To restate the old sportscaster’s adage: There are no two more exciting words in sports than ‘Game Seven’. Tonight, we will be treated to only the second World Series Game 7 in 11 years. The last one (2011) was personally a thrill for this Cardinals fan but certainly not the most dramatic of contests. This prolonged drought of penultimate Fall Classic games is a far cry from how baseball seasons regularly concluded during the kinescope era. From the inaugural broadcast in 1947 thru the dramatic 1975 tilt, there were 16 World Series that took all seven games.
Some of these were defining moments for franchises or the sport as a whole, creating iconic images that are instantly recognizable. Of these 16 games during this period, only 7 have survived. Below is a look at the Game 7s, how they turned out and which ones we are lucky to still have.
Those are the words Harry Caray uttered as Stan stood in against Jim Maloney of the Cincinnati Reds on September 29, 1963. That would be Stan Musial's final day as an active player in Major League Baseball. That season, with it known to be Stan's last, the Cardinals made a furious dash towards the pennant. They would win 10 straight games to put themselves 1 game out of first place with 10 games to play and starting a 3 game home series vs the first place Dodgers. They would be swept, losing 8 of their last 10, to finish 6 games out of first.
Stan played most of his career on newsreels. The Cardinals won the pennant 5 times during Stan's career, all before KSDK in St. Louis ever went on the air. What survives of his career in the form of television broadcasts is an abbreviated game vs the Dodgers in 1959 and segments of his final game in St. Louis from 1963. That is what I will show here.
The 1968 All-Star Game was the first All-Star game to be played indoors. During a season in which pitching dominated baseball, the All-Star Game was no exception. Willie Mays would lead off the game with a single, promptly stole second and eventually come around to score. This would be the only offense of the game.
