It was much like any other typical Dodgers-Giants game except for one difference, one enormous difference. The date was Friday, July 20, 1969 and the two bitter rivals were squaring off against each other at famed Candlestick Park – a still very new Candlestick Park that was celebrating it’s ninth season in existence. As he had done for the past 20 seasons and would continue to do for the next 47, then future Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully was at the microphone calling the game from the visiting team’s broadcasting booth.

At the time there were no regional sports networks, no SportsNet LA or Fox or Cox or KTLA or KCAL television broadcasts of the game because games were rarely televised in those days except on special occasions; and even if it were, no one would have been watching it that day anyway. Instead, on that day – Friday, July 20, 1969 – nearly every television in America, the world for that matter, was tuned in to a live television broadcast … from the moon.

Dodgers and Giants fans, even the most die-hard among them, were glued to their television sets watching United States astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. walk on the surface of the moon – the first human beings to ever do so – thus fulfilling former president John F. Kennedy’s dream and proclamation of: “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”

Buzz Aldrin’s footprint on the moon is perhaps one of the most famous photographs in history.
(NASA photo)

Yes, the game went on and yes the great Vin Scully and partner Jerry Doggett called it over the radio – then on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles (the Dodgers lost 7-3 with Hall of Fame right-hander Gaylord Perry getting the win and hitting a home run off of Dodgers left-hander Claude Osteen) – but Scully will be the first to question as to why on earth (pun intended) you were listening to him when you should have been listening to and watching perhaps the single most historic event the world has ever seen?

American astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. He was photographed here by fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon.
(NASA photo)

That was 47 years ago today. And though Neil Armstrong and Jerry Doggett have since passed at ages 82 and 81 respectively, Vin Scully (88) and Buzz Aldrin (86) are still around and are, in fact, good friends.

Buzz Aldrin and Vin Scully share a moment on Memorial Day 2013 shortly after Aldrin threw out the ceremonial first pitch. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

For reasons that nobody knows – except perhaps by his own request – it took until 2014 for Scully to be named Grand Marshal of the annual Rose Parade, an honor and distinction that Aldrin fulfilled in 1999 along with Shirley Temple Black and the great Jackie Robinson (posthumously).

Vin and Sandi Scully at the 2014 Rose Parade.
(Photo credit – Allen J. Schaben)

Although many of today’s Dodger fans weren’t yet born when Neil Armstrong said the historic words “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” – the first words ever spoken from the surface of the moon – many of us were. And for us, those words, which were all-inclusive and never intended to be gender-specific, are every bit as important and memorable as “play ball.”