Bay Area fans will get to hear part of Vin Scully’s final call from season-ending Dodgers-Giants game.
San Francisco will be the focus of the baseball world Oct. 2 even if the Giants’ playoff hopes aren’t on the line.
It’ll be the final day of Vin Scully’s legendary broadcasting career.
“We’ll tie the ribbon on the package in San Francisco,” Scully said Monday, “and that’ll be that.”
The Dodgers will play at AT&T Park in the season finale, and the 88-year-old will call it quits after the final pitch, having decided earlier not to broadcast Dodgers playoff games.
The Giants said they’ll pay tribute to Scully during the finale and that both the Giants’ television (CSNBA) and radio (KNBR) feeds will carry Scully’s call throughout the third inning.
Giants announcers will give way to the man who’s widely considered history’s greatest sportscaster.
In a Monday conference call, Scully said he’s embarrassed by the attention he’s receiving in his final year and suggested the games are the story, not his pending retirement.
“I mean, gee whiz, Giants and Dodgers tonight, I don’t want people to think this is Vin’s last whatever,” he said. “I just want them to enjoy the Giants and the Dodgers. So I am uncomfortable having been pushed out into this spot. But again, I realize the only reason there is all this fuss and fury is the fact that I’ve lasted 67 years, to be honest.”
The fuss and fury extend beyond longevity, of course.
Fittingly, Scully’s last call will be Giants-Dodgers. He grew up in New York a fan of the Giants and Mel Ott and changed allegiances once he began broadcasting Dodger games in 1950. He moved west when the two New York teams relocated to California in 1958, and he’s in his 67th year behind the mic.
His final call will come in a broadcast booth named after Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons, celebrated Giants broadcasters who, like Scully, are acknowledged at the Hall of Fame for winning the Ford C. Frick award.
“I can actually remember one night in his kitchen harmonizing with Russ and Ernie Harwell, one of the beautiful memories in my entire life,” Scully said. “Russ was just terrific. He was a wonderful broadcaster, very emotional. I just loved being with him. So we spent a good bit of time together.”
Simmons called games once the Giants moved to San Francisco, and he and Scully were golf partners.
“So I remember them both very well,” Scully said. “We had a lot of good kidding, of course, about our rivalry and the two teams.”
Scully will broadcast his final game 80 years to the day that his fondness for the Giants began. As a child, when walking home from school and noticing on a storefront the score of the World Series game on Oct. 2, 1936 — Yankees 18, Giants 4 — he felt for the losing team and became a fan.
“So it seems like the plan was laid out for me,” Scully said, “and all I had to do was follow the instructions.”