Vin Scully Avenue dedicated on street leading to Dodger Stadium
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (FOX 11 / CNS) - A street leading to Dodger Stadium will be dedicated Monday as Vin Scully Avenue, a honor the longtime Dodger broadcaster once declined.
Scully will be joined at the 11:15 a.m. ceremony at the Gate A entrance to Dodger Stadium off of Sunset Boulevard by Mayor Eric Garcetti, Councilman Gil Cedillo, whose district includes Dodger Stadium, and Dodger President and CEO Stan Kasten.
The ceremony is free and open to the public, who should park in Lot 13/14 on Stadium Way, just east of the main entrance to Dodger Stadium.
The City Council voted Friday to give final approval to the changing what had been Elysian Park Avenue. The stadium's new address, 1000 Vin Scully Avenue, was included in a new sign welcoming fans to the stadium that was unveiled last week.
When Garcetti made a similar street-naming proposal in 2013 in response to a viewer question on a public affairs television program, Scully said he would prefer for a street near Dodger Stadium to be renamed after Walter
O'Malley, who brought the team to Los Angeles from Brooklyn following the 1957 season, or his son Peter, instead of himself.
"The mayor of Los Angeles has a great deal more important things to do than name a street after me," Scully said at the time. "And if he is considering that idea, better the street should be named after Walter or Peter
O'Malley than myself."
Peter O'Malley succeeded his father as the team's chairman of the board upon the elder O'Malley's death in 1979. The O'Malley family continued to own the Dodgers until their sale to the Fox Group in 1997.
Scully has been a Dodger broadcaster since 1950, the longest tenure for a broadcaster with a team. He has been the Dodgers' No. 1 announcer since 1954, succeeding his mentor, Red Barber, who had become an announcer with the New York Yankees. The 88-year-old Scully has said this will be his final season.
Either on the team or NBC broadcasts, Scully has called such memorable moments by the Dodgers (or their opponents) as Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965, New York Yankee pitcher Don Larsen's perfect game against the Dodgers in the 1956 World Series and Hank Aaron's record-setting 715th home run.
Scully's many honors include the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually by the Baseball Hall of Fame to a broadcaster for "major contributions to baseball" and being named the greatest sportscaster by the American
Sportscasters Association.
A ranking system devised by author Curt Smith for his 2005 book "Voices of the Game" determined that Scully was baseball's greatest announcer, giving him a perfect score of 100, based on such factors as longevity,
language, popularity and persona.
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