31. Baseball Dictionary (aboard-American Baseball Coaches Association)

aboard

On base. First used: McClure's Magazine, Apr. 1907.

ace

(1) In the early days of baseball, the term used for a score, as called for in the 1845 rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. First used: 1845, New York Morning News, Oct. 21. (2) A team's best pitcher. First used: 1902, The Sporting News, Nov. 15.

Baseball lore and tradition have always laid the origin of this term to one man. In 1869, pitcher Asa Brainard won 56 out of 57 games played by the Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's first professional team. From then on, according to lore, any pitcher with a dazzling string of wins was called an "Asa," which later became "ace." -- Dickson Baseball Dictionary.

across the letters

A pitch passing the batter chest high.

activate

Returning a player to a team's active roster following injury or suspension.

activity

There is "activity in the bullpen" when one or more of a team's relief pitchers are warming up.

advance

What a batter does when he moves a baserunner one or more bases with a hit, ground out, fly out or sacrifice; what a baserunner does when he moves from one base to the next.

advance scout

A scout who studies the strengths and weaknesses of a team that his team will play next.

"The term was first used by Casey Stengel, according to Tony Kubek (in George F. Will's Men at Work, 1990). The practice dates to the early 1950s when the Brooklyn Dodgers began sending an advance man to the Polo Grounds or to Philadelphia to scout the teams on their way to Ebbets Field." -- Dickson Baseball Dictionary.

aggressive hitter

A batter who swings at pitches out of the strike zone.

ahead in the count

When a pitcher has more strikes than balls in the count. Can also be applied to a batter who has a count containing more balls than strikes.

airmail

To throw the ball over another player's head.

alley

(1)The portion of the outfield between the center fielder and the left or right fielders; also known as the "power alley" or the "gap". An "alley hitter" is a batter skilled at driving the ball into the alleys. (2) The dirt path between the pitcher's mound and home plate, common in the first half of the 20th century.

allow

When a pitcher gives up hits or runs.

All-American Amateur Baseball Association

Organization based in Johnstown, PA that advances, develops and regulates amateur baseball.

All-American Girls Professional League

A league that existed from 1943 to 1954, the brainchild of Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley, and which consisted of as many as fifteen teams playing a hybrid of baseball and softball in such places as Rockford, Ill., Milwaukee, Wis. and Kalamazoo, Mich. The 1992 film A League of Their Own celebrated the league.

All-Star

A player voted by the fans or chosen by the manager to appear in the mid-season All-Star Game. The method of selecting All-Stars have varied over the years. Beginning in 1933 or '34, fans voted for the players using ballots printed in the Chicago Tribune; managers voted in players from 1935 to 1946; fans made the selections from 1947 to 1957; rom 1958 to 1969 players, managers and coaches did the voting; since 1970 the fans do the voting. Critics claim allowing fans to vote turns the process into a popularity contest that sometimes ignores merit. The balloting process is funded by private companies; the Gillette Safety Razor Co. paid for it between 1970 and 1986. In 1987 USA Today began picking up the tab.

All-Star break

A three-day period in mid-July coinciding with the All-Star Game in which no regular season games are played.

All-Star Game

The annual interleague game played in July between players chosen as the best at their position. The players are selected by fan balloting, while pitchers, coaches and substitutes are chosen by selective managers -- who are, these days, the managers of two teams who played in the previous World Series. The first All-Star Game was played July 6, 1933 at Chicago's Comiskey Park, and was the brainchild of Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward. (In that first game, a two-run homer by Babe Ruth gave the AL a 4-2 victory.) Because of the war, an All-Star Game was not played in 1945, and the 1981 contest was postponed to August 9 because of that year's players' strike.

Amateur Softball Association of America

Headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, the ASA consist of over 100 local associations and more than 260,000 teams involved in slow pitch, fast pitch and modified pitch programs in male, female and coed leagues with players aged 9 to 70. The association was created in 1933 to discuss a set of rules for a game scheduled to be played at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition.

