In August, Los Angeles Dodger play-by-play announcer Vin Scully declared that he’d return next season for a record breaking 64th campaign with the club. It was a pretty big deal in Southern California – Everybody here exhaled in relief and blew an extra quantity of smog to the east, explaining those particularly polluted days in Phoenix early in September. The Dodgers without Scully? Unthinkable. You might as well take Mason away from Dixon, Black away from Decker, or Hall away from Oates.

(By the by, the Dodgers’ Spanish-language play-by-play guy, the estimable Jaime Jarrin, announced around the same time that he’d be coming back, too, for a 55th season…thus making him only the second-longest tenured announcer in baseball.)

Wait, you say. This isn’t a Los Angeles Dodger blog. It isn’t even a baseball blog. Has Beechen been without basketball for so long that he’s completely lost his grip? [Read more...]