baseball fans take note - they found the Holy Grail

[Dave (imported)]

>>Baseball fans take note - they found the Holy Grail.

>>When you ask sportcasters about the most iconic, the most spectacular plays in baseball, at least two if not three innings of this game are mentioned on the list. Much more than the ninth inning homer by Mazeroski that wins the game (the iconic baseball win in so many movies -- the final inning home run), there are brilliant plays by the Yankees (at that time THE Dynasty of wins, most people thought unstoppable and incapable of losing) and the Pirates in the innings leading up to the ninth.

>>This series had SEVEN baseball Most Valuable Players -- Dick Groat, Roberto Clemente, Yoggi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Elston Howard and Bobby Shantz. Casey Stengel managed his last World Series at 70 y/o.

>>This was one of those sports moments that should have been saved and today would be recorded routinely but back then, it was thought lost.

>>I'm old enough to remember the day and there was no televised game. It was radio or nothing. no home team ever had TV of the game. I remember that evening going to the home of Elroy Face and congratulating him and my Mother getting his autograph.

>>So watch the MLB baseball channels for when the show this. It will be grainy B&W but you won't lack for excitement and you won't lack for good baseball.

>>

When savoring film of Bucs' game 7, credit Bing with save

Sunday, October 03, 2010

By Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10276/10 ... z11Ow8y98N

Brian O'Neill's book, "The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-first Century," is available in the PG store.

Plenty of baseball fans leave the room when they get too nervous about a ballgame. Bing Crosby, who was a part-owner of the Pirates in 1960, went a little farther.

He left for Europe.

"Bing liked to be casual,'' his widow, Kathryn Crosby, explained the other day when recalling how the couple spent Oct. 13 that year. "He didn't like to get his soul wrapped around the situation, and he knew the French were cool. If things didn't go our way, he could suffer in silence.''

So the Crosbys and friends listened on short wave in a Paris apartment. When Bill Mazeroski hit the home run to win the series for the Pirates, Der Bingle bungled. He tapped a Scotch bottle against the mantel and "started a conflagration.

"For a man who's supposed to be really cool,'' Mrs. Crosby said, "he lost it completely.''

We were talking because a kinescope of the famous game seven, which hasn't been seen in 50 years, was found in what had been the wine cellar of the Crosby home outside San Francisco. That since has been conveyed to the MLB Network, which plans to show the game in its entirety in November at a yet-to-be named Pittsburgh theater. The veterans of that game and other celebrities will be there to discuss it, and the resulting program will be broadcast on MLB sometime in December.

The Crosbys may be a show biz family, but they've been floored by the reaction to this find. Bing's daughter, Mary, urged me not to say anything more about the Crosby home other than that it is "outside San Francisco.''

"We don't want thousands of people to come to the basement to see what else is in it,'' she said.

Some will remember Mary as the actress who shot J.R. Ewing in "Dallas'' in the 1980s, but I wanted only to know about growing up the daughter of this Pirates owner. (She must have cried like a baby whenever the Pirates lost in 1960. She was only a year old.)

"I'm the only girl out of six boys,'' she said. "So Dad didn't really know what to do with me. He taught me how to hunt, fish and play baseball. I am, to this day, a hopeless tomboy.''

She has fond memories of pickup games her father would organize when they vacationed in Baja California, Mexico. The natives and Crosbys all played together, and her father would fiddle with a short-wave radio to pick up ballgames at night.

Her father never watched any of the movies he starred in, but she expects he watched the Mazeroski game more than once. Kathryn Crosby said that when she and Bing returned home from France, they watched the kinescope a California company had made at his request and "we both went crazy again.''

Then the kinescope was forgotten. Mr. Crosby died in 1977, still a part-owner of the Pirates.

Robert Bader, vice president of marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises, found it around Christmastime last year. He was rummaging through the archives in the climate-controlled part of the Crosby basement, looking to find more Crosby music and television to release on CD and DVD. Then he came across these loose reels that said, "World Series, Part 1 and Part 2.''

He played all five reels to make sure he had the whole game. Before long, they ended up on DVD -- at three different facilities.