American Association

(1) This major league existed from 1882 to 1891 as a rival to the National League. It allowed Sunday games and beer sales at ballparks, charging half what the National League charged for admission. Even so, the AA floundered, and four of its teams -- Baltimore, Louisville, St. Louis and Washington were absorbed by the National League.

(2) A primarily Midwestern minor league established in 1903 as Class A through 1907, Class AA through 1945, and then Class AAA from 1946-62 and since 1969.

American Baseball Coaches Association

Organization based in Hinsdale, IL that consists of over 5,000 members and which originated the NCAA World Series.

30. Ready or Not, It's Time We Got Started

Abbott and Costello performed "Who's on First?" thousands of times, often adapting the dialogue to the setting, always sharpening. They are still performing it, on film, in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

"Who's on First?" is not so easy as, say, "Casey at the Bat" to parody, but with a little help from a trio of real baseball players named (Mike) Dunne, (Randy) Ready, and (Jim) Gott, a gifted columnist, Mike Downey of the Los Angeles Times, was able to burlesque the burlesque.

Ready or Not, It's Time We Got Started

Mike Downey

You think Pete Rose got a National League umpire angry? You should have seen Larry Bowa and Jim Leyland.

The San Diego Padres came to bat against the Pittsburgh Pirates the other day, with no leadoff man. The plate umpire went up to Bowa, the Padres manager, and said, "Need a batter here."

Bowa said: "He's still in the clubhouse. Be out in a minute."

The umpire waited a few minutes, then asked impatiently: "Well, where is he?"

Bowa said: "Hold on. He's almost here."

Umpire: C'mon, we ain't got all day. Get whoever it is out here.

Bowa: My first batter's Ready.

Umpire: Good.

Bowa: He'll be out in a minute.

Umpire: I thought you said he was ready.

Bowa: I did.

Umpire: Then let's get started.

Bowa: We can't until my batter gets here.

Umpire: You said he was here.

Bowa: Who?

Umpire: Your batter.

Bowa: He's still in the clubhouse.

Umpire: I don't understand. Is your batter ready or isn't he?

Bowa: Yes.

Umpire: Yes, what?

Bowa: He's Ready.

Umpire: Then let's play ball.

Bowa: But he's still in the clubhouse.

Umpire: Who's still in the clubhouse?

Bowa: My batter.

Umpire: I don't understand this at all.

Bowa: Wait. I'll be right back.

Umpire: Where do you think you're going?

Bowa: To the clubhouse to get Ready.

Umpire: For what?

Bowa: For the game.

Umpire: You're going to get ready?

Bowa: Yes.

Umpire: And what about your batter?

Bowa: That's why I'm going.

Umpire: Why?

Bowa: To get my batter.

Umpire: Where?

Bowa: In the clubhouse.

Umpire: What's in the clubhouse?

Bowa: My batter.

Umpire: So the reason you're going to the clubhouse is....?

Bowa: To get Ready.

The Padre manager disappeared into the tunnel. The Pirate pitcher, meanwhile, stiffened up waiting for the first batter, so Jim Leyland went to the mound. The manager talked to his pitcher for a very long time, until the umpire finally had to intervene.

Umpire: Your pitcher's done?

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: OK. Who are you bringing in?

Leyland: To do what?

Umpire: To pitch.

Leyland: Maybe nobody.

Umpire: I thought you said your pitcher's done.

Leyland: I did.

Umpire: Well, is he or isn't he?

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: He is what?

Leyland: He's Dunne.

Umpire: Then you're bringing in a relief pitcher?

Leyland: I don't know yet.

Umpire: Look, this guy here is done, right?

Leyland: Right.

Umpire: So you're going to bring in a relief pitcher.

Leyland: I'm still thinking about it.

Umpire: Your starting pitcher is done, right?
Leyland: Right.

Umpire: He's out of the game?

Leyland: No, he's standing right here.

