As always, he began by wishing us a pleasant evening, where ever we may be. Routine and ritual are an essential part of baseball, and that goes doubly for baseball announcing; Vin was never going to deviate from the opening line that has signaled the imminent opening pitch to Angelenos for nearly six decades, not even on a night dedicated to his magnificent career.
But as surely as Vin was never going to abandon the cheerful normalcy of his trademark greeting, he was never going to pretend that it wasn’t a momentous night - pretend that Sandy Koufax and Clayton Kershaw hadn't both just praised him to the heavens, or act as if the club that has employed him since the Truman administration hadn't just formally enshrined him with a handful of names who are now more legend than man. To do so would be false humility, and more than that, it would be plain rude. It would be a rejection of the heartfelt love that LA, and all of baseball, wanted to show him. And Vin could never do that.
So he acknowledged it. He didn't downplay it, and he didn't act as if it were a minor award he'd been given. He described it for what it was - the culmination of a remarkable life's work. And after he'd done so, as gracefully as a man uncomfortable with praise for his role in a kid's game could possibly do, he said "that's enough of that," and began to paint the picture for an exciting late-season Dodger game.
It was as professional a moment as he's had in his extraordinary career, precisely because it was so ordinary and decent.