What Life Was Like During Vin Scully’s Rookie Season
The country itself was fundamentally different
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.