Umpire: Who's standing right here?

Leyland. My starting pitcher. He's Dunne.

Umpire: Then take him out.

Leyland: But I might leave him in.

Umpire: Make up your mind!

Leyland: Actually, I was just stalling until I got one of my relief pitchers up.

Umpire: You were?

Leyland: Yeah.

Umpire: Got one?

Leyland: What?

Umpire: Got a relief pitcher?

Leyland: Yes, he is.

Umpire: Who is?

Leyland: Gott.

Umpire: Got what?

Leyland: He's one of my relief pitchers.

Umpire: Let me get this straight. Your starting pitcher's done?

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: And your relief pitcher?

Leyland: Just got up in the bullpen.

Umpire: And the one you want?

Leyland: Gott.

Umpire: Got the one you want.

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: You want this one here?

Leyland: No, he's done.

Umpire: Let me try this one more time. You're bringing in a new pitcher?

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: The one you've got up in the bullpen.

Leyland: Yes, I think he's ready.

Umpire: I thought he was the batter!

Bowa and Leyland were suspended for 30 days.

Joy in Mudville: The Big Book of Baseball Humor, Dick Shaap & Mort Gerberg (eds.)

Copyright 1992 by Dick Shaap & Mort Gerberg

Published by Doubleday

Image: Three Umpires, by Norman Rockwell

29. Losing A Big One

...And so it was on October 9, 1912. [Christy] Mathewson and the New York Giants had battled the Boston Red Sox to a deciding seventh game in the World Series. The Series would have ended sooner, with a New York victory. In the second game, the 32-year-old Mathewson had outpitched three younger foes for 10 innings, but five errors by his fielders cost him the win. He had to settle for a 6-6 tie when darkness ended the contest. Three days later, an error by the Giants second baseman led to a 2-1 loss even though Matty had retired the last 15 batters in a row.

Now the championship was on the line, and once again manager John McGraw handed the ball to Mathewson. The Giants scored a run in the 3rd, and it remained 1-0 until the Red Sox came to bat in the 7th. It was then that the fates played their first trick of the day on Matty, the man who aspired to perfection. With one out, Boston's player-manager, Jake Stahl, hit a fly ball to short left field. The New York shortstop, leftfielder, and centerfielder converged on it. They all arrived in time to catch the ball, but each one waited for another to take it, and it fell between them. With two men out, a pinch-hitter then doubled in the tying run.

Nobody scored in the 8th or 9th, but in the top of the 10th the Giants went ahead, 2-1. Mathewson then walked to the mound, determined to hold on to the lead and take home the prize. The first batter lifted a high fly ball to centerfielder Fred Snodgrass, who had to move only a few feet to make an easy catch. Incredibly, the ball trickled through his hands for a two-base error. The center fielder then redeemed himself by chasing a long fly ball and making a splendid catch.

Matty, whose control had been perfect in the first two games, walked the next man. That brought Tris Speaker, a .383 hitter, to the plate. Speaker hit a routine pop-up near the first-base coaches' box. Catcher Chief Meyers ran up the baseline as Matty came over from the mound. First baseman Fred Merkle, the closest man to the ball, took a few steps toward it. In the silence that shrouded the ballpark, where Boston's hopes seemed suddenly dashed, Matty called out clearly, "Meyers, Meyers," for the catcher to take it. Then somebody on the Boston bench, hoping to confuse the fielders, yelled, "Matty! Matty!" Merkle could have caught the ball easily, but he backed off to avoid running into the others. Mathewson could have caught it in his bare hand, but he had already called on Meyers. And so Meyers, who had the farthest to run, made a desperate lunge for it. The ball dropped to the ground in foul territory, untouched.

Given another chance, Speaker stood in the batter's box and called to Mathewson, "That's gonna cost you this ball game and the championship." And on the next pitch he lined a clean single that drove in the tying run and moved a man to third. The next batter hit a sacrifice fly to left field, and the winning run scored.

