By Edwin Cooney
As I begin this annual trip down World Series Memory Lane, I offer once again my observation that while teams get the glory for victory or blame for defeat, World Series heroes are always individuals.
Ever since the American League’s Cleveland Indians and the National League’s Chicago Cubs achieved their right to play in the 112th Professional Baseball World Series, there has been a tendency on the part of scribes and broadcasters to call the 2016 World Series historic. Exciting and wonderful as it truly is, I insist that there’s nothing particularly “historic” about this year’s fall classic. In order to be historic, a trend, an outside situation or condition, or internal circumstance must be present. Here are five historic World Series.
The 1903 World Series between the Boston Pilgrims or Americans (take your pick!) and the Pittsburgh Pirates is historic because it was the first World Series and thus started a trend.
The 1918 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs was historic for several reasons. First, due to our involvement in World War I and the Wilson administration’s insistence that major league players were subject to the draft, major league owners were forced to begin the World Series on Tuesday, September 2nd, a month before it otherwise would have begun. Second, it was during that World Series that “The Star Spangled Banner” was first played. Hence, baseball and patriotism have been permanently linked on a daily basis. Third, there was nearly a strike by the players over World Series shares. The strike was narrowly avoided just before the fourth game.
Certainly the 1919 “Black Sox” series was historic: it was due to the result of the subsequent scandal that baseball took the necessary steps to eradicate gambling from professional baseball.
The 1989 “earthquake” World Series was dramatically historic. The Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants were getting ready to play the third game of the series at Candlestick Park when a 7.9 “shaker” rocked the entire park cutting off lighting within the park and communication with the radio and television networks that were preparing to bring the series to the public. The series wouldn’t resume until Saturday, October 28th. In the meantime, there was tentative discussion about moving the series to another location if conditions within the Bay Area of Northern California hadn’t stabilized.
Some insist that the 2001 World Series was historic for two reasons. First, it was played in the crisis atmosphere of the 9/11 catastrophe. No one could be sure that another terrorist attack on the heels of September 11th might not be forthcoming -- especially at Yankee Stadium in New York. Second, the 2001 World Series was the first one to extend into November. The Yankee’s Derek Jeter hit the first ever November home run, but the Yankees were eventually beaten by the Arizona Diamondbacks. Neither the Diamondbacks win nor the Yankee’s loss was historic, but everything affected by 9/11 was certainly significant.
As i wrote earlier, individuals (rather than teams) are the ultimate World Series heroes. Sure, people remember the 1927 and even the 1961 Yankees as well as the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals “Gashouse Gang,” but in 2016 the names of two players, Don Larsen and Frank Robinson, and one broadcaster, Vin Scully, come to both mind and heart.
The 1956 World Series may have featured Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Duke Snyder, and Jackie Robinson, but its brightest star was Yankee pitcher Don Larsen. A native of Michigan City, Indiana where he was born on Thursday, August 1st, 1929, Donald James Larsen was what baseball calls “a journeyman pitcher” throughout his big league career. However, his career was loaded with many distinctions. On Wednesday, April 14th, 1954, he was the losing pitcher for the new Baltimore Orioles. The team had just moved from St. Louis to Baltimore and changed their name from the Browns to the Orioles. Larsen’s record in 1954 was 3-21. In December of that year, the Yankees and Orioles made an 18 player swap and Larsen was one of the “swapees.” Following a stint in Denver where he went 9-3, Larsen joined the Yankees where he went 11-4 in 1956.
Larsen’s career peaked on Monday, October 8th, 1956 when he pitched a 2-0 perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. This performance came after a night of drinking with teammates Billy Martin and Mickey Mantle. Almost as amazing was the fact that six years later to the day, he defeated the Yankees at Yankee Stadium as a reliever for the San Francisco Giants. Larsen was a good hitting pitcher, too. He had 14 career home runs and went 12 for 66 as a pinch hitter throughout his career.
The year 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of Frank Robinson’s greatest season during which he hit 49 home runs, batted .316 and drove in 122 runs. He won the American League Triple Crown and the Most Valuable Player award. A native of Beaumont, Texas where he was born on Saturday, August 31st, 1935, Frank Robinson’s career was jam-packed with success as both a player and a manager. It has been said of the 1966 World Series Orioles’ sweep over the Los Angeles Dodgers that “the series began with Frank Robinson and ended with Frank Robinson.” In game one, he hit a two run blast off Don Drysdale and, in game four, he hit a second drive off “Big Don” that scored the only run of the game to conclude the 1966 “fall classic.” Fifty years ago this month, the Orioles not only swept the Dodgers, but held them runless after three and one third innings of Game One. Baltimore’s “baby birds” shocked much of the baseball world as they literally overwhelmed the veteran stars of Los Angeles.
Since 1950l broadcasts of many World Series games have carried with them a special expectation -- that they would be broadcast by Vincent Edward Scully. Vin Scully was born on Tuesday, November 29th, 1927 in the Bronx, New York. His warm, controlled but fluid baritone voice invited millions of fans to “pull up a chair.” You didn’t have to be a Dodgers’ fan to feel welcome to Vin Scully’s broadcast or even to his world. Vinny often described star players’ moves as “poetry in motion.” His presentations were a combination of poetry and melody inviting the listener to come along to share his pleasure.
The World Series, be it historic or not, constitutes an annual invitation to savor the best in baseball because a championship is ever fleeting. The day after the winning run is scored and the final out is recorded, spring training is already being anticipated in millions of hearts because, after all, a championship in all its glory is, at the instant of its acknowledgment, yesterday’s story -- and as the song reminds us, “yesterday’s gone.”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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