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Today is Vin Scully's Birthday, Happy 79th!
He's been the LA Dodgers announcer even when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers. Handpicked by the legendary Red Barber, Vinny has been the poetic play-by-play man for the Blue Crew for 57 years, which is the longest tenure of a sports announcer with one team Ever.
When he was 25 he was the youngest World Series broadcaster and that record has yet to be broken.
The fact that Fox allows Joe Buck to do the World Series when Vin is sitting at home is not only a crime but a slap in the face to one of the finest broadcasters of all time, one who has dutifully witnessed some of the greatest moments in baseball.
Would Joe Buck or Bob Costas have been able to narrate Kirk Gibson's miraculous home run off Dennis Eckersley the way Vinny did?
"And look who's coming up..."
Scully, the master of letting the crowd tell the story through their cheers, waited a wonderful 67 seconds after Gibson bashed his homer to right before summing it up clearly, concisely, and perfectly, "In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."
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For a long stretch, Los Angeles was home to two of the finest old-time broadcasters of all time, Chick Hearn and Vin Scully. His voice and delivery is timeless, iconic, and currently without peer.
His quip after the Dodgers hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers last year in the ninth followed by the dramatic dinger by Nomar in the tenth proved that Scully has it. After the homer, Scully let the crowd cheer in gleeful disbelief and then he said, "I forgot to tell you, the Dodgers are in first place."
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