Old Series tapes bring America's Pastime back to life

Sunday, February 26, 2006

I have viewed them over and over and plan to keep watching them until either my eyes fall out or I croak. Of what I am writing is my library of "real" World Series videos.

I placed real in parenthesis for an important reason. You see, to my ofttimes archaic way of thinking, the last real World Series occurred in 1968 and pitted the St. Louis Cardinals against the Detroit Tigers.

Oh, I have a filmed record of the 1985 Kansas City Royals series win, but that's a different story. That's not to say there haven't been good World Series' since '68, but in '69 the world changed when the leagues split into divisions and finishing atop the standing in your league no longer meant an automatic trip to the promised land.

A number of years ago I saw an ad for video tapes of World Series' that started in 1943 and continued to date. Pretty neat, thought I. So, I sent off for a video tape of the 1955 World Series in which the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Yankees and Duke Snider hit four home runs. After watching, I was hooked. My next purchases were 1959 and 1960.

They started filming the World Series in 1943 after a brief stab in 1937.

After working for a long time to complete my set, I'm finally getting fairly close. My only missing World Series in the '40s is 1949.

I still lack 1953 in that decade with the only ones in my possession in the '60s being 1960, 1961, 1964, 1967 and 1968. Naturally, the three Cardinal participations are in my grasp.

That means I have 20 out of 26 that I can watch practically any time.

A lot of people might say, "Why in the world would anyone want to see that awful 1950 series again?" You know, I thought the four-game sweep by the Yankees was lopsided until I actually watched the games. The Yankees won 1-0, 2-1 in 10 innings, 3-2 and finally, 5-2. In three of those games, a key hit by the Phillies could have turned the tide.

The 1951 series had a major disappointment. It was the last one by Joe DiMaggio and the first by Mickey Mantle. For some reason. those people who put the highlights on film apparently didn't think it was very important when Mantle, chasing a fly ball, stepped in a drainage hole in the second game and was carried off the field on a stretcher and marked his final appearance in the series. It also marked the beginning of Mantle's lengthy battle with leg injuries that plagued him throughout his career.

I only recently purchased the 1954 DVD because there were others that seemed more important. I still can't believe what happened to the Indians that year. How many people out there know that while Casey Stengel won 10 pennants in 12 years as Yankee skipper, the team that won the most games was the 1954 version -- 105. And they finished second to Cleveland by three games. The Indians were simply awesome that year but were swept in four games. When Dusty Rhodes won the first game with a pop fly home run that would have been a medium depth fly ball to right in our own Lyons Stadium, the Tribe came unhinged. Shoot, that ball couldn't have gone 270 feet. But that's what makes baseball great.

I still watch the 1948 Boston Braves lose to Cleveland in what came very close to being an all-Boston World Series.

It's still fun to watch Bill Mazeroski's 9th-inning home run in the seventh game that lifted the Pittsburgh Pirates to an unlikely championship after the Yankees had outscored them 55-27. It marked the end for Stengel and always brings to mind a Sporting News cartoon caption after the series that shows a downcast Stengel lamenting, "Faces, Faces, all I see are Elroy Faces." The little forkballer saved three games and pitched in four for the Bucs.

But of all of them, including the St. Louis win over the Yankees in 1964, the best of all is probably the 1957 series between the Yankees and Milwaukee Braves.

And one more thing. It's great to see the games played in all the old ballparks. Shibe Park, Braves Field, The Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field, County Stadium, Forbes Field, Crosley Field and old Yankee Stadium are there in all their glory once more.

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