Baseball Goodbyes

We said a lot of goodbyes in Major League Baseball today.

Of course the one I care about the most (by many orders of magnitude) is that today was Dodger great Vin Scully's last broadcast. As I write this, the article to which I linked is very terse, but I watched the game (of course!), and the Giants organization was very classy indeed in the way they honored Vin—including a big deal during the 7th inning stretch, giving the fans goodbye placards for Vin, and putting up a permanent placard in the visiting broadcast booth commemorating his final game. (I'm sure I'll find some links to add later, but in the meantime, here is the box score for the game.) This was a very nice complement to Vin Scully Day at Dodger stadium for his final home game. Vin was typically low key, though of course this wasn't just a normal game. In an earlier blog entry, I compiled a short list of some tributes to (and vignettes about) Vin Scully. Today was in fact 80 years to the day that Vin Scully fell in love with Baseball (in a story that he's been telling for the last couple weeks). Vin has been the voice of the Dodgers for 67 years and is the most beloved Dodger of all.

I am now 40 years old, I have listened to Vin Scully (the best broadcaster of all time!) call baseball games since I was a little kid—maybe the first time when I was 3 years old?—and I fell asleep to his sound on the radio back in the day (and, given my time on the U.S. east coast and of course my 9 years in Oxford), and I listened to Vin's voice sooth me to sleep from my computer in more recent years. Every year, I knew and felt that a new Baseball season started when I first heard Vin's voice announcing that it's time for Dodger baseball and wishing me a very pleasant good evening or afternoon (wherever I may be). That's how Vin signed off today. Thank you for everything!

Meanwhile, in Boston, there was a tribute to David Ortiz (whose number the Red Sox will retire next year, and this marks the first time ever that the Red Sox are doing that for a player who is not yet in the Hall of Fame), though he'll still be playing for them in the upcoming postseason.

The Yankees said goodbye to Mark Teixeira.

We also said goodbye to Turner Field in Atlanta.

Update: Here is an article giving some details about today's very classy tribute to Vin Scully from the Giants.

Update: Here is Vin's final message to Dodger fans. It was special watching today's game.

Update: Ryan Howard played what is likely his final game with the Phillies, although it looks like he's going to try to latch on with another team. (I write "probably" because, if Howard's career persists, I could imagine Philadelphia bringing him back as an inexpensive backup player a couple of years down the line.)

Update (10/04/16): Another very good announcer who retired at the end of the regular season on Sunday is Dick Enberg.

Some Tributes to Vin Scully

Vin Scully is retiring at the end of the 2016 regular season, his 67th year of broadcasting Dodger games. I have listened to Vin all of my life (ever since I can remember), and that covers only a bit more than half of Vin Scully's career. (He's had the longest career of any broadcaster in any professional sport.) Wow! And Vin is the best of all time.

As Vin's career winds down, I have (especially in the last couple of days) seen various tributes on my Facebook feed, so I am going to put some links to some of these here—partly just so that I can have a few of them in one place. I should have compiled a few I saw over the last couple of weeks, and I'll add some of those when I see those links again.

Here is are stories compiled by Jayson Stark.

Here is a video from Baseball Tonight.

Baseball-reference.com has posted a discussion with a statistical trip through Vin Scully's career.

Update (9/23/16): I hadn't caught this before, but Vin has broadcast more than half of the games that the Dodgers have ever played. Wow! (I am listening to the live presentation of the presentation at Dodger stadium honoring Vin Scully.)

Update (9/23/16): Here is a rank-ordered list of the "top 20" Vin Scully calls of all time. As I write this, numbers 1 and 2 haven't yet been listed, but they are not at all surprising: number 2 is the end of Sandy Koufax's perfect game, and number 1 is (obviously) Gibson's home run. The reason I put "top 20" in quotes is that fans were given a list of 20 moments and then voted among the given list of 20. That's a bit cheesy, though some of my favorite moments and a few other obvious ones are among the memorable 20.

Update (9/24/16): Here is an article about the tribute to Scully. Also, I happened to notice that #vinscullyday was trending on Twitter yesterday.

Update (9/26/16, about 1:03 am): The Dodger players have Vin Scully a great tribute during today's game, which we won in the 10th inning on a walk-off homer to win the National League West for the fourth year in a row. I haven't yet gotten my cable tv working in LA, so I listened on the radio, although for most of the game I couldn't hear much because my friends and I were busy building my furniture for my apartment. I'll need to catch some video clips of the game.

Update (10/01/16): Here is an article in the New York Times about the "archive of oddities" that Vin Scully leaves behind.

Update (10/02/16): Vin's final broadcast finished a little while ago. You can see my comments about it in this blog entry, where I also link to a few other goodbyes.

MLB Tonight's Tribute to Vin Scully

This season is the last season that Dodger announcer Vin Scully will be broadcasting Dodger games. MLB Tonight has produced a nice tribute video.

I have been listening to Vin announce baseball games for more than 35 years, and that is barely more than half of his career! Vin's voice has been one of the soundtracks of my life, and I sure as Hell am going to miss it.

When it comes to broadcasters, Vin Scully is the Best of All Time.

(Tip of the hat to Chris Howland.)

Awesome Audi Commerical: 'Battle of the Spocks'

Another of the awesome things that has been circulated amidst Leonard Nimoy's passing is this fantastic Audi commercial from 2013 (or at least the io9 article is from 2013, so I am assuming that the commercial is as well) featuring both Nimoy and Zachary Quinto (who plays Spock in the Star Strek reboot) in a 'Battle of the Spocks'.

There are quite a few great allusions in this commercial.

(Tip of the cap to somebody, but I forgot to scribble down whom.)

"Bank of Canada Urges 'Star Trek' Fans to Stop 'Spocking' Their Fivers"

This story is absolutely fantastic. As a tribute to the late, great Leonard Nimoy, an apparently large number of Canadian Trekkies (or Trekkers, as I suppose they would prefer) have been 'Spocking' their five-dollar bills. Take a look at the story for some pictures that show examples of Spocking, which I think are rather well done. I think this is an excellent tribute. I approve!

(Tip of the cap to several people.)

Peter Gammons retires from ESPN

It was announced on Tuesday that Peter Gammons, one of my favorite sports writers, is leaving ESPN to pursue other things. I am under the impression that this won't include much baseball writing, and I'm really going to miss reading his words. One particular aspect of what I occasionally do in expository articles was actually influence a bit by his writing, though I don't know if anybody has particularly noticed that. Here is Buster Olney's tribute to Peter Gammons, and here are some other words of appreciation.

Here is what Peter Gammons writes.