"If something leaked out, it was just going to be a couple of innings,'' Mr. Bader said. "Things have a way of getting on YouTube,''

But the historic game was kept intact. Nathaniel Crosby, 48, Bing's youngest son, said, "It's amazing to me that baseball didn't have a copy.''

He intends to be at the Pittsburgh event. Nathaniel used to sit on the Pirates bench, in full uniform with Roberto Clemente's No. 21 on his back, when the team played in San Francisco's Candlestick Park. He was also on the Pirates bench when Nellie Briles shut down the Baltimore Orioles on two hits in the 1971 World Series.

He's seen Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh spit massive wads of tobacco after tough losses, and he saw his father have many long conversations in Spanish with Clemente, but, like so many in Pittsburgh, he can't wait to see this game that was played before he was born.

Nobody's seen that since the Eisenhower administration.

Brian O'Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10276/10 ... z11Ow8y98N

[Riverwind (imported)]

Dave, I found your article very interesting, I only found one little mistake, its in this last line of the first part of your post.

"

>So watch the MLB baseball channels for when the show this. It will be grainy B&W but you won't lack for excitement and you won't lack for good baseball.

"

Every sports fan knows there is no such thing as "good baseball". I would rather watch paint dry then to sit through a baseball game.

Your friend,

River

[Dave (imported)]

About ten years later when I was in college I could walk to Forbes Field and get a $2 seat in the bleachers and sit doing my homework while the game went on.

There was nothing better than sitting near a wood grill cooking hot dogs, drinking something cold and watching a pitching duel on a cool summer night in September. That's real baseball.

[Riverwind (imported)]

The last game I went to was about 10 years ago, a friend his wife and her sister to a Cardinals game, it was the 3rd of July hot humid typical for that time of year. Our seats were in the club house behind home plate about 40 feet away, big picture window bar seats food drinks air conditioning, BORING. The day was not a total loss, after the game we stayed for the fireworks show. There are a couple places in this country that a 4th of July fireworks show is a must see, one is sitting under the arch in St Louis, hearing Ray Charles sing America.

Football is great, Hockey also very exciting, Tennis is great to watch, Basketball is OK, but watching Golf, Bowling and Baseball are the three most boring sports in the world. Just wait for the sports news and you can see the whole game on highlights in 2 minutes.

River

[Dave (imported)]

Baseball is a game of numbers.

There was a no hitter pitched in baseball today. Not even my team. But a no hitter is so rare. 9 innings. 28 at bats. 1 walk.

First no-hiiter in a post season game since Don Larsen tossed a perfect game for the New York Yankees in the 1956 World Series against Brooklyn.

Roy Halladay threw 104 pitches, 79 for strikes.

There were five no-hitters in the majors this year. Only five games out of thousands.

Roy Halladay spent 13 years waiting for this result and this game puts him into the history books for life. Possibly this one statistic, this one number, puts him in the Hall of Fame.

Numbers that go into record books and history. This is fame. This is why boys play baseball. It is a game of numbers and strategy.

[Riverwind (imported)]

OK Dave, Name the winning pitcher who has the fewest number of pitches in a complete game in a world series?

I will give you a hint, it was before I was born.

Second clue, he played for the St Louis Cardinals among other teams.

OK one more clue, he was on the cover of TIME, (personal note, I have a copy of it).

I still don't like baseball.

River

[Dave (imported)]

As close as I can find and I had to go to the record books, Red Barrett of the Boston Braves in 1944 -- 58 pitches.

You don't have to like baseball to appreciate a no hitter, one walk, near perfect game.

[Riverwind (imported)]

Very good, Charles 'RED' Barrett was my uncle, Mother's younger brother.

River

[Dave (imported)]

TONIGHT - DECEMBER 15, 2010:

MLB Network will broadcast the Crosby copy of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, regarded by many as the greatest baseball game ever played.

[Riverwind (imported)]

TONIGHT - DECEMBER 15, 2010:

MLB Network will broadcast the Crosby copy of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, regarded by many as the greatest baseball game ever played.

Who played who, or was that who's on first?

WHAT?

River