Home is wherever Vin Scully is on the air; a scary moment turns celebratory as he announces his return
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And then, a giant sigh of relief.
A day that had seemed so ominous suddenly filled with an explosion of happiness.
Back to fill our summer evenings, to anchor a troubled franchise, to give us that one familiar, warm verbal embrace.
I have never been so happy to be so wrong about a gut feeling in my professional career.
Vin said Sunday he was embarrassed for any anguish he had caused with fans over the past day because he had left his decision oddly hanging for a night. I don’t understand the mechanics of it -- if it was just going to be announced in a morning press release, why not just announce it Saturday and avoid all the Southland hand-wringing? -- but right now it doesn’t matter.
What’s matters most is, Los Angeles’ greatest living treasure will return for at least one more season.
‘I found in the deep recesses of my mind that I did not want to sever the relationship,’ Scully said.
That’s a relationship with the team that goes back 61 years, and every season since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958. That’s a 52-year relationship with Los Angeles. That’s iconic.
It has to be hard to walk away from. Maybe Vin was going to, too, and then at the eleventh hour changed his mind. Selfishly, you want him to be with the Dodgers forever. But he’s 82 and long ago earned the right to do whatever it is that makes him happy.
And happily for Dodgers fans, this still makes him very happy.
‘I just love it so much,’ he said. ‘It’s like a very good marriage. I found when push came to shove, I just did not want to leave. My wife understood it, God bless her. She said, ‘If you love it, do it.’ So I love it and I’m going to do it.’
So the Dodgers win. Their fans win. Baseball wins. All of Los Angeles wins.
And, for at least one more season, we can all exhale.
-- Steve Dilbeck