WPCNR PRESS BOX. “View From the Upper Deck” By John Baseball Bailey. October 21, 2003: Every baseball fan should go to a least one World Series game in their lifetime. In no other sport is the air so charged, the stakes as high, the egos as challenged as they are in the 7 games for the ring. Indulge an old fan for awhile as we travel back in time. As Vin Scully would say, “Pull up a chair, we’re just getting under way.”
PREGAME GAME 1, 2003 WORLD SERIES. Photo by WPCNR Sports
I have been lucky. I have gone to four. Game 2 in 1957 when Yankee Stadium was Yankee Stadium, Game 4 in 1958, and Game 2 in 1961. And Game 1 of this year’s World Series. The Yankees have lost all four games I have seen.
Yankee Stadium is different today than it was in 1957. Today the walls are shortened, the infield and outfield grass cross-cut instead of the long lanes of grass that extended forever to the black walls in left with the numbers 396, 407, 457 and 461 on them, and the tantalizing 344 in right.
THE BIG BALL PARK 1956: Andy Jelinko’s painting brings to life the Westminster Abbey of baseball as I remember it.. Drink in the vast outfield. The way the grass is cut straight-out. The auxiliary scoreboards in left and right center. The sprawl of the multitudes in the bleachers, and the friendly lazy green hue. The rich red dirt. Note the monuments in dead center looking like gasoline pumps. Photo by WPCNR Sports. From the Author’s Collection.
The seats are dark blue instead of soft aqua green. There are no auxiliary scoreboards in left and right center, with 0’s and 1’s sliding down after each inning with perfunctory finality.
There is no bright sunshine and long shadows to ratchet up the drama. The prefabricated façade hangs on the bleacher advertising today, instead of “lifting the curtain” from its former place of elegance hanging from the roof of the upper deck. There are no posts in the new Stadium. I once sat behind a post at a Series game, but they framed the action.
STADIUM PAST: Yankee Stadium in the 1951 World Series. Note the elegant facade on the upper deck. The higher, grander grandstand, the metal fence running out to the Visitors’ Bullpen in leftcenter and the magnificent sweep of the bleachers, as left field and left center run on forever. Photo: Yankee Stadium: 75 Years of Drama, Glamor, and Glory.
The outfield is no longer as pretty as it once was. Once it was a great immense green extended to a high black wall from left to right center between the two bullpens, with leftfield a small metal link fence running from left center to the leftfield foul line. Right field from the rightfield bull pen to the foul pole was a short green concrete wall that outfielders could boost themselves up on to make one-hand catches. There was a 344 sign in dead right on that wall.
Ruthville: 1961: The painting is by Bill Pudom, showing Roger Maris belting Number 61. You get an idea of the sweep of the blechers. The drama of the short right field porch (344 feet). From Yankee Stadium: 75 Years of Drama, Glamour, and Glory.
In dead center there were the three monuments to The Babe, Colonel Ruppert and Edward Barrow. Like Billy Crystal, as a kid, I too thought those men were buried there. They let you walk on the field then too, after a game. The crunch of the red dirt on the running track was like walking on gold dust…it was that soft.
The World Series programs were different in the 50s. For decades, individual teams would print up their own programs, providing a colorful history of the era in which the game was played. Now Major League Baseball prints the program that features all eight teams in the postseason.
Series Past: Original Programs from 1957, 1958 and 2003. Photo by WPCNR Sports, The Author’s Collection.
Another nostalgic touch I miss is afternoon games. You never had cold weather for the series as you had on Sunday evening. You listened to the games at school on transistor radios.
I especially associated the World Series with a song, the Gillette jingle that started each World Series telecast, it went “To look sharp, you need a razor that’s right for you. To be sharp, you need a razor that’s right for you…Light, regular, heavy, only way to get a decent shave.” When you heard that you knew it was World Series time.
The drama remains the same though. Although kids rarely get to see the ends of the games.
Every pitch is important. Every mistake is magnified. The uninitiated tourist observer of the game does not understand they are watching the greatest ballplayers pit their skill levels and instincts against each other. They are trying to outthink, overpower, outrun, outwit, bringing all their concentration to bear on every pitch, play and batted ball.
Each confrontation between pitcher and batter is a test. The pressure is magnified because their reputations ride on the line. Each player has to have amazing self confidence to deal with the canards of criticism heaped on them by sportswriters and commentators who have never been out there inbetween the lines and worked to have the privilege of being out there when no one else is playing in the major leagues because they are not good enough.
SERIES SCORECARDS from Ballparks of the Past: At left is a replica of the program from the first World Series between Boston and Pittsburgh in 1903. In the center is the 1929 Program for the Philadelphia A’s-Chicago Cubs Series, and on the right is the program from the 1918 Series when the Red Sox and Cubs played. The programs rest on an original Yankee Stadium Reserved Seat. Photo by WPCNR Sports. From the Collection of the Author.
Unlike the Super Bowl or the playoffs in other sports, there are pitching rotations to consider: The competitive matchups adjust each day as the players become familiar with the opposition.
There are various levels of pressures in each game. The First Game there is no pressure. The second game the team which lost wants to even it up, but is still confident even if they lose. The third game is a swing game, the fifth game is perhaps the game with the most pressure in the sequence until the seventh game is reached, at which point the teams have shown they are pretty evenly matched and even the loser has given a good account of themselves.
In the 1950s, when World Series games were played in the afternoon, the sun played an important factor in Yankee Stadium. Left field in the autumn was brutal. I remember watching Norm Siebern freeze, losing three fly balls in left field on a brilliant autumn afternoon when the stadium shadows in the sixth and seventh innings were dark and long.
