Check The Webbing: Gibby and Billy Williams Day

Editor's Note: 'Check the Webbing' will be short posts about broadcast clips found on the Web.  These types of clips either do not need extensive explanation or research, or are updates to posts already written.  

Billy Williams Day, a doubleheader from June 29, 1969, is a topic that has been discussed on numerous occasions.  Three years ago, we saw a brief clip of the final out of Game 1 from that double header at Wrigley.  Our original post back in 2012 focused on color video tape footage from the 8th inning of that first game.  

The description of the events of that clip were:

The clip seen here is of Ernie Banks driving in the 1st run of the game with an RBI single up the middle.   This clip, as well as the other Gibson shots, come from Revisiting the 1969 Cubs , a WGN produced clip that (judging by onscreen graphics) was put together in the 1990's. 

On January 31, 2017, MLB.com uploaded an extended video clip of Banks' single off of Gibson in the 8th inning.  This clip can be found on their YouTube channel.  The footage is color videotape and is complete with the Jack Brickhouse call.

Without speaking to MLB, the source of this clip most likely comes from the WGN highlight reels that were compiled throughout the season.  Many of these survived from the late 60's and early 70's.  They often times represent the only broadcast footage that remains from WGN.

1972: The Last No-Hitter of Its Kind (until 2015)

 *This post is part of an on-going series cataloging surviving broadcast footage from 1972.

Milt Pappas' no-hitter/near perfect game stood as a rare feat in two ways for nearly 43 years.  In 1972, Pappas became the first pitcher since 1908 to lose a perfect game bid on the 27th batter without giving up a hit.  Not since Hooks Wiltse's HBP in 1908 had a free base been issued to the 27th batter.  The walk by Pappas would be the last of its kind until June 2015, when Max Scherzer's perfect game bid was spoiled with 26 outs by Jose Tabata's elbow pad.

Even with that inglorious drought ended, Pappas still held the distinction of throwing the most recent no-hitter in the 'friendly confines' of Wrigley Field.  That feat now belongs to left hander, Cole Hamels, who no-hit the Cubs on July 25, 2015.  

For Pappas, his day in the sun was near the end of a long, weird career.  This eventful no-hitter was one of the final chapters in a career of prominent lowlights (being on the wrong lopsided end of the Frank Robinson to Baltimore trade/admitting to giving up Roger Maris' 59th homerun out of spite towards Ford Frick) and highlights (striking out the side on only 9 pitches).

The memorable 9th inning and more, after the jump.

1972: Hooton Heaves (No-)Hits

*This post is part of an on-going series cataloging surviving broadcast footage from 1972 .

When rookie Burt Hooton took the mound on April 16, 1972 at Wrigley Field, he was likely just trying to solidify his spot in the Cubs pitching rotation.  What he ended up doing was etched his name into the record books. 

On that blustery Chicago afternoon, Hooton was not particularly sharp. While he struck out seven hitters and did not allow a hit, he issued seven walks.  He also dodge a few bullets thanks to some defensive help.  In fact, he may have only lived on in this game for as long as he did because manager Leo Durocher was sick and at home. After the jump, we will take a look at how much of the game survived and how a few key defensive stops made this day historic.

The 1972 Season: What has survived?

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.

The 45th Anniversary of 'Billy Williams Day'

On a day in which Billy Williams would tie and pass Stan Musial in a doubleheader against Stan's old team, we've been treated over and over again with bits and pieces of beautiful WGN color video footage.  While I have never been able to track down (through many attempts) how much of this footage WGN held on to, I'd like to mark the anniversary of Billy Williams Day by showing you footage that doesn't contain Billy Williams!

As I pointed out in this post nearly 2 years ago, Billy Williams Day featured one of the greatest of Wrigley treats: A Gibson/Jenkins duel.  The two would both throw the entire game with Gibson giving up the lead in the bottom of the 8th.

After the jump, we get some of the 9th inning action.

This is not 1970 (Sept 7, 1969)

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.

"in the friendly confines of beautiful Wrigley Field"

Joining the 500 Homerun club is hard enough, but often it seems getting from 499 to 500 can be the hardest part.  Players will often go through an extended stretch before reaching the milestone event.  That is what made Albert Pujols hitting 499 and 500 in the same game (not just the same day) all the more rare.  Sadly, the last 25 years of the homerun deluge took value away from reaching those counting number milestones.  You would think, in 2014 with at least 4 cable channels carrying games nationally weekly, that the game would be carried outside of the local markets.  However, much like when Mays or Aaron hit their 500th, coverage was as minimal as it could get.

As was pointed out in this post a few years ago, nine players hit their 500th homerun between 1960 and 1980.  During that time, many owners still saw television broadcasts as cutting into their attendance.  A few did not.  Thanks to major markets like New York and Chicago, some of these events were televised.  In the case of Ernie Banks, WGN actually preserved homeruns 498, 499 and 500.  

Ernie Banks ended the 1969 season needing three homeruns to become the 9th member of the club.  In speaking with Jack Brickhouse during Spring Training, Banks said that he'd hoped the number 500 would come on April 14th at the home opener "in the friendly confines of beautiful Wrigley Field".  Banks would be right about hitting 500 at Wrigley, but would be off by nearly a month.  

