It is jarring. You don't expect it. You're watching the ball jump off the bat and your brain is conditioned to think it is a routine flyball. As the camera pans to the right, it just appears. The right field stands at the Polo Grounds. That is where Duke Snider's 399th career homerun landed in an unearthed video clip from MLB.com.
This isn't the only homerun we've ever seen in the Polo Grounds, however (to my knowledge) it is the only broadcast footage of a homerun in the iconic stadium. The Polo Grounds was the home of the New York Yankees until 1922, the Giants until 1957 and the Mets for the 1962 and 1963 seasons. The ballpark hosted two All-Star games, neither televised and the 1951 and 1954 World Series, both of which were televised but no broadcast material survives. Probably the most famous game ever played at The Grounds was Game 3 of the 1951 NL Playoff. Despite the WPIX broadcast being transmitted coast-to-coast by NBC, no broadcast footage from this game survives either.
After the jump, we will talk about the game, the call and the true star of the clip: the ballpark.
The longer I stay with this hobby, the more and more I learn. When I originally wrote about Stan Musial's final at-bat, I was left perplexed at the combination of two video pieces into one elongated clip.
In 2013, I wrote:
"How
this game was broadcast is a bit of a mystery. Having the Dizzy Dean
clips at the beginning are what is most perplexing. In 1963, he was
working games for CBS in their Game of the Week broadcasts. On
Saturday, the GOTW on CBS was Minnesota vs Yankees at Yankee Stadium
with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese as per various television listings of
the day. CBS did not have a GOTW on Sunday (although NBC did with
Senators vs White Sox) instead showing NFL Football. So Dean would have
had the opportunity to get to St. Louis for the game."
After the jump, I will talk about some archival footage I stumbled upon over the weekend that helped explain where that clip of Dizzy Dean came from and when it aired.
