July 10, 1962. On the same day that the NBA agreed to let George Steinbrenner’s ABL Cleveland Pipers join as an expansion team, Major League Baseball played the first of two Midsummer Classics.
It would be the final year that the two leagues would play more than one All-Star exhibition game. For the past 3 years, the Players Association had used the two All-Star games to help support the players’ pension fund. The American League had argued that they would no longer participate in two exhibitions during the previous winter; however the two leagues came to an agreement to go ahead with both contests in 1962.
These long lost kinescope reels (which constitute the most complete All-Star Game broadcast prior to 1965) give us a glimpse into Midsummer Classic that features a sitting President, an All-Star Game legend, an exciting game and a rare glimpse into a classic stadium.
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.
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.