Realizing that even the greatest players sometimes make errors, Mathewson never blamed Snodgrass for dropping the fly ball that started his downfall. "No use hopping on him; he feels three times as bad as any of us," was all Matty said.

Sportswriter Ring Lardner, who was at the game, had a lot more to say about it. "There was seen one of the saddest sights in the history of a sport that is a strange and wonderful mixture of joy and gloom," he wrote. "It was the spectacle of a man, old as baseball players are reckoned, walking from the middle of the field to the New York players' bench with bowed head and drooping shoulders, with tears streaming from his eyes, a man on whom his team's fortune had been staked and lost, and a man who would have proven his clear title to the trust reposed in him if his mates had stood by him in the supreme test .... Beaten, 3-2, by a club he would have conquered if he had been given the support deserved by his wonderful pitching, Matty tonight is greater in the eyes of New York's public than ever before ...."

Baseball Legends: Christy Mathewson

Norman L. Macht

28. Roger Kahn Reports on the '52 World Series (Part 7)

The temperature dropped almost twenty degrees, back into the fifties, on October 7, the final day. Summer was past. It was time to bring the World Series to a close.

As everyone expected, Dressen went with big Joe Black. This was a third start in seven days, but Black was strong. Frank Graham, Jr., the Dodgers' scholarly publicist, pointed out that Christy Mathewson made three starts in six days during the World Series of 1905, and pitched three shutouts. But Mathewson was the nonpareil -- in twenty-seven innings he walked only one batter -- and besides the ball was dead. He didn't have to throw the modern rabbit to the likes of Mantle and Berra in a small ballpark. Dizzy Dean started three World Series games in seven days in 1934. He lost the middle one, but finished with a six-hit shutout. "I don't feel tired," Black said before the game.

[Casey] Stengel chose Ed Lopat, the lefthanded loser of Game Three. Except for [Duke] Snider and Shotgun Shuba, all the Dodger starters batted right and Snider, on a record pace, seemed to be hitting everything anyway. Stengel declined to discuss his reasoning. "Why doncha just watch the game?" he grumbled. "They give ya free tickets. Watch the game." We were left to conclude that Stengel preferred Lopat's experience and pitching wiles, to the younger, stronger, rested right arms of Tom Gorman or Tom "Ploughboy" Morgan.

Lopat nibbled at corners, changed speeds and spin and kept the Dodgers scoreless for three innings. Black looked strong and held the Yankees hitless until the fourth. Then [Phil] Rizzuto doubled to left and advanced as Mantle bounced out to first. The hitter was [Johnny] Mize. Black would stay away from his power, the inside part of the plate. He threw a low outside breaking ball. Mize changed his swing and tapped a gentle single to left field. The Yankees led by one run.

The Dodgers countered quickly. Snider singled to right. [Jackie] Robinson bunted deftly toward third. Even though the Yankees were anticipating a sacrifice, nobody could make a play. [Roy] Campanella bunted toward the same spot and beat Ed Lopat's throw to first base. Stengel hurried to the mound and lifted Lopat for Reynolds, who would now pitch in his fourth game this World Series.

Gil Hodges, who had come to bat eighteen times without hitting safely, lined out to left and Snider scored. When the outfield throw went bad, Robinson ran to third base. The game looked as though it might explode. But Reynolds reached back and struck out Shuba. Then Furillo bounced out. Going into the fifth, the game was tied.

Gene Woodling drove a home run over the screen in right.

Later, [Billy] Cox doubled and [Pee Wee] Reese singled. The game was tied again going into the sixth.

Reynolds and Black were wearing down. Strong, brave, heroic, but wearing down. Rizzuto opened the sixth with a liner that Reese was able to snare. Mantle caught up with a fastball and hit a very long home run, over the scoreboard in right, over the sidewalk beyond, over Bedford Avenue beyond that and into a parking lot. A swarm of civilians scrambled for the ball. Dressen replaced Black with Preacher Roe.

