Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was too nervous to watch the series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.
....He knew he would want to watch the game later -- if his Pirates won -- so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby's home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.
Crosby, the singer and movie, radio and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.
....Three years ago, Major League Baseball acquired the rights to Yankees pitcher Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series -- leaving the finale of the 1960 World Series high on its wish list. The hunt for old games -- this one unseen on TV since its original broadcast -- is constant, subject to serendipity and often futile. Great games like Game 7 in 1960 are often recalled with just a few newsreel clips.
....After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening house in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.
They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby's TV specials for a DVD release -- part of the estate's goal of resurrecting his body of work.
He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled "1960 World Series." They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees' Mel Allen and the Pirates' Bob Prince -- the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD,
....The production is simple by today's production. NBC appeared to use about five cameras. The graphics were simple (the players' names and little else) and rarely used. There were no instant replays, no isolated cameras, no analysis, no dugout reporters and no sponsored trivia quizzes.
Viewers looked at the hand-operated Forbes Field scoreboard, which on that day (of 19 runs and 24 hits) got a vigorous workout. Occasionally they saw newsreel cameras atop the ballpark roof.
Prince and Allen rarely interacted, with Prince calling the first half and Allen the second. That put Allen on the air for Yogi Berra's three-run homer in the sixth inning (Allen first called it foul); Pirate catcher Hal Smith's eight-inning homer to put Pittsburgh on top, 9-7 ("That base hit will long be remembered," Allen said as the film showed Roberto Clemente ... bounding around the bases with joy); and Mazeroski's winning drive to left field ("And the fans go wild," Allen said).
The game included the play on which a ground ball hit by Bill Virdon to Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek kicked off the dirt and hit him in the Adam's apple. Kubek fell on his back, sat up within a minute looking dazed, stood up, then lobbied Manager Casey Stengel unsuccessfully to stay in.
It also included remarkable base running by Mickey Mantle with one out in the top of the ninth. The Yankees were trailing 9-8, with Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third. Berra hit a sharp grounder that was grabbed by first baseman Rocky Nelson, who quickly stepped on the bag for the second out. For a split second, Nelson seemed ready to throw home in time for a tag play on McDougald for the final out of the World Series.
But Nelson immediately became distracted by Mantle, who never took off for second when Berra hit the ball and was now standing just a few feet away. Nelson reached to tag Mantle, but Mantle made a feint and dived back safely into first. McDougald scored, and the score was tied, 9-9.
"How about that?" Allen said after Mantle's play. But just minutes later, Mazeroski stepped to the plate....
"In Bing Crosby's Wine Cellar, Vintage Baseball," Robert Sandomir
The New York Times, 23 September 2010
IMAGE: Pittsburgh's Bill Mazeroski mobbed at home plate after series-winning homer
No comments:
Post a Comment