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.
The charm of baseball exists in the peaks and valleys of a full season. If you catch a World Series or a playoff game, you are getting a truly small sample size. The six month scale of a season is what allows sabermetrics to have almost enough data to be relevant and allows fans to develop an opinion of their team’s players. The World Series or All-Star game does not tell us the narrative of the season. Instead, we get to hear the opinions of writers and broadcasters formulated through the lens of history, rather than as it is seen unfolding. If baseball broadcasts today were archived in the scattered manner of years past, fans 30 years from now wouldn’t get to appreciate the two month long phenomenon of Puig-mania from 2013 or other like stories that come and go during the marathon of a season.
When trying to find the most complete sampling of the oldest baseball season, it becomes a tough task with surviving baseball broadcasts. While there are a few seasons with the All-Star Game and the entire World Series (1965, 1968) very few regular season games exist to flesh out a season. Rolling back through the years, the 1972 season stands out, if for no other reason, because of the high volume of retained broadcast footage.
I'm sure it is difficult for MLB Productions, from time to time, to put together their 'clips' shows for seasons prior to 1980. While they undoubtedly have more footage in their archives than any of know they have or will ever see, there are large gaps that they must try to fill with newsreel footage, broadcast news highlights and team highlight films. It is often times disappointing that they will chose color 'film' clips over broadcast footage when putting together these shows but is somewhat understandable.
When they use footage that isn't even from the time period they are showcasing, however, I feel it creates a 'false history'. That is exactly what happened in an episode of Baseball's Seasons focusing on the 1970 season.
When pointing out the contentious NL East race of 1970, they discussed the Cubs early season collapse and the assencion of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The problem is, they used footage from a late 1969 game between the two trying to punctuate the Cubs poor play. More about it with extra footage after the jump.
As the season enters the final weekend, all but one divisional race remains. The last two teams standing in the National League Central are the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates. These two former National League East combatants found themselves tied for the top spot just over a week ago. It was a back and forth three team race reminiscent of another season the Pirates and Cardinals came down to the wire.
In 1974, the NL East saw a season long race between three teams: the Cardinals, Phillies and Pirates. For most of the season, the Phillies led the division with the Cardinals chasing them and towing the Pirates along behind. At the end of July, the Cardinals finally caught the Phillies to move into first place. In the last week in August, the Pirates nudged back ahead, only to find themselves tied with the Cardinals on September 29th at 85-74 a piece.
Going into the final series of the season, the Cubs were in dead last in the division and had just closed up their Wrigley season by dropping 2 of 3 to the Cardinals. They now took on the Pirates while the Cardinals traveled to Montreal. Both division leaders won their games on the 30th, remaining tied going onto October 1st.
The Cardinals would send Bob Gibson to the mound against former Cardinal Mike Torrez. Gibson would give the Cardinals a chance with 7 innings of 1 run ball, only to relinquish a 2-run HR to Mike Jorgensen in the 8th putting the Expos ahead 3-2. The Pirates would win 6-5 vs the Cubs at Three Rivers, giving the Pirates a 1 game lead with 1 game to play.
On October 2nd, the Cardinals were rained out in Montreal so the Pirates took the field only needing a win to force the end of the season and a trip for them to the NLCS. Down to their last strike, it looked like they weren't going to get that win.
Technically, his last homerun came in Game 4 of the 1972 NLCS but this one was the 240th of Clemente's career. This longtripper came against Roberto's favorite victim at his favorite home-away-from-home. All of this in beautiful color videotape! More about this simple discovery after the jump.
With the regular season coming to an end, we are beginning to get the 'list' programs by MLB Network. This is good for picking out bits and pieces of old broadcast footage that may not have been seen before or may be expanded on in their clip shows.
One such clip popped up during their broadcast of "The 40 Greatest Teams of All Time". Listed as the 2nd greatest team of all time, the Cincinnati Reds met up with the Boston Red Sox as what is widely regarded as the greatest World Series of All Time. However, before the Reds could head of to Beantown, they would have to dispatch of the other NL powerhouse of the 70's, the Pittsburgh Pirates.
I know this one is outside the range I traditionally write about, but this clip involved both a historic milestone and the St. Louis Cardinals, so I couldn't pass it up.
Willie Stargell, it is said, had atleast 100 career homeruns suppressed by spending his early career in Forbes Field. With a 20 foot high chainlink fence protecting RF and a 457 fence in left-centerfield, many believe that he would have at the very least reached the 500 Homerun plateau should he have played in a more neutral park.
Whether or not this is all true, Stargell was well regarded as one of the most prolific power hitters of the late 60's and entire 70's.
On June 29, 1977, Stargell hit his 400th career homerun off of Eric Rasmussen of the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium.
This now marks the THIRD reference to Bob Moose on this blog. When we reached the 2nd reference, I remarked how improbable even that instance was.
Bob Moose, who tragically died in an automobile accident on his 29th birthday, authored the 2nd No Hitter in Shea Stadium history. This achievement came on September 20, 1969.
I really didn't think any footage from this game existed, however I was watching a Pirates/Cubs game on Memorial Day when this clip was shown during a commercial break.