Reynolds retired the Dodgers in the sixth. [Gil] McDougald singled n the seventh, Rizzuto sacrified, Mantle shot a long single to left. The Yankees led by two. Stengel replaced Reynolds with Vic Raschi. He was using the heart of his starting rotation, his three finest pitchers, in a single game.

One day after his enervating struggle against Billy Loes, Raschi was wild. He walked [Carl] Furillo, got an out, fell behind to Billy Cox, who singled, and walked Reese. The bases were loaded with one out and here came the hottest batter in the cosmos, Duke Snider.

The crowd made raucous noises. Thirty-three thousand, a full house in Brooklyn, was less than half a Yankee Stadium crowd, but twice as passionate. So far, in a triumphant World Series, Snider had hit four singles, two doubles, and four home runs. Red Smith was calling him "The Archduke Snider." A single now would tie the score. A long double would put the Dodgers ahead. Another Duke Snider home run? ... The thought turned Brooklyn fans giddy.

A decidedly ungiddy Casey Stengel was not surprised to find Snider coming to bat with the ballgame and the Series on the line. As in classic drama, the major figures would play the principal scenes. Stengel was, in fact, prepared. One Yankee spearcarrier, 6-foot 2-inch Bob Kuzava, out of Wyandotte, Michigan, threw hard, lefthanded stuff. Kuzava was a career .500 pitcher, win one, lose one, never a star, just someone you needed to pitch the innings. In 1948 Kuzava lost sixteen games with the Baltimore Orioles of the International League. But one batter Bob Kuzava mastered that season was the star center fielder of the Montreal Royals, Duke Snider. Stengel was not a man to disregard history. He replaced Raschi with Kuzava. The issue was joined.

Snider worked the count full. If he could win this game, the Duke would be anointed King, Pope, Grand Rabbi, and Czar of all the realms of Flatbush.

Snider bore down. So did Kuzava. He threw a tailing outside fastball. Trying to drive the pitch to left, Snider lifted a mighty pop fly over third. Gil McDougald tapped his glove. Two out.

The hitter was Jackie Robinson. Two strong right arms were active in the Yankee bullpen. Stengel made no move. Kuzava threw hard stuff to Robinson who fouled back four consecutive pitches. Now came the play that decided the series.

Trying to drive a single to right, Robinson lifted a pop fly toward first base. Kuzava called the play, shouting, "Joe, Joe." But Joe Collins, who had replaced [Johnny] Mize, was looking to the same light pattern that brought down Billy Loes the day before -- blinding sunlight slanting through the arches behind the third base stands. Collins, a fine fielder, never saw the ball.

Billy Martin suddenly realized what was happening. He raced in from his spot at second base. The wind was blowing the pop fly away from him. Running with two out, Furillo and Cox crossed home plate. If Robinson's pop-up landed safely, the score was tied. Martin lunged and caught the baseball, ankle high.

The Dodgers never threatened again and when Reese, who had played so well, made the final out, the Yankees' 4-2 victory became living history. Brooklynites wept in the grandstands. Gladys Goodding serenaded the ballpark with a song from South Pacific.

She played "This Nearly Was Mine."

From my earliest years I'd heard Brooklyn fans cry out in defeat, "Wait till next year." My lead for the front page of the Herald Tribune leapt through the peanut shells residing in my portable typewriter:

"Every year is next year for the Yankees."

Red Smith peeked at my typewriter. "Good lead, sire," he said.


Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
Copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc.
Published by University of Nebraska Press

Image: Mickey Mantle and other Yankees celebrate winning the World Series

27. Roger Kahn Reports on the '52 World Series (Part 6)

We were back in Brooklyn for the sixth game....

Reporters ringed [Casey] Stengel in a dugout and tried to draw him into comments on the umpiring. No chance. Except when posed by star journalists, questions never interested Stengel. He would listen, then say what he wanted, questions be damned. "If you was watching," Stengel said, "you musta noticed they won the game for Brooklyn."

