It had never occurred to me. That Vin Scully’s hair might not be his own.

It required a British colleague, at The National, to make me confront this.

He had seen a photo of the Dodgers broadcaster on a page proof; I had run a small story on our two-page lighter-side-of-sports package in The National, here in the UAE, explaining how Scully has committed to calling Dodgers games next year, his 65th consecutive year of doing so, when he will be 86 years old. (Inshallah, as we say in Arabia.)

It was a bit self-indulgent, as a bit of journalism; most people who see the newspaper here don’t know baseball, aside from maybe the Yankees, and the guy who does radio and TV for the team in Los Angeles … well, that’s obscure, on this side of the world. But I ran with it, anyway, because I wanted people here to be aware of this Los Angeles … well, “institution” is the only fitting word.

So, back to the newsroom. Said the colleague: “Who’s the guy with the rug?”

And my first reaction was, “That’s not a rug! Everything about Vin Scully is genuine. He’s just been lucky with his hair. He’s had that hair forever.” Some of which I verbalized; most of which I did not.

Later, reflecting on it, I had to wonder. The man is 85. A fairly good chance that is not his hair. And at age 85, it cannot really be red. And “he’s had that hair forever” would seem to suggest it’s a rug. That’s the thing about rugs; they always look the same.

Which is not as important as the greater realization that most anyone who has paid any attention to Dodgers baseball since 1950 … no longer is rational about Vin Scully. Including me. Absolutely. He is untouchable, beyond criticism, and only a churl would think otherwise.

And it led me to mull: “How does a guy become beloved and revered? What is Vinny’s secret?”

A couple of obvious explanations.

–He is very good at what he does.

–He has been doing it a very long time.

–He is identified with a sports franchise with deep roots, significant history and an emotional hold on millions of fans living in Southern California.

Three-plus generations of Angelenos associate that voice with the ballpark experience, which for most of them is a memory of good times with friends and loved ones. And Vinny has moved into those memories, become part of them. Someone who has, in fact, “pulled up a chair” inside our heads.

But what I believe has been the biggest factor in his becoming beloved … someone we all hope does Dodgers games for the rest of our lives … is his unerring focus on baseball. On the game.

He has not always been applauded for that.

Think back about what has happened since 1950, his first year with the Dodgers, in Brooklyn. Every team in baseball signed black and Latin and foreign players. The Korean War, Vietnam, social upheaval, economic dislocation, terrorism, the internet … the world of 2013 is not at all like Brooklyn 1950. It has moved on in ways Scully certainly would concede he could not have expected.

But through all those changes, many of which were deeply polarizing to the nation, to California … Scully has kept his focus on his job: Calling baseball games.

Not to pass judgment on off-the-field activities. Not to dwell on (or even much acknowledge) the strange and often unhappy events away from the ballpark.

Vin Scully has put up a wall between what happens on that big patch of green … and what happens outside the stadium. He also has, by steady omission, created a gap between the Voice of the Dodgers and his life away from the microphone.

What do we actually know about Vin Scully? We know he has a wife. He mentioned her, when talking about coming back in 2014. If we search through his wiki page, we get a few facts under the personal life subhed … but how much of any of that did we know at the time?

I will not go any further with long-range psychoanalysis than this: Perhaps the way in which he internalized grief, in his own life — by going to the ballpark — became the framework for what is now the almost blank page in our heads about “Vinny away from baseball.”

(Consider what we don’t know about him. The car he drives; where he lives; what he does on his days off; his hobbies; his grandchildren; his favorite food; his favorite author. This may be the Information Age, but what we do not know about him is astonishing … and we are fine with that.)

Did he plan that? Did it evolve?

Either way, it was the best way possible to proceed with a career. Even if some in the media have criticized him, over the decades, for his clear preference not to talk about bad news — pertaining to the Dodgers or the world — while on the air. He has several times been asked to take a stand and he rarely, if ever, has. And it is not about not having opinions — it is his certain knowledge that we watch baseball to escape from life’s cares and woes, not to bring them to the ballpark.

Vin Scully now exists in a realm where practically none of us can have a reason for disliking him. We don’t know what his politics are, we’re not at all sure what he thinks about any scandal in sports.

We don’t know where he stands on any issues other than these:

He loves to go the ballpark and talk about the game of baseball, and in particular the Dodgers. And better yet, he clearly cherishes his job, realizes how fortunate he has been — and tells us — and his enthusiasm and joy and wonder and an almost childlike innocence is clearly communicated to those who are listening.

In a world sometimes hard and evil, and always unpredictable, and often not in nice ways, Vin Scully is a safe haven. A diversion. A wonderful, soothing diversion, a dependable friend who gives and never asks for anything in return.

How could we not love a man like that?

I doubt he planned to get where he is now, deep inside the brains of millions of fans. But he has been there a very long time, and we hope he never leaves.