Announcers

While the Dodgers' acquisition of a top starting pitcher before the trading deadline remains woefully uncertain, one thing has become wonderfully clear. They just got their ace. Vin Scully, thought to be retiring this winter after 60 seasons, said this week he is planning on coming back for one more summer. Scully, 81, said if he continues to feel well he will work past his landmark year and retire after the 2010 season.

For more than a generation the avuncular John Madden was the principal voice of America's most popular game, professional football. In his more than 30 years as a broadcaster, the former coach turned announcer appeared on all four networks and was familiar to those old enough to remember his 1977 Super Bowl victory with the Oakland Raiders as to those young enough to tackle his bestselling video game.

'Novak for the win," Ralph Lawler says, his deep voice climbing up the sound ladder with each syllable, in perfect rhythm with Steve Novak's three-point shot as it arcs and settles into the net. As time runs out, there is Lawler's voice, sweet sounding as any symphony, musical and exuberant and just so heartfelt. BIIIIINNNGOOO.

It is hard to silence Dick Vitale, and he returns to the air tonight to broadcast the Duke-North Carolina game on ESPN after an absence of more than two months because of surgery to remove ulcers from his vocal cords. For 3 1/2 weeks, Vitale couldn't speak, instead scribbling madly on a grease board for his wife, Lorraine. "I went through so many pens, so many pads!" he said.

Michael Buffer knows how to put an exclamation point on the anticipation of a major boxing match. The veteran ring announcer stepped into the hot Las Vegas spotlights in March, knowing something the crowd didn't: that these precious seconds at the center of attention could be his last. The man whose voice had made a few simple words so famous was facing throat surgery. He had cancer. So, he prefaced those trademarked words.

It is his voice that catches your attention. The accent is at once sharp and fluid, a remnant of his youth in South Africa. And as famed thoroughbred trainer Bob Baffert puts it, "His calls give me goose bumps." Trevor Denman, the voice of Santa Anita, has been calling horse races for as long as he can remember. "When they go to a gate, I go back to being a 12-year-old," he says with a laugh. "That never changes."

There is something not quite right about Don Cherry. It's not his trademark visage -- a pugnacious mug that sprouts from one of his outrageous pink-flowered sport coats and beckons: "Go ahead, take a swing. I dare you." It's not his oft-uttered proclamation: "I'm a redneck." And it's not his matter-of-fact self-analysis: "I can go a little insane sometimes with guys who cross me."

Carlos Amezcua, the longtime KTLA-TV Channel 5 morning news anchor who was viewed as a potential replacement for the late Hal Fishman on the station's 10 p.m. newscast, has decided to move to rival KTTV-TV Channel 11, station officials said Tuesday. Amezcua, who has been with KTLA for more than 16 years, had been working as the interim evening news anchor after Fishman died this summer. "We had hoped that he would be in that position, but obviously things take turns.

Vin Scully, who just completed his 58th season behind the Dodgers microphone, sat down recently in the Dodger Stadium press box to discuss the tumultuous 1957 season -- the Dodgers' final season in Brooklyn -- and what followed: Question: Which team did you root for as a kid? Answer: I was born in the Bronx and raised in an area called Washington Heights. I was able to walk from my grammar school to the old Polo Grounds where the Giants played, so I grew up a rabid Giants fan.

After more than 25 years sharing a warm, cozy booth with co-host Bob Eubanks, Stephanie Edwards found herself perched on a rain-soaked bench Monday morning covering the 117th Tournament of Roses Parade for KTLA-TV Channel 5. Inside the booth this year with veteran Eubanks was KTLA morning news co-anchor Michaela Pereira. "We wanted to add Michaela as a co-host to try something new -- to expand the broadcast," said KTLA spokeswoman Carolyn Aguayo. "We had three co-hosts, basically."