"Pardon, Casey," Red Smith said. "Who is 'they'?"

"Them outfielders is what I mean, Red. You can't get away from that. They make those border-line catches and they beat you and you can't kick on that. He [Charlie Dressen] had to have that outfield to win, but maybe if it's another day, they don't win that way."

Arthur Daley of the New York Times asked Stengel to be "a little more specific." Some of us laughed, but Stengel took his Times coverage very seriously.

"On some other days," he said, "the people out there in right aren't so quiet. An outfielder from the other side goes up to make a catch, they grab his shirt, they go for his arm. They grab the glove. They twist his fingers. They get the ball."

"You mean the fans?" asked Daley.

"It was our ballpark, wasn't it, Arthur? Those people were supposed to be our fans. Raschi today. He will pitch good. My men are ready." So also was the magical Stengel brain.

Billy Loes flung six commanding innings at Stengel's men and when [Duke] Snider drove a fastball over the screen, the Dodgers took a 1-0 lead. Then, nine outs away from the World Series victory, the World Series victory, Loes came unraveled.

[Yogi] Berra led off the seventh with a home run, much like Snider's drive. Gene Woodling singled up the middle.

"Time for Joe Black right now," I said to Smith. "Billy the Kid is losing it."

"And if the Dodgers lose the ball game, Skipper, who pitches tomorrow?"

"Preacher Roe and the rest of the staff. They can rest all winter."

It is simple to manage from behind a typewriter. All power and no responsibility. Dressen, with so much at stake, elected to stay with a twenty-two-year-old rookie. Or maybe Dressen simply froze.

Loes threw a ball and a strike to Irv Noren. Then, as he stretched to deliver his third pitch, the baseball fell out of his right hand. The ball bounced behind the mound. The umpires called a balk. Woodling advanced to second base.

Loes steadied and struck out Noren. Billy Martin popped out. Stengel, with several pinch hitters available, let Raschi bat for himself. The big pitcher smacked a bounder to Loes's right. Afternoon sun slanted through the arches that supported the upper deck on the left side of Ebbets Field. Loes looked for the ball but the sun got in his eyes. The baseball bounced off his left knee and caromed past Hodges. A pool-table single to right. The Yankees got the lead run in scoring position when the pitcher dropped the ball. They scored him when the pitcher lost a grounder in the sun.

Still Dressen stayed with Loes. [Mickey] Mantle opened the eighth inning with a 400-foot home run to left center. The Yankees led by two runs. Snider hit another homer in the bottom of the eighth and with two out Shotgun Shuba doubled. Stengel walked mournfully to the mound, where he muttered something to Raschi. Then both men turned toward the bullpen, where Allie Reynolds was throwing hard. Stengel pointed. Reynolds marched in. Raschi waited to wish him well. Reynolds nodded, but said nothing. He was going to work. The hitter was Roy Campanella.

Reynolds threw a fastball at Campanela's head. Then he threw two hard strikes. He threw an outside breaking ball. Campanella swung and missed. As the ball socked into Berra's mitt, Campanella's bat went spinning out across the infield. Reynolds literally had taken the bat out of Brooklyn's hands.

My lead, spread across three columns on the front page, expressed a degree of wonderment.

By using his two best pitcher, Casey Stengel got his

Yankees even again yesterday and beat the Dodgers, 3-2,

at Ebbets Field. Vic Raschi, the 33-year-old righthander

started and Allie Reynolds, the 37-year-old righthander,

finished, and the Yankees forced the World Series into a

seventh game....

If the Yankees are to win their fourteenth World Championship.

they wll have to beat Joe Black, Brooklyn's best pitcher.

Casey Stengel has no idea who will start today because

Reynolds, his original choice, worked yesterday.

So the Yankee manager will select Mr. X after a full night's

thought and considerably less sleep.

Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn

Copyright 1997, Hook Slide, Inc.

