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New address unveiled Monday. Photo: Stuart Rapeport.
With the Dodgers home opener today, the team and City Hall yesterday changed the name of Elysian Park Avenue where it enters the Dodger Stadium gates to Vin Scully Avenue. With the change came a new mailing address for the stadium: 1000 Vin Scully Avenue. Scully, 88, delivered a speech to a few hundred fans and a bunch of officials, and reconfirmed this will be his final season at the microphone. This is his 67th season with the Dodgers.
"The roar of the crowd," Scully said. "That's what I'm going to miss the most." After the onlookers cheered, he added: "I don't know you, and I miss you, each and every one of you."
The name change is not without controversy. City Councilman Gil Cedillo just sort of popped it on the community as a done deal, and members of the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park and the Echo Park Historical Society both spokes against the change at the City Council last week. Businesses and residents of the street, which has been around for more than 100 years, will also have their addresses changed.
From, the Eastsider LA:
“I feel that Elysian Park Avenue is the entrance to the park. It’s not the entrance to the Dodgers,” said a woman who spoke against the name change. Elysian Park Avenue is “the entrance to the quinceañeras, to the parties [in the park], the entrance to the police academy. It’s much more than just the Dodgers. Elysian Park has been there before the Dodgers. I think you should consider that perspective.”
Eric R. Eisenberg, who owns property on Elysian Park Avenue and is president of the city’s Department of Transportation Commission, said that Vin Scully was a household name in his family but that the old street name holds historic value. “Elysian Park Avenue is undoubtedly historic to our community,” he said.
The Dodgers come home for the first game with the season already looking tumultuous. They began the year with 10 players sidelined by injuries, the most of any team, then swept the Padres in San Diego by a combined score of 25-0 over three games. Since then, they are 1-3 and did not look very good against the Giants, allowing 26 runs.
The losses include the game where rookie Ross Stripling pitched into the 8th inning with a no-hitter but was pulled by manager Dave Roberts after throwing more pitches than he ever had in his career, and starting to struggle, amif concerns about his surgically repaired arm. The controversy over yanking a starter int he late stages of a no-hitter was amplified when the next pitcher allowed the Giants a game-tying home run. The Giants went on to win in an extra-inning walk-off.
As for the street name change, LA Times columnist Dylan Hernandez may have had the best line when he praised Scully's voice at the mic: "Who else could make something as disgusting as a Dodger Dog sound delicious?"
Also: Behind the scenes with KTLA reporter Eric Spillman.
Look what I got! (Just to show on TV, not as a souvenir) pic.twitter.com/ypUHqOvvbW
— eric spillman (@ericspillman) April 11, 2016
