LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A street leading to Dodger Stadium will be named
after the team’s longtime play-by-play announcer Vin Scully, who plans to
retire after 67 seasons with the Dodgers.
The council voted 12-0 to begin the process for renaming Elysian Park
Avenue between Sunset Boulevard and Stadium Way as “Vin Scully Avenue.”
“Now we’re going to say, `Hey, go up Sunset and make a right on Scully
Avenue’ — that’s going to be the new directions to get to Dodger Stadium,”
said Councilman Gil Cedillo, who proposed the street name change.
Cedillo called Scully “the voice and symbol of baseball, not just for
the Dodgers but the entire nation.”
“I remember growing up in the city, and I couldn’t always afford to go
to the games,” Cedillo said. “We had a little radio, as all young boys and
girls did in that time period. While you may not have been able to afford the
games, you could turn on the radio, and with that you can see the Dodgers, each
and every pitch, each and every play … just amazing storytelling that was
unparalleled.”
Councilman Paul Krekorian said the recognition “is a few decades
overdue.”
“I’m so glad Mr. Scully has finally consented to our doing this,” he
said. “He’s a man of great humility who has resisted this kind of recognition,
but it’s so important that we do so.”
Dodger manager Dave Roberts told the council that “on behalf of the
players, the organization, we’re deeply honored, as Vin has called many great
monumental moments” in Dodger history.
Former Dodger stars Orel Hershiser, Maury Wills and others were on hand
for the vote, as were several active players.
The visit by the Dodger contingent to City Hall is part of their week of
service tour in the Los Angeles area, dubbed by the team as the “Dodgers
Love L.A. Tour.”
The Dodger team tweeted a statement from Scully, who said he was
“overwhelmed” by the decision to rename a street after him.
“I was raised on the streets of New York and to have a street named
after me in Los Angeles is almost too much to comprehend,” he said.
“A path to Dodger Stadium is a pathway to my heart. For 55 years, it
has been an honor to walk that road to one of the greatest entertainment
centers in the world, a place that has brought so much joy to all of us. I
thank God for this great honor,” he said.
The 88-year-old Bronx-born Scully has announced Dodger games since 1950,
when the team played in Brooklyn. He said in August that the 2016 season
likely will be his last.
Scully has been an announcer longer than anyone else in sports history.
A ranking system devised by author Curt Smith for his 2005 book “Voices of the
Game” determined that Scully was baseball’s greatest announcer, giving him a
perfect score of 100, based on such factors as longevity, language, popularity
and persona.
When Mayor Eric Garcetti made a similar street-naming proposal in 2013
in response to a viewer question on a public affairs television program, Scully
said he would prefer for a street near Dodger Stadium to be renamed after
Walter O’Malley, who brought the team to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, or his son
Peter, instead of himself.
“The mayor of Los Angeles has a great deal more important things to do
than name a street after me,” Scully said at the time. “And if he is
considering that idea, better the street should be named after Walter or Peter
O’Malley than myself.”
Peter O’Malley succeeded his father as the team’s chairman of the board
upon the elder O’Malley’s death in 1979. The O’Malley family continued to own
the Dodgers until their sale to the Fox Group in 1997.
In 2013, when Scully announced he would be returning for the 2014
season, Garcetti said that “Vin Scully is more than the voice of the
Dodgers.”
“L.A. Little Leaguers hear his voice when swinging for the fences and
as adults, we hear his voice during those big moments in our lives,” Garcetti
said. “Vin Scully transcends L.A.’s ever-changing `A List.’ In his seventh
decade here, he is an icon to grandparents, parents and our kids and earns new
fans with each new child who tunes in to their first Dodgers game.”
CNS-01-29-2016 12:40