When Vin Scully arrived from Brooklyn with the Dodgers for the 1958 season, he found Los Angeles to be lacking a core.
“When I came to Los Angeles, all I knew was that it was like 450 square miles. There was no ‘there.’ I felt Los Angeles did not have a centerpiece.”
The opening of Dodger Stadium in 1962 changed that.
“In a sense, Dodger Stadium put the ‘there’ in Los Angeles,” Scully said. “I believe the stadium helped to reunite this spacious community that extends from here to there.”
The stadium opened exactly 50 years ago Tuesday, and the Hall of Fame broadcaster shared his thoughts and memories of the ballpark in a recent interview:
The now-extinct dugout seats:
“Now, I was told this was absolutely true: Giants-Dodgers game, late in the game, Giants rallying, crowd going bananas, Willie Mays in the on-deck circle and all that stuff, Willie McCovey going to hit in back of him, and Milton Berle, a comedian, is sitting in a dugout seat.
“Now, Mays is going to come up. And as Mays started to walk up to the plate, Berle hollered, ‘Willie!’ Mays looked over and recognized Berle. Berle said, ‘Come here a minute.’ Willie actually started, instinctively, to come over and realized, ‘What am I, crazy? I’m in the middle of a game!’
“Doris Day used to love those seats. She was a sweet lady. You would see her a lot. Cary Grant, when he was married to Dyan Cannon, they would sit in those dugout seats.”
Construction insight from longtime owner Peter O’Malley:
“Mr. O’Malley pointed out an interesting thing that I never thought of. They were building the stadium and he said, ‘The most expensive seats are the cheapest to install. And the cheapest seats are the most expensive to install.’
“He said, ‘The box seat is the most expensive. It’s right on the ground. The cheapest seat is way the hell up there. Just think of all the steel and concrete and everything else you need to put that seat way up there.’ ”
for many more excerpts form the best announcer in baseball…For Vin Scully, the view from Dodger Stadium never gets old