Opinion: Dear Vin Scully: ‘I truly hope we have not seen the last of you’

To the editor: I was given a great gift on Sunday. I heard the last game of Dodgers announcer Vin Scully’s career with my wife, tears streaming down my face at the end. Like many, my experience with him goes back decades. (“With Vin Scully’s retirement, Los Angeles loses a poet-philosopher,” editorial, Oct. 2)

I pray for two things, one of them admittedly a bit selfish.

First, I pray for Scully’s health, so that he, his wife Sandi and his family can enjoy the retirement he has so richly earned. Second, I pray that Scully does not disappear from the public completely now that he is retired.

Sir, every time you run into someone, you will make their day, and perhaps their life. I truly hope we have not seen the last of you.

Jim O’Fallon, San Diego

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To the editor: What more can be said about one Vin Scully that hasn’t already been said in the last 67 years?

Vinnie is a true, kind and fine gentleman, the consummate professional and simply the greatest television and radio sports play-by-play announcer in all of American sports history. There never has been and never will be one as fine as him.

Thank you, Vin, for poetically calling Dodger games for a span of time that covers my entire life on this Earth and for countless fond memories. With a wink and smile, I must mention that these thoughts come from an avid and loyal San Francisco Giants fan, but I suppose that now I must pull my little transistor radio from out from underneath my pillow and finally put it away.

James Schweitzer, Brea

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To the editor: Having listened to and watched Scully for more than 50 years, the only apt analogy I can think of for witnessing his retirement game on Sunday would be if Santa Claus on his last roof stop this year announced that he would be driving his sleigh no more.

We would still have Christmas, but no Santa, as we will still have baseball, but no Vinny.

Alan Charles, Beverly Hills

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To the editor: Calling his last game in a 67-year career on Sunday, Scully paid tribute to Champ Pederson, the Dodgers’ batboy for the team’s last regular season game, a young man with Down Syndrome. It’s the same Scully who, after Hank Aaron’s record-breaking 715th home run, reminded his viewers that a black ballplayer was being mobbed in congratulations by whites in Atlanta.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has mocked a reporter with disabilities, sneered at a U.S. senator who bravely endured torture in Vietnam, vilified the parents of a war hero who died saving his comrades and routinely disparaged Americans of color and women.

Trump promises to “make America great again.” To do that, we should all try to be like Scully, not Trump.

Lawrence Dietz, Pasadena

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