Vin Scully, baseball’s greatest narrator, called his last game at Dodgers Stadium on Sunday, closing with a division-clinching walk-off homer by Charlie Culberson. As the ball landed in the bleachers, Scully sounded as charmed as everyone by the cinematic ending to his career in Los Angeles: “Would you believe a home run?” After the game, the announcing legend played “Wind Beneath My Wings” over the loudspeakers to a standing ovation.
Scully, who calls the final game of his 67-year career this upcoming Sunday in San Francisco, joined the Dodgers when the club still played in Brooklyn. The year was 1950. The world was a far different place. Scully’s time in the booth, starting with a 9-1 loss to the Del Ennis-led Philadelphia Phillies, outlasted apartheid, the Cold War, and Charles Schulz’s Peanuts column, which launched the same year. These are some other facts about that fateful time.
In 1950…
• The U.S. consisted of 48 states
• The country’s population was 151 million
• Major League Baseball consisted of 16 teams
• Five MLB teams employed a black player
• 95 percent of American households owned radio receivers
• 9 percent of American households owned a television set
• Minimum wage was 75 cents per hour
• One dozen eggs cost 49 cents
• A Dodgers game ticket cost $1.66
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• The highest grossing movie was “King Solomon’s Mines”
• A movie ticket cost 37 cents
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