October 25, 2018--Say-Hey Kid: The Catch

Uncle Jack had tickets for two box seats for the first game of the 1954 World Series. It was a day game and the New York Giants were hosting the Cleveland Indians at their home field, the vast Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan. The tickets were for himself and his son Lewis.

Jack owned and ran a thriving international business and so it was not unusual that he had something urgent to deal with just at the time the game was scheduled to begin. So he asked me, I was16 at the time, if I could fill in for him and take cousin Lewis to the game. He was just ten and so I felt flattered to be trusted with so much responsibility and excited to be going to my first World Series game.

And so packed in with other fans we took the rickety elevated train line all the way up to 157th Street and Eighth Avenue, to the former meadow, Coogans Bluff in the center of Harlem, where the Polo Grounds was located.

It was a huge stadium, perhaps the largest of any Major League stadium then or now. Deepest center field, for example, was 455 feet from home plate. Typically a center field wall was and is no more than 420 feet from home plate. As at the Yankee Stadium at the time. And so the Polo Grounds could accommodate 55,000 fans.

I had been to Yankee Stadium once but as a Brooklyn boy, Ebetts Field, which had 32,000 seats, a cosy place by comparison, was my frame of reference.

But we had box seats--also something I had never experienced--and so I anticipated being close enough to the playing field to see the spin on curve balls. Or the spit on spit balls!

An usher peered at our ticket stubs and said, "Good for you boys. I see you have box seats with yours being in the first row of the lower deck. Just head that way," he said pointing,"And enjoy the game."

We raced in the direction of the Giants' dugout and when we got there realized our seats were still further, out toward right field. But when we got there, out of breath, we saw we had to keep going, all the way to center field. From this I knew we would be too far from the diamond that I could forgot any thoughts about seeing the spin on pitches. 

In fact, the Polo Grounds was so vast that we might have to strain even to see the pitchers and batters. But we would have a closeup view of the Giants' centerfielder, the incredible Willie Mays. The Say-Hey Kid. 

"We'll at least be able to see him chewing tobacco," I said to Lewis. In truth feeling a bit deflated. Though Mays played so shallow that even that might not be possible.

It was a pitchers' duel with the score tied 2-2 at the top of the 8th inning.

Cleveland immediately threatened. The Giant's pitcher, Sal (the barber) Maglie, gave up a walk and a single and so there were two men on and nobody out.

Vic Wertz stepped to the plate. He was one of the League's most fearsome sluggers. He had hit 29 during the season. Giant fans suddenly grew quiet.

Wertz got ahold of a fast ball and hit a monster drive to deepest center field. 

At the crack of the bat Willie Mays turned his back to the plate and, running full speed, raced right by where Lewis and I were seated--actually, along with everyone else, where we were by then standing--and right in front of us, close enough that we could almost reach out and touch him, over his shoulder, with his back still to home plate, he caught the ball, cradling it basket style, his signature move, and then wheeling about, threw the ball toward the infield, tumbling to the ground from the effort.

The ball flew directly to the second baseman, a perfect strike, who in turn did not allow the runners to advance.

Some said the catch was the best of all time, others that Mays's throw was what was remarkable.

Probably both were right.

The Indian's spirit was shattered and after the third out in the 8th in effect they collapsed and the Giants won, 5-2.

And they continued to win, sweeping Cleveland in four-straight games.

Another cousin somehow found this picture and enhanced it so you can see me in my striped shirt and my mouth open in wonderment.

We can't as yet locate Lewis.

April 2, 2014--Kill the Umpire!

After a funky start last week that saw the L.A. Dodgers play two games with the Arizona Diamondbacks in Australia, yesterday was the full launch of the official baseball season. For me, a lifelong Yankee fan, this means the Bronx Bombers got off to a bad start against, losing to the Houston Astros 6 to 2.

In addition to a year-long celebration of Derek Jeter's last season (he got one hit and scored a run in the season opener), Major League Baseball is expanding its instant-replay rules. In recent years, because of a number of controversies about whether or not home runs were fair or foul, they instituted replays so umpires could get it right.

Not everyone was happy with any rule changes in America's most traditional sport, but since home runs are so consequential, umpires were allowed to use technology.

For this season, there are new, much more dramatic options available to umpires and, most debated, managers.

As in football and tennis, they are being given a number of challenges.

Up to the 6th inning, managers will have one challenge and then after that two more.

Umpires will still use replay for home runs but managers can challenge if a ball hit down the left-field line is fair or foul, if a runner is or isn't tagged out when running the base paths or attempting to steal, if a fielder catches a ball cleanly or traps it; on a bang-bang play at first base if a runner beats the throw or not; or if a hit qualifies as a ground-rule double.

Though this will reduce umpiring errors, it will slow down even more a game that routinely moves along at a languorous pace. It can take five minutes to check every camera angle to adjudicate an especially close call. Baseball is often referred to as a "game of inches." With replay it will become a game of centimeters. And if all six challenges are used they will eat up another half hour of game time.

Much more concerning than slowing the game down, this new-fangled approach (from this phrase alone you can see I belong in the traditionalist camp) will result in eliminating from the game any lingering controversies.

One of the best things about baseball has been that it permits controversies to fester, especially during the long off season when blown plays and bad calls are topics for endless discussion over coffee in the Hot Stove League.

Did Reggie Jackson intentionally move his hip in order to be hit by a throw in the 4th game of the1978 World Series, thereby breaking up a potential double play? If he did, he would have been automatically out. The umpired ruled otherwise. Probably incorrectly. And the Yanks went on to win. But who knows.

Did Ed Armbrister interfere with Carlton Fisk's throw to second base in the 2005 American League Championship Series? Who knows.

Was Jackie Robinson safe or out when attempting to steal home in the 1955 World Series? The umpire called him safe but to this day, nearly 60 years later, Yankee catcher Yogi Berra still claims Jackie was out. I saw the play on TV and though I was half-blinded by the snowy black-and-white picture think Yogi's right. But then again, who knows.

Isn't that the point? Who knows indeed.

For certain things getting it exactly right is important, even essential. In triple-bypass surgery, for example, you want things to be exactly right. But for close plays at first or home, not being certain reflects the reality of life itself, where so little is certain.

It is for this reason, before they automate everything, including the calling of balls and strikes (and there is the technology to do so), that baseball endures as sports' most metaphoric game.

Where, as in life, there's a role for stealing; in baseball's judicial system, a place for "judgement calls" and "appeal plays"; and a place for getting something for nothing--bases on balls come to mind. Also, for "errors" as well as bottom-of-the-ninth heroics.

And in a world ruled more and more by time where in nanoseconds one can earn or lose millions, isn't it still nice to have something important going on that doesn't depend on the rule of time?

Best of all, there are 161 games to go before the playoffs.