The Greatest

There are many debates in sports and politics. Who was the greatest player of all time? The greatest President. Baseball is a sport that, due to the incredible lack of any significant rule changes, lends itself well to debates about different eras.
There is one category about which there can be no debate: greatest announcer ever. It is the Dodgers' Vin Scully, hands down.
Vin is in his 60th season with the Dodgers. To put that in perspective, he started announcing for the Dodgers during the Truman Administration. The Dodgers did not even play in Los Angeles when he started (rumor has it they played in Brooklyn). I won't even try to count how many teams have come into Major League baseball since Vin started calling games. I do know that the Washington Senators and Montreal Expos came and went. Division play started, the designated hitter, the wild card, and ESPN have all come into existence since Scully started.
But longevity alone does not make Scully great. Listening to him announce a game is like having a very nice gentleman sitting in your living room describing the action to you. It is conversational, and very pleasant conversation at that. He doesn't scream or cheer for the home team. He is not a wacky character who you tune in to see what outrageous thing he will say next. Vin Scully just calls the game.
For many of us his voice is the soundtrack of our life. As a kid I grew up with "Garvey-Lopes-Russell and Cey". In college there was Fernandomania ("if you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky"). Also, the simple call on Kirk Gibson's memorable 1988 World Series homerun "she is gone!". Now my sons get to listen to Vin Scully announce Dodger games with me, as I did with my Dad.
There have been tough moments. I remember him announcing the death of his broadcast partner and Dodger great Don Drysdale. As always, he was eloquent in discussing the death of Angels' pitcher Nick Adenhart a few weeks back.
After 60 years he is a good as ever. Sure, there is an occasional name wrong, but he quickly corrects himself, usually with self-deprecating humor. Most importantly, he makes a 10-0 loss in September when the Dodgers have been eliminated from the pennant race three weeks earlier just as interesting to listen to as a late September game with the pennant on the line.
You can tune in in the middle of the game and it is as though he saw you walk in the room and catches you up. You have a question about a player and it is as though he heard you and answers it.
60 years at the mike for the Dodgers. There are few things, other than breathing, that people do for 60 years. There are even fewer things that people do just as well as ever after 60 years (let's face it, the breathing gets tougher). Vin Scully however is still the best , simply the greatest.