Program Alert: Wrigley 100 (on WGN) this Sunday

This Sunday, WGN will air a two-hour special titled: "Wrigley 100: A Century Celebration" to honor the tie between WGN and the Chicago Cubs.  The program will air at 8 pm ET, 7 pm CT.

 This season, WGN's website is running blog posts discussing events that have happened on that day at Wrigley.  Here is the description of the special:

Narrated by WGN Radio’s Steve Cochran and featuring custom drawings by cartoonist Drew Litton, the magic moments and memories of a century of baseball at Clark and Addison are told via interviews with over 60 different people, including Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, Ron Santo, Andre Dawson, Greg Maddux and Ryne Sandberg; as well as Kerry Wood, Rick Monday, Rick Sutcliffe, and Derrek Lee.  Visiting greats such as Hank Aaron, Vin Scully, Mike Schmidt, Albert Pujols, Bob Uecker and Paul Konerko will add their thoughts as well.  Other segments include Mike Ditka and Gale Sayers on playing for the Chicago Bears at Wrigley, fun and crazy moments at the park described by Harry Caray and Jack Brickhouse, and an in-depth look at some of Wrigley’s greatest games.

Here is a YouTube clip of the intro to the special.

WGN has a special bond with this blog simply because a majority of our color content has come from surviving WGN specials.  I have contacted WGN in the past and they have told me on a few occasions that a cache of classic broadcasts aren't hidden away somewhere.  What we have seen is what exists.  I don't know that to be 100% true, as things can be mislabeled or misplaced but I would imagine if there is something new, we might see it on this weekend's show.

Our summer of much-content

With today's post, we kick off the Opening Day weekend.  If Major League Baseball can start the season two weeks early in Australia, we can start the season on a Saturday.  The first post going up is a record tying performance not thought to be captured on video.  The stream of content we have weekly this summer will see Homerun Kings, DVD reviews, pennant clinchers, expansion teams and whatever surprise footage pops up.  

We've got over 25 weeks until the playoffs, so here's to fun-filled summer!

Tom Seaver's no-hit bid broken up after 25 outs.  Footage courtesy of WGN.

The Cubs win the NL East (for the Pirates)

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.

Two Cubs, One At-Bat and Jim West swears

There are two 'departments' of baseball history.  World Series champions, home run totals, consecutive games played and the numbers of the game which are so important to comparing eras and weaving the fabric of the game of baseball over nearly a century and a half make up one side of the sport's history.  The other, that which gives us the narrative we pass down to our children in hopes of making them, too, fall in love with the annual marathon we endure is that of moments.  These moments help us illustrate the greatness of a player, the importance of an event and sometimes to show that no matter how many games you watch, you are bound to come across something you've never seen before.  Today's post is one of those moments.

 

By pure happenstance I was watching some WGN clips someone had given me a long time ago and found a video I apparently gave no thought to.  Expanding the scope of this blog to include more mid-1970's content, I ignored a video about the 1974 Cubs.  This, apparently, was a huge mistake on my part because in it we get to see the height of the 'Mad Hungarian' persona and the Cubs being, well...the Cubs.

Clemente's last homerun, sorta

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.

Bob Gibson in COLOR! (and Billy Williams Day)

A treasure trove of color broadcast clips come from what WGN has saved over the years.  What exactly they saved as far as just clips or full length games, no one really knows.  However, there have been a plethora of video clips in the trading community that people have seen so often, they just take for granted.  However, the other day a clip caught my eye that I had never seen before.

That man standing on the mound, in beautiful color video tape, is Bob Gibson.  He is standing in the middle of the field at Wrigley Field, pitching against the 1st place Chicago Cubs.  What game this is and what the rest of the footage shows, after the jump.

Hey! Hey! The Ken Holtzman no-hitter

With the death of Ron Santo, MLB.tv released a brief highlight video of the 3rd baseman's playing days. Included in it were clips from many games over the 1969-1972 seasons. One clip that stood out was a part of the Ken Holtzman no-hitter that I had never seen.

A big hat tip goes out to twib77 for bringing these clips to my attention.

In the past, I had seen clips of the 9th inning. We will get to that later. What I hadn't seen until a few months ago was the footage from the 7th inning. On top of that, what I hadn't seen until 3 days ago was the clip from the FIRST inning of that game.

All of this footage is WGN COLOR broadcast footage. I'll break it down after the jump.

Happy New Year and 1971 Cardinals

Happy New Year to all. This week, I'll be posting a few clips of 1971 St. Louis Cardinals broadcast footage. I will preface this as saying that MLB has already informed me that these come from highlight videos and that actual full game broadcasts do not exist. That's their official statement, take it for what it's worth.

First up, we have a clip of "Lefty" Steve Carlton at Wrigley Field. Before we get into other stuff, let's nail down a few parameters. First off, the two Cardinals in this clip are Joe Torre and Steve Carlton. Both were on the team together from 1969-1971. Furthemore, per uniwatch, the St. Louis Cardinals switched to the pullover tops that Torre and Carlton are both wearing for the first time in the 1971 season. So while Torre was with the Cardinals through the 1974 Season, Steve Carlton painfully was not.



With that in mind, let's get into the action.