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.

More 1957 World Series from RareSportsFilms

Again, this blog gets a chance to update a previous story with a 'new' find.  This time, it is in respect to the 1957 World Series.  As previously highlighted in one of the first posts nearly 6 years ago to-the-day, Doak Ewing and RareSportsFilms has a cache of 1957 World Series kinescopes.  Residing in that collection are Games 3, 4 and 7 confirmed.  It also appears that Game 6 of that series exists as a partial and there have been rumors that a complete Game 1 is in their possession.

Today, however, they have listed just in time for the holiday season a near complete version of Game 5 from that series.  Without having the game in hand, it is hard to tell what condition it is in or what at-bats are actually missing.  From the description it says:

Game 5 of the 1957 World Series, except for parts of the 2^nd, 3^rd and 5^th innings is shown on this new 1-hour, 27 minute DVD!

The game's length, as listed on B-Ref, is 2 hours.  If this game has only a short amount of pregame (as Game 3 did) then it is likely only missing roughly 35 minutes worth of the game.  

This game has been heralded as one of Whitey Ford's best performances, despite only striking out 2 while scattering 6 hits.  The two most important plays from this game should be intact in this recording.  Those plays, Jerry Coleman's lack of urgency on Mathews' groundball in the 6th and Mantle's caught stealing in the 8th, are attributed to the outcome in this game.

Also on display in this game are the two leading candidates for MVP from the Braves side.  Aaron picks up 2 more hits in the Series and Lew Burdette goes the distance for a CG win.

Hopefully this is a step towards whatever remaining games from this Series finding their way into daylight.  A near complete series showcasing Hank Aaron in his prime is a real treat for fans. More to come on this game when it is available!

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.

MLB expands on '714'

Last January, I showed a series of clips that involved Hank Aaron's 714th homerun in Cincinnati.  This was color videotape footage that had Milo Hamilton's call of the events over the video.  The original post is below:

Sat Down on 714

 
Well, MLB finally released more of the video clip.  You can find it here on their YouTube channel.  The video is nearly three and a half minutes long, however you can clearly see the video is edited down in a certain part.  More after the jump.

"...you can also hurt somebody with a ball"

These are the words Juan Marichal uttered in 2009 to Bob Costas about his 1965 incident involving a bat and Johnny Roseboro's head.  Marichal's defense has always been that tensions were running high and Roseboro had attempted to hit him with a ball in the back of the head.  Those tensions were always present in the Dodgers/Giants rivalry.  In another flare up, coincidentally involving Marichal again, the Dodgers and Giants began a beanball war that erupted into a benches clearing junior-high dance late in the 1971 season.  We have a great clip of this thanks to KTTV.  More after the jump.

Opening Day at Shea (1972)

When it comes to 'important' games in a baseball season, ones you can point to on the schedule and know they are coming are few and far between.  Milestone games, pennant clinching games, postseason games and Opening Day are the few that you know are going to happen at least the day before they do.  This, you would think, would lend itself to being captured on kinescope or video tape.  Opening Day also is (usually) guaranteed to feature the best pitchers on each team going against each other.

Yet very few Opening Days have survived in baseball collecting.  In fact, I only know of two large selections of Opening Day games that still exist before 1977.  I'm going to talk about one of those today.

Coming full circle

Even though it isn't updated nearly as much as I would hope, this blog has been going for nearly 6 years now.  A labor of love, I get great joy with every new broadcast clip I stumble across.  So, it is with that in mind that I get to present the first ever clip I talked about on here.

Thanks to MLB.com, we finally get to see the full clip of Clemente's great grab against the Cubs at Wrigley field that I described in my post "Clemente vs Cubs Regular Season Broadcast (1970-1971)".  Per the label, it is indeed July 2, 1971.  It is, however, not an NBC GOTW.  As I said back in January of this year, that is Jack Brickhouse making the call, which means this is color footage leftover from a WGN telecast.  As I have asked WGN in the past, they say they have no full games tucked away in any archives.  What we see here may be all we get.  However, it is great to see an update to something that I "found" almost 6 years ago.

Thanks for all the page views and enjoy the clip!

Duke Snider's 2000th Hit (in COLOR)

Happy 4th of July!

With the Cardinals playing the Angels this week, it will be the first time this Cardinals fan gets to see Albert Pujols take swings against his former team in a real game.  For 11 years, he was the face of the franchise, the team's perennial MVP.  As late as 2011, fans couldn't think of him as wearing any other uniform than the Birds on the Bat.

It is always a strange sight when we see players who dominate the landscape wearing one uniform don another cities colors.  Whether it be the likes of Hank Aaron as a Brewer, Willie Mays as a Met or Babe Ruth as a Boston Brave, it just doesn't feel right.  So, when we talk about today's clip, it seems strange to see Duke Snider wearing a New York Mets uniform.