When I was a junior in college (so many, many moons ago), I had a less-than-enjoyable roommate experience. He was very quiet, beyond introversion. He really did not speak much. Our interests barely intersected, if at all. He preferred dance music. I listened to…well, lets pretend that I was really into early 1980s hardcore and not, say, The Early November. I loved sports. He did not. I played sports video games. He definitely did not. I did not drink. He did. I was a communications major, focusing on broadcasting. He wanted to be a city planner.

This background is provided as a way of saying we didn’t spend a lot of nights sitting around the proverbial fire, singing campfire songs. Because I worked a full-time job in addition to being a full-time student, and because of my general aversion to socializing with drunk people, I would spend a lot of time alone. I was, by no means, a “loner.” But I would sit outside of my dorm with the other smokers, dragging on clove after clove. I would watch Seinfeld reruns and have AIM conversations with my high school friends in far off places. But on most nights at 10:00 p.m., I would have a date.

I grew up with baseball in my blood. My grandfather introduced me to the sport and I fell in love with boxscores, which probably explains my statheadedness now as a fully-formed (mostly) adult. But I grew up in Massachusetts and without cable television. I didn’t know National League baseball like a 12 year-old version of me would today. In fact, I wonder whether there is that delineation for a young baseball fan today.

The Los Angeles Dodgers always seemed like a mystery team to me. They weren’t very good in the days of my youth, so I never really got a chance to watch them play, as that only opportunity would have come in the playoffs. But I had seen pictures of Dodger Stadium and really bad Sega Genesis renderings of it and something about that outfield view and that bright, beautiful royal blue meant something to me. They were a baseball team, sure. But they just seemed, I don’t know, different.

I knew about Vincent Edward Scully, the team’s longtime broadcaster. I had heard his call of Kirk Gibson’s World Series Game 1 homer off of Dennis Eckersley. And I had heard his call of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run. But I had never listened to him call a game. Which, as an aspiring broadcaster, was probably the greatest disservice I could have done to myself.

And so, as a lonely college junior, with an MLB.TV subscription, I started watching Dodger games. And I started listening to Vin. Or maybe those sentences should be reversed.

At first, I didn’t have as much interest in rooting for the Dodgers. I certainly wasn’t a fan. Yet, nearly every night, for at least a few innings, I would sit at my computer, headphones on, and listen to this unique voice describe baseball like I had never heard it before. I learned factoids about players that no other announcer would even think to offer and certainly no boxscore would ever include.

Years would pass, but I would never lose that connection to Scully, which developed into a connection to the Dodgers and ultimately a love of and for the city of Los Angeles. I remember my first trip to Dodger Stadium, hearing a taped message from Vin over the PA system, and thinking, “this is more of a bucketlist item than I ever could have imagined.” I had spent countless hours in my early 20s “at” Dodger Stadium. Listening to Scully and the way he knew when to let the crowd speak made me feel, and I imagine many others feel, like we too were there. But actually being there was different. Actually looking out at the San Gabriel Mountains. Actually eating a Dodger dog. Actually looking up at the 5 tiers of early 1960s architectural beauty; it made me appreciate it all that much more. And since then, I have to say, I’ve become a fan of the Dodgers (albeit not at the expense of the Washington Nationals…).

Sunday afternoon will mark the last time Vin Scully will call a game from Dodger Stadium. He’s been calling Dodger games since the 1950s. And for many, many years, he’s done so without a color commentator.

The experience of listening to Vin can be described, but it can’t do it justice. There is no one, has never been anyone, and truly, will never, ever be anyone who mans the broadcast booth in the way that Vin Scully does.

He made many a quiet, boring, lonely college night better, simply by saying “It’s time for Dodger baseball.” And even now, those five words can improve any night for me, no matter how good. His voice has been such an important part of my life for the past decade that I honestly don’t know what baseball will be like for me without him.

What I do know is that I would not be the baseball fan that I am without him. I wouldn’t love Los Angeles like I do, without him. And I wouldn’t necessarily root for the Dodgers like I do, without him. Which is all the more interesting because Vin never makes it about the Dodgers. There are never any “we’s” in his commentary. He’s worked for the Dodgers in 7 different decades, but he considers himself no more a part of the team than the fan sitting in Section 114 should.

But to me, Vin is the Dodgers. He is west coast baseball. And he is the standard-bearer for his profession.

There are still some games left for Vin, as he’ll make a rare road trip and finish in San Francisco next Sunday, but for me, this Sunday’s game, his last at Dodger Stadium, will be special. Baseball, and thus, my life, will never be the same without him, welcoming me, a hardened, sarcastic, bitter East Coaster, into one of the most beautiful settings in baseball, with those magical 5 words. Sunday, it will indeed be time for Dodger baseball.