Scully Will Stay Through 2008

The Dodgers will announce today that Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully has signed a contract extension that will keep him with the team through the 2008 season.

At that point, according to a source, Scully is likely to retire, which would end the most consecutive years of service with a team for any broadcaster in professional sports.

Scully’s current contract was due to expire after this coming season. The extension is for two years, the source said.

Scully, who turns 79 on Nov. 29, is believed to make close to $3 million a year and the extension calls for a salary in that range.

Born in the Bronx, Scully began his broadcasting career while attending Fordham University.

He announced baseball games for the campus radio station and got experience on the field by playing for Fordham’s baseball team for two seasons. Scully joined the Dodgers in 1950, a year after graduating, and worked alongside the legendary Red Barber.

Because he has been with the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, Scully has been witness to the feats of some of baseball’s greatest players, such as Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax.

He has been around for the Dodgers’ World Series championships -- 1955, ‘59, ‘63, ‘65, ’81 and ’88. In 1965, Scully called Koufax’s perfect game.

In 1976, Dodger fans voted Scully the “most memorable personality” in L.A. Dodger history.

In 1982, he was inducted into the broadcaster’s wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame as the Ford C. Frick Award recipient.

While still working for the Dodgers, Scully signed with CBS in 1975 to announce pro football and golf.

In 1983, he signed with NBC as its lead baseball announcer, and he was behind the NBC microphone when the Dodgers won the ’88 World Series.

It was during Game 1 of that Series that Scully came up with one of his most memorable calls -- on Kirk Gibson’s ninth-inning home run off the Oakland Athletics’ Dennis Eckersley.

“All year long they looked to him [Gibson] to light the fire and all year long he answered the demands,” Scully said.

A moment later, he said, “High fly ball into right field. She is gone!”

After a pause to let the crowd say it all, Scully added, “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”

In recent years, he has scaled back the number of games he calls to about 115 and no longer makes every trip. But age and retirement do not usually come up.

Perhaps he came closest in 1991, when he said, “Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day,” and then added, “Aren’t we all?”