Opening Day Means Vin Is Back In My Life.

I hate everything Dodger. I was raised by two New Yorkers who loved the Brooklyn Dodgers with all their hearts, and still curse the O'Malleys for moving, so despite being an L.A. native, I was raised to do everything but Think Blue. Regardless of my dislike, my dad and I always liked one thing about the Dodgers, and that is Vin Scully.

Whenever I'd go to games at Dodger Stadium with my dad (usually when the Mets were visiting), I'd bring the radio along so I could listen to Vin call it live in the stadium; to this day, every game he calls in his limited schedule is still something to plan a day around, because he is just that good. In the age of three-man-booths, he is play-by-play man and color commentator all rolled into one, and that requires an alert, astute, and bright man to do that.

But Scully's real brilliance is that he calls baseball telecasts as if he were still calling it on radio: adding all the little details about the ballpark, the visual elements of the players, and everything else that we can see on TV, but wouldn't think about unless he made a note of it. Those kinds of announcers are shuffling off the mortal coil -- Twins radio voice Herb Carneal passed away yesterday -- and the first year of Dodger telecasts without Vin will be a sad one for me.

(Mindless fantasy tangent: I'm going to eat it for keeping Lowe and trading Schmidt, clearly, this early jam for Lowe is not good for me -- and maybe I shouldn't have dumped Rickie Weeks.)