SAN FRANCISCO — Ten years ago today, Vin Scully delivered his swan song at what was then AT&T Park — now Oracle Park — as the San Francisco Giants beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-1 in a finale where the result was secondary to the voice saying goodbye.
The tributes framed the afternoon. Part of Scully's call was simulcast on both home and away feeds as well as ESPN, the Giants dedicated a plaque in the visiting broadcasting booth and handed out dual-sided cheer cards featuring the plaque on one side and a thank-you message on the other — keepsakes the author notes have been framed in his apartment for nearly a decade. For those in the ballpark, the wait to hear Scully's final send-off was worth it, a farewell that still brings a tear with every replay.
The baseball itself was forgettable. Kenta Maeda was knocked around early and often as Los Angeles fell 7-1. The piece notes symmetry a decade later with the recent retirement of longtime Giants announcer Mike Krukow, when the Dodgers won an otherwise forgettable game destined to fade into history. In the decade since, Joe Davis has charted his own course alongside Orel Hershiser, including the anecdote that Davis inadvertently screened Scully twice upon getting the Dodgers job.
The remembrance pushes back on the temptation to use artificial intelligence to graft Scully's voice onto highlights of this era, arguing that while well-meaning, it misses the point and lessens his legacy. If the Dodgers have done anything right in the past decade, apart from signing Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, it is embracing that each era should have its own soundtrack and voice. Scully was not one for ego or monument, and cracking wise with Stephen Nelson and Dontrelle Willis cannot measure up by definition — and does not have to — as time marches on and the way baseball is consumed has changed.
Scully enjoyed his retirement with his family for six years, popping up most notably for Game 2 of the 2017 World Series, before passing away on Aug. 2, 2022, at the age of 94 while the Dodgers were playing the Giants at Oracle Park. Tributes poured in then as the baseball world joined Dodger fans in grief, and ten years after that final call in San Francisco, his closing words still offer encouragement: "Don't be sad that it's over," he said. "Smile because it happened."