Published by University of Nebraska Press

Image: Mickey Mantle at the plate in Game 6

26. Casey at the Bat

"The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day..." So began "Casey at the Bat, A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888," a poem that appeared in the fourth column of page 4 of the Sunday, June 3, 1888 San Francisco Examiner. The poem that would become the most famous American verse ever written was bylined "Phin" and sandwiched inconspicuously between editorials on the left and Ambrose Bierce's weekly column on the right.

Ernest Lawrence Thayer, or "Phinney," as such classmates as William Randolph Hearst and George Santayana called him, had been the editor of the Harvard Lampoon. After Hearst was kicked out of Harvard for sending personalized chamber pots to several professors, his father gave him the Examiner to run, and the errant heir soon asked Thayer if he would write a humor column for the paper.

It took Thayer half a day to write "Casey." The piece might have been forgotten altogether had not a novelist named Archibald Clavering Gunter clipped it and given it to his actor friend William DeWolf Hopper, who was performing a comic opera entitled Prince Methusalem at New York's Wallack Theatre on August 14, 1888. The Giants and White Stockings had been invited to the show, and Hopper thought the new piece particularly appropriate. Before beginning, though, he congratulated Tim Keefe, who was in attendance, on his feat of 19 straight victories.

Hopper, whose fifth wife was gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (their son Paul Hopper played Paul Drake in the Perry Mason television series), later described his first reading of the poem in his autobiography, Once a Clown, Always a Clown: "When I dropped my voice to B flat, below low C, at 'the multitude was awed,' I remember seeing Buck Ewing's gallant mustachios give a single nervous twitch. And as the house, after a moment of startled silence, grasped the anticlimactic denouement, it shouted its glee."

Had Casey hit the ball out of the park, we might never have heard of Thayer or Hopper or been subjected to the countless parodies of "Casey at the Bat." Hopper hit upon its appeal when he wrote, "There is no more completely satisfactory drama in literature than the fall of Humpty Dumpty." He would go on to recite the poem more than 10,000 times, each time in five minutes, 40 seconds...

Baseball Anecdotes, Daniel Okrent & Steve Wulf

Copyright 1989 by Daniel Okrent

Published  by Oxford University Press (New York), 1989

Image: In 1927, Paramount Pictures made Casey at the Bat, a silent film starring Wallace Beery

25. "The Biggest Boston Game Ever"

Was my team doomed? Sure seemed like it. Just one year earlier, I figured out that Santa Claus was a sham because he couldn't possibly hit everyone's house in one night, although I peeked downstairs to see my parents sticking gifts under the tree to make sure. So I was a realist (the Santa Claus theory), but also a little kid (peeking on Christmas Eve to make sure). And that's how I approached the [Boston Red] Sox over the next few years: I knew things were probably going to end badly, but that didn't stop me from watching as many games as possible and hoping I was wrong. When they jumped to a seemingly insurmountable fourteen-game lead over the Yankees in July of 1978, it seemed like our fortunes had changed. Then the Yank[ee]s started creeping back into the race -- to the abject horror of everyone in New England -- as the lead dwindled and eventually disappeared during the demoralizing Boston Massacre.* But just when it looked like the Sox were finished, they battled back with their own little streak, winning 12 of their last 14 (including their last eight) to force a one-game playoff.

You can't possibly imagine how big that game was. We didn't have cable TV. We didn't have video games. We didn't have the Internet, cell phones, DVD players or iPods. Honestly, there wasn't much happening in 1978. And when you don't have a ton of distractions, the distractions that do exist take on epic proportions. You know, like the Red Sox. This wasn't just the most important game of my entire life, it remains the biggest Boston game ever and will never be topped. We had to beat the Yankees. When you combine the circumstances between those two teams, with the Shakespearan relationship between those two teams, as well as the ghoulish setting of Fenway Park in the late afternoon and a petrified crowd ... seriously, has there ever been another baseball game quite like that? Even when ESPN Classic shows the old broadcast, there's an eerie vibe from the fans: deafening silences, urgent cheers, a palpable nervous energy, almost like 35,000 people were warned that they would be collectively slaughtered if the Red Sox lost.