The base ball would come out to leftfield hidden a blue fog bank haze of cigarette and cigar smoke only to reappear dazzled in dappled sunlight. Picking up fly balls was difficult. Siebern’s miscues treated the Milwaukee Braves to unearned runs, as I watched the great Warren Spahn shut out New York, 3-0. Spahnie’s curve, change, and slider just handcuffed the Bombers that day. I still see him yet.
I was there to see the crafty workhorse righthander Lew Burdette win the first of three games in the 1957 Series in Game Two. Lew was saved by a great catch by Wes Covington in the second inning of that game, when Covington, shading the Yankee pitcher, Bobby Shantz (a lefthanded hitter), to left center was caught way right as Little Bobby as he was called sliced a liner down into the left field corner, a sure double and two Yankees were on.
Covington, not a great outfielder, raced to the line and backhanded the ball on a line for a double play. It was the last Yankee threat, as Burdette kept the ball low and the Yankees power hitters beat the ball into the dirt the rest of the day.
Some players, after the ignominy of making a bad play in a World Series, are never the same. Norm Siebern was one. After that fourth game in 1958 he never had another good season. He had hit .300 in 1958.
What has not changed around the Stadium at World Series time is the oldtime feel around the ballpark. There are the dark and jammed streets, the smell of pretzels and hot dogs from street corner vendors. The roar of the overhead elevated subway on the IRT No 4 & 6 Lines. You used to be able to see the subway trains from beyond the rightcenterfield bleachers at the old stadium. Now since the park was remodeled in 1974-76, the high wrap-around electronic scoreboard obscures the “EL.”
Dave and Candyce Corocoran Arriving for Game One. The modern entrance to the stadium celebrates the tradition of the Bombers, but has lost the “Roman Coliseum” look which distinguished the old Stadium. Photo by WPCNR Sports.
THE OLD STADIUM WAS STATELY AND RESEMBLED THE COLISEUM OF ANCIENT ROME. I loved the simple game announcement which would read, depending on the opponent: “Milwaukee Today, 1 PM” From Yankee Stadium: 75 Years of Drama, Glamour, and Glory
There is also the massive traffic jam getting into the ballpark, the smell of beer in the air. The brightly lit plazas around the new Yankee Stadium are just too clean and neat. I liked the old cluster of “Baseball Joe’s,” a block long souvenir stand that ran along the first base side of Yankee Stadium that stood there in the 1950s through the 60s before it was torn down to build the parking garage that no one can get out of after the game.
Once inside the park, there is the lining up of the two ball clubs, the pomp of the National Anthem, and finally the game. No matter how official baseball tries to pomp up the start of these games, the game takes over once the first pitch is thrown.
SERIES OPENER LINEUP ANNOUNCEMENTS, 2003. Photo by WPCNR Sports
Then for nine innings it is mano a mano. Pitcher trying to outthink the hitter. Fielders trying to align themselves where they believe the hitter will hit the ball. There is strategy too. In the World Series, fundamentals count. The team that executes the fundamentals, building runs by moving the runner, making the unexpected play or the great catch usually wins.
As each game is played the level of intensity is picked up. The teams get to know each other it becomes a contest of who will transcend their abilities the most to determine who is the Champion.
The mental anguish over the bad break. The ability to take defeat and use it to motivate yourself to be better is the lesson the losers take home into the cold winter as they sit in the loser’s dugout watching the other team celebrate on the field. It is bitter. Some cannot handle it, like Donnie Moore the Angels pitcher who committed suicide shortly after giving up a three-run homer to cost the Angels a pennant.
Out after out, threat after threat each game wends its way to conclusion, the tension wound taught. The concentration of players tested. Their abilities to bounce back challenged. Their willingness to reach back for “that little something extra” that wins.
Ahh, the mistakes. They are cruel in that the unfortunate player that makes them is immortalized, perhaps more than the heroes. Fred Merkle of “Merkle’s Boner,” Freddie Lindstrom. Tony Kubek, Fred Snodgrass of “The Snodgrass Muff,” Mickey Owen, Julio Franco, Bill Buckner, Curt Flood, the unfortunate players who in one moment could not make a play that cost a series.
Then there are the pitchers who made the one mistake: Branca, Terry, Torres, Root, Hrabosky, Moore, Whitfield. Cruelly they are remembered for the one pitch they wished they could have back that cost a championship.
Baseball, softball, it is the cruel, unforgiving game that is the supreme judge of player ability.
What I noticed Saturday evening was how things have changed since I was last at a Series game. The umpiring was not as good. I did not know the umpires. In the 1950s, you knew the umpires. They were as much stars as the players because they were well-respected and you never had a controversial call in a World Series: Augie Donatelli, Frank Umont, Al Barlick, Dusty Boggess, Jocko Conlan, Nestor Chylak, Frank Dascoli, Frank Secory, Bill Summers, Jim Honochik, just to name some I remember. The umps Saturday night missed a couple of calls. I can never remember that happening in the 50s Series.
MANO A MANO: “Ugie” Urbina, Man on the Mound for the Marlins, fans on their feet, going at Alphonso Soriano of the Bombers in the 9th with the winning run on. Photo by WPCNR Sports
In the bottom of the eighth and the ninth Saturday night, watching “Ugie” Urbina pitch out of a jam in the eighth and the ninth was a throwback. For the first time all season, I saw a reliever come in and put out a fire. Ugie rose to the occasion throwing a terrific pitch a changeup to Jorge Posada in the eighth for the last out.
In the ninth, he froze Alphonso Soriano on a change on a 3 and 2 count. That’s real pitching, throwing change-ups on a full count. It was that confidence the concentration that just is a little bit better that one time.
Watching these individual confrontations between players consumed by the game, concentrating at such a high level is what the World Series is all about.
