Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES — Longtime Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully has been named recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from Baseball Digest. The honor makes Scully the second-ever winner of the award, following last year’s inaugural recipient of the award, Willie Mays.
In an article slated to appear in the venerable publication’s May-June edition, Baseball Digest publisher David Fagley laid out the case for bestowing the prize on Scully. “Vin Scully was not only the voice of the Dodgers, but was also, the voice of our national game for an incredible seven decades.”
Scully, now 95, was selected for Baseball Digest’s 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from a list of candidates that included Dr. James Andrews, Paul Beeston, Steve Blass, Marty Brennaman, Bobby Cox, Cito Gaston, Pat Gillick, Bill James, Jaime Jarrín, Sandy Koufax, Jerry Reinsdorf, Rachel Robinson, Bud Selig, Janet Marie Smith, Joe Torre and Bill White. Baseball Digest “We are honored to recognize (Vin’s) iconic career,” Fagley continued, “both as a broadcaster and as an ambassador for the game he loves so much.”
Vin started broadcasting for the Brooklyn Dodgers as a kid barely out of Fordham University in 1950. At first, he was second banana to another baseball legend Red Barber, but when Barber jumped ship to the Yankees in a pay dispute in 1953, Vin became entrenched as the team’s play-by-play man. And, when the team traveled west to Los Angeles a few years later, he became synonymous with the LA version of the team, probably as much as any player if not moreso.
Vin’s reaction to the honor was typically humble and classy. “I think, first of all,” Scully said via a press release, “any award that’s already been won by Willie Mays, who certainly was one of my favorite players and one for whom I had great respect, is an honor. It’s an honor to even have my name linked with his in some way. I was honored, delighted and surprised that I turned out to be the second winner of Baseball Digest’s Lifetime Achievement Award. I’m proud of it and humble at the same time.”
Vin called his last game on October 2, 2016. And though Joe Davis and Orel Hershiser are both capable and excellent broadcasters, in the hearts of Dodger fans, there will only be one “voice of the Dodgers”.
Congrats, Vin… see you around!
