The Dodgers "do not plan to bring Steve Lyons and Eric Collins back to their broadcast team next year," according to Bill Shaikin of the L.A. TIMES. Lyons had worked on the Dodgers' TV broadcasts "for nine years, most recently as an analyst on road games and on pregame and postgame shows." Collins, with the Dodgers "for five years, had served as the play-by-play voice on televised games outside California and Arizona -- that is, the games to which Vin Scully did not travel." The Dodgers are "expected to bring back the rest of their broadcasters -- Scully, Charley Steiner and Rick Monday, as well as the Spanish-language team of Jaime Jarrin, Pepe Yniguez and Fernando Valenzuela" (LATIMES.com, 10/12). In L.A., Hector Becerra wrote Scully may be baseball's "poet laureate, but the man who has shared the Dodgers airwaves with him for 55 years is no slouch in the lyricism department." Jarrin has been a "fixture with the Dodgers since joining the organization as a 19-year-old and broadcasting his first game a year later." Like Scully, Jarrin is a HOFer, making the Dodgers "the only team with two announcers enshrined in Cooperstown." But in many ways, and "perhaps not surprisingly, he inhabits a parallel world that makes him hard to fully appreciate if you're not a Spanish speaker." Dodgers 1B Adrian Gonzalez said of Jarrin, "He's kind of like Vin Scully to Spanish-speaking people. He's been here so long; he's been through it all." Even after more than "half a century as the announcer for one of the most storied teams in sports, Jarrin doesn't act like a star" (L.A. TIMES, 10/11).
