Pictures courtesy of Kansas City Royals

Denny Matthews will call his 8,000th Royals game this Friday night, a number that includes the postseason and has grown over 58 seasons since the club’s inception in 1969.

He’s one of four announcers in Major League history to broadcast for the same team for at least 50 seasons, along with Vin Scully (67 seasons) and Jaime Jarrín (64) with the Dodgers and Bob Uecker (54) with the Brewers.

Denny’s broadcasting career with the Royals has spanned seven decades…he’s called games for all seven of the Royals division-winning teams, all four pennant-winning teams and both World Series titles, in 1985 and 2015.

Denny was 26 years old when he started calling Royals games in 1969…through the Royals first 32 seasons (1969-2000), he called 5,061 of the club’s 5,084 games (99.5%) including the postseason, missing only 23 games in those 32 years, at which point he was 58 years old.