It's the nature of the game to lose almost as often as you win, even in the best of summers. This was the man who'd told them it would be all right, just by showing up every day, just by having them in for a few hours to talk about a ballgame. He'd allowed them to believe, even in the worst of summers. He'd taught them the perspective required to love a thing that belongs to no one, to everyone.
And now, suddenly, after all these years, he'll say goodbye a few hours at a time. So they'll hold on to what they can and manage a smile. They had a time, didn't they? Remember?
Moments after the last out, the people in the corridor parted and Vin passed by on his way to the elevator, to the eighth floor, into the parking lot and straight down the street he'll probably always think of as something other than Vin Scully Avenue. Something more heavenly.
