You Can Put This One in Vin Column

When it came time Wednesday to announce Vin Scully would remain the voice of the Dodgers through 2008, getting a two-year contract extension with no raise, Jamie McCourt stepped to the podium first.

She began by saying, “Vin Scully brings out the best in all of us,” and knowing the Dodgers went 71-91 a year ago, just imagine how awful they might have been had Scully not brought out the best in them.

Then she talked about the (dark) day the McCourts took control of the Dodgers, and how nervous she had been, but sitting next to Scully that all changed when he held her hand.

Then the Boston Parking Lot Attendant took his turn behind the podium, talking about the great impression Scully had made on his wife when he had taken her hand, and I couldn’t help but think Charley Steiner was sitting somewhere in the audience making a note to himself to start holding Jamie’s hand.

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FINALLY, AND mercifully when the McCourts stepped aside, Scully took the microphone, and the magic began with that comforting voice filling the room.

It’s a voice that never lets you down, the stories a little richer, the comments a little more poignant because of who is delivering them.

He will tell you he is not the face of the Dodgers, going so far as to joke, “When I’m looking in the mirror in the morning, I’m not thinking to myself, ‘I’m shaving the face of the franchise.’ I don’t think that way; I’m just an ordinary guy who got an extraordinary opportunity.”

He might be the most humble man in the room, but standing there in a blue sports coat, blue hankie in his pocket, light blue shirt and blue on blue tie, if you think Dodgers, you think Vin Scully.

And yet, somewhat amazingly, he said he had never had a news conference before in his 57 years with the franchise, the announcement he had been hired in Brooklyn being overshadowed by a news conference for Pee Wee Reese -- Pee Wee Reese’s name rolling off his tongue like poetry.

But now Scully is working for the McCourts, who have hired a number of specialists to beef up the family’s image, obviously taking the advice to use one of the city’s most admired figures and pose arm-in-arm with him any time they can.

There had been some speculation Scully wouldn’t agree to such an event unless he was going to announce his retirement soon, but he said that decision had not been made.

He said there was no talk of a raise when he met with the McCourts and, while I wasn’t surprised, we joked that he now knows what it’s like to work for a newspaper. “I’m just thankful to come to the ballpark and get a free seat,” he said. (I sure hope McCourt doesn’t get the idea to start charging him.)

In the past, he has talked about sitting in hotel rooms on the road, hearing his life ticking away, but Scully, who is expecting grandchild No. 14 in June, said he talked to his wife, asked her to share more in his baseball life and she agreed.

“If she didn’t,” he said, “I would have packed it in after this year.”

He said there are days when he’d rather not come to the ballpark, “and just sit under a tree and have a cold beer.” But then he gets in his car, puts on Broadway show music, “peppy music,” he said, and he’s ready, ending the night back in the car listening “to strings, and music that is very soft.”

“I really love the game,” he said, “and then something wonderful or outrageous will happen, and I’ll get these goose bumps. And then I know I am where I belong.”

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SCULLY SPOKE glowingly about the McCourts’ enthusiasm, and thanked them for keeping him on the job. Later, when I asked him if he would tell me the truth if he thought the McCourts didn’t have what it took to get the job done, he said, “No.”

And we laughed, and I’m not sure I can remember spending time with Scully and at some point not laughing. He knew I was on my way to a poker tournament, and he had a story about Leo Durocher playing cards ready, the conversation always somehow shifting away from him.

He’s a humble icon, all right, like John Wooden drawing almost reverential treatment from everyone blessed with meeting him. Like Wooden, though, he’s open to being teased and poking fun at himself.

I wanted to know if he colors that red hair, thinking about Dwyre and what little gray hair he has left, and Scully said his mother had great red hair late in life before finally going to the bottle.

“Not that bottle,” he grinned. “She dyed it, and it turned orange,” and so he won’t be hitting the bottle, he said.

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HE FINALLY came clean and admitted he didn’t like the names taken off the back of the Dodger jerseys, and so McCourt seized the opportunity to announce the names will be back on the jerseys in 2007 because that’s what Scully wants. (I wish Scully would make his feelings known about acquiring a power-hitting outfielder.)

For his part right now, Scully said he has no idea if the Dodgers will be a better team because “I don’t even know who the players are,” he said.

Someone else wanted to know about a broadcasting decision he made long ago not to be perceived as a “homer,” and he told a story about coming to L.A. and Walter O’Malley suggesting it might be time for him to start rooting for the Dodgers.

But he told O’Malley he spent eight years trying to go down the middle, so fans could trust what he had to say.

“It’s all based on trust,” he said.

Off to the side, I noticed Jaime Jarrin, the Spanish voice of the Dodgers and a Hall of Fame broadcaster in his own right, hanging on Scully’s every word -- a tribute of the highest order.

T.J. Simers can be reached at

t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.