My parents kept me home from school that day, like thousands of other kids in the Boston area. It felt like we were preparing for a nuclear attack; I'm not even sure if I was excited or scared. We watched the game in the basement of our house in Brookline .... Nursing a 2-0 lead in the seventh, Mike Torrez yielded the infamous three-run homer to light-hitting Bucky Dent, a pop fly that somehow drifted over the[Green] Monster and spawned Bucky's lifelong nickname in Boston: Bucky Fucking Dent. The Yanks padded the lead with two more runs, followed by the Sox answering with two in the bottom of the eighth. Yankees 5, Red Sox 4. With one out in the ninth, Rick Burleson walked against a tiring Goose Gossage (pitching into a third inning). Jerry Remy followed with a line drive to right field, where a flustered Lou Piniella -- completely blinded by the setting sun -- thrust his glove out and somehow snared the ball, almost like a guy defensively swatting at a bee and miraculously connecting. Burleson held at second. Unbelievable.

Now [Jim] Rice was up. Remember, this was his famous "46 HR/139 RBI/406 total bases" MVP season during an era when sluggers didn't have oversize heads, extended jaws, and back acne .... If you put Rice on an HGH program back then, he would have belted the first 700-foot homer. Believe me, there was nobody more imposing in 1978. You wouldn't have wanted anyone else up in this spot. Anyway, Rice ended up creaming a ball to right-center that looked like the game-winning double, only it veered right to Piniella (playing him perfectly in right-center), so the crowd ended up making one of those combination shriek/groans that became a Fenway trademark over the years. With Burleson advancing to third, the tying run was 90 feet from home plate. And Yaz was coming up.

Understand this about [Carl Yaztrzemski]. Nobody personified the Red Sox quite like him. A surly chain-smoker with a thick Boston accent, poor Yaz wore every harrowing Boston defeat on his face; he always looked 10 years older than he actually was, like a famous actor who seems too old to be starring in a baseball movie. Of course, no Red Sox player came through more times when it mattered, and few Boston athletes ever had a better sense of The Moment. Seeing him stride to the plate against the fireballing Gossage, well, other than Kirk Gibson's famous homer off Dennis Eckersley, has there ever been an at-bat that felt more like a movie scene? There was grizzled old Yaz trying to save the season, his lungs filled with nicotine residue, the sun setting behind him, needing a single to save the season. If this were a movie, William Devane would have played him, and Yaz would have ripped a Gossage fastball into the right field bullpen, and everyone would have happily skipped out of the dugout in slow motion, and the fans would have charged the field, and Yaz would have been swarmed as he hopped on home plate, and then the credits would have rolled. The end.

Here's the thing that killed me (and everyone else): Right as we were entertaining these magical thoughts, Yaz swung late on a Gossage heater and abruptly popped up to third. What sports movie would ever end like that? I remember the ball slicing up in the air, Yaz grimacing in disgust and slamming his bat like a shovel, the crowd shrieking n horror, Craig Nettles settling underneath it, the Yankees celebrating, everything going quiet, Yaz limping back to the dugout, the finality of it all.

I started crying. I cried and cried. My mom rubbed my head. I kept crying. Life wasn't fair. I kept crying.

I had just turned nine years old.


*On September 7, the Yankees rolled into Fenway trailing by just four games, then pulled into a dead heat by outscoring the Sox 42-9 in four games. That was the Massacre. The definitive moment: A haunting photo of Yaz slumping against the Green Monster during the umpteenth pitching change -- it was like that famous photo of  the naked little girl running in Vietnam.


Now I Can Die In Peace, Bill Simmons
Copyright 2005, 2009, Bill Simmons
Published by ESPN Books

Image: Bucky Dent hits the three-run homer and earns a nickname