Locals recall Scully’s final home game

When Eric Snyder of Creston was collecting baseball cards as a youth of some of his favorite Los Angeles Dodgers, he didn’t realize that someday he’d be seated in Dodger Stadium for one of the most historic days in the team’s history.

Eric, joined by wife Brandi and son Billy, were at the final Dodgers home game of the 2016 season on Sept. 24. The Dodgers had already clinched a playoff berth, but the game attended by the Snyders was significant for another reason.

It was the final home broadcast for legendary radio and television announcer Vin Scully, who would retire at the end of that season. When Scully died on Aug. 2, Snyder recalled the special memory of being in Dodger Stadium that day.

“I liked the Dodgers since the days of Dusty Baker, Davey Lopes and Steve Garvey,” said Snyder, now 52. “I was buying their baseball cards in the early 1980s. We were visiting relatives in the Long Beach area during our trip out there in 2016, and going to Dodger Stadium for a game was part of our plan. It just so happened to be Vin Scully’s last game there as a broadcaster.”

“VIN” was painted on the field along the baselines that day, and Scully hung a sign from the broadcast booth that said, “Will Miss You.” As they came to bat, each Dodger player tipped their cap to Scully in the booth.

The Snyder family each received one of the commemorative Vin Scully coins distributed to the first 10,000 fans through the gates that day. Snyder took some photos of Scully waving to fans from the booth, and other special events taking place.

Scully was the longest tenured broadcaster with a single team in pro sports history. He began in the era of Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson in the 1950s, then stayed on as the team moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. He broadcast games by legends such as Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax in the 1960s, into the 1970s with Garvey and Lopes, through the 1980s with Orel Hersheiser and Fernando Valenzuela, into the 1990s when the team had Mike Piazza and Hideo Nomo before wrapping up his career in the 21st century with the likes of Clayton Kershaw and Manny Ramirez.

Scully, who died at age 94, broadcast more than 4,000 games at Dodger Stadium, culminating in that September 2016 game attended by the Snyders. When he went on the air that day he told viewers that since 1958, “You and I have really grown up together, through the good times and the bad.”

Dodger Stadium was one of four Major League ballparks visited by the Snyders on that 2016 trip through the western United States. They also saw home games of the Anaheim Angels, San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks. On the same trip, they saw 500 hot air balloons in the National Hot Air Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“We travel a lot,” said Snyder, a 27-year United Parcel Service employee.

The family has visited more than 200 sports venues, including more than 100 college football stadiums across the United States. They have attended games in 19 Major League Baseball stadiums.

When news broke two weeks ago of Vin Scully’s death, that visit to Dodger Stadium on a late September afternoon in 2016 took on a new meaning.

Not many Iowans can say, “I was there.”