LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Dodgers' remarkable run in the National League West this season extended to Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, who will return to the booth for an unprecedented 65th season in 2014.
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Chris Williams/Icon SMIVin Scully acknowledges a standing ovation from the Dodger Stadium crowd on the night last month when his bobblehead was given out.
The announcement was made Friday. Scully again will call all Dodgers home games and road games played in California and Arizona.
"I have thoroughly enjoyed the excitement of this season, and there is no way I could leave this truly remarkable team and our great fans," Scully said in a statement. "With my wife Sandi's blessing, I've decided I'd like to come back and do it again next season. I love what the new ownership has brought to the team and the energy provided by the fans, who have packed renovated Dodger Stadium. It reminds me that other than being home with my family there is no place else I'd rather be."
Earlier this year, the Dodgers announced plans to launch a regional sports network funded almost entirely by Time Warner Cable in 2014 called SportsNet LA, which will broadcast Dodgers games for the next 25 years. Scully will call all nine innings of the team's television broadcasts on the network beginning next season, with the first three innings of each game simulcast on the radio.
"We're so grateful that Vin wants to continue to call Dodger games," Dodgers owner Magic Johnson said. "Being able to listen to Vin helps make every Dodger game something special."
Scully, 85, has usually decided around this time of year whether he will return to the booth. He has said he has been reinvigorated by the Dodgers' worst-to-first run in the division this summer. Scully will call the Dodgers' potential playoff games on the radio when the networks take over broadcasting the games on television.
He began his professional baseball broadcasting career in 1950 with the Brooklyn Dodgers and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. Scully has called three perfect games, 25 no-hitters, 25 World Series and 12 All-Star Games.
When Scully began broadcasting, the Dodgers had yet to win a World Series. Three years later, at age 25, he became the youngest person ever to broadcast a World Series game, and in 1955, he called the Dodgers' first and only championship in Brooklyn.
When asked last year how much longer he'll work, Scully mentioned that his mother lived to be 97.
"I doubt very much I'll live that long. We've had lives that have been totally different, but we'll give it a shot," he said. "I'm not even thinking about doing games when I'm 97."
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