Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown
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NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
Observations from Outside the Lines
By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)
#302 AUGUST 10, 2003
THIS JUST IN
Using that headline gives me a chance to recommend here the book by Bob Schiefer, which I just finished (on book tape). It's a great read -- Schiefer combines his recollections with fresh material from interviews and from research -- and since I've been in the mode of taking new looks at old events lately, I admired his process and his product.
But the headline fits: on August 8, while searching the National Baseball Library's web site for a listing of transcripts from their oral history department (it was a slow Friday), I discovered that right there in Cooperstown, less than an hour away, are the papers of Ban Johnson related to the "Black Sox Scandal." That's right, his correspondence, interviews with players like Lefty Williams (who shows up in this issue) and Joe Gedeon (the 9th Man Out), the results from his hired Pinkerton detectives, material from the trial, leads suggested to him (Miller Huggins, Al Jolson?) Needless to say, I will try to see these papers ASAP.
The past weeks, my local paper has been full of American Legion ball ... I sampled some again, but did not get hooked, as I did last summer (see NOTES #265). I could use 30-hour days, eight days a week -- or maybe a month off!
By the way, there was a typo in the last issue -- it was Notes #301 -- not 302. So I did not slip one past you.
The first item below follows up on a squib in last issue, then there's the piece on Lefty Williams (and more material from the Milwaukee 1924 trial transcripts), and finally, another chapter from DEAR PATRICK -- another "favorite" chapter of mine, which will be a mainline dose of nostalgia for older Pirate fans; it will seem like wishful thinking to current Pirate fans, who might recall coming close to a league championship in the early nineties ... but have no memory of a sweet World Series victory (over the Yankees, yet).
For those who are following the project, hoping my book becomes a reality soon -- I'm still trying to land an agent. I may shift targets, to a publisher, but I'm giving this some time, and I feel I'm being given serious consideration right now. I've needed an agent for years. Something else to root for.
THE AWFUL HOWL
Last issue, I included this excerpt from The Sporting News, October 7, 1920:
Williams and Cicotte said that after the awful howl was raised they decided they had better pitch real ball in the closing games of the Series, but by that time things were so upset on the team because of accusations, threats, etc., that it didn't make much difference whether the conspirators tried to play ball or not.
I commented that the "awful howl" referred to might have come from Kid Gleason, when he confronted his team with the news that their team knew the fix was in. But I am more inclined to believe that the "howl" was the ruckus described by Edd Roush (this was in a recent issue of Notes in a different form):
In January 1964, Lawrence S. Ritter interviewed Edd Roush, the Cincinnati Hall of Famer who played centerfield for the Reds in 1919. Edd was always skeptical that the Series was fixed, and like many Reds (and Reds' fans, no doubt), he believed that the best team won, without any help from their opponents.
Many of the stories Roush told Ritter appeared in the oral history classic, The Glory of Their Time, and in other books. However, in the Ritter tapes transcripts, Roush makes a few comments that did not make it into Glory.
After Game Two, a gambler named Jimmy Wigmore, Roush's "deep throat" source, asked him if he heard the "squabble" the White Sox got into after Game One. They tossed it, but the $20,000 they were promised was not delivered. Roush quoting Wigmore: "They had a meeting in Cicotte's room ... Gleason found out about it and he went up there. They had a heck of a go-around. [Emphasis mine] I heard it because my [Wigmore's] room is right next to Cicotte's."
Roush told Ritter that the Sox players beat up one of the fixers until manager Kid Gleason was finally sent for. "'They didn't get their money and they decided to go out and win if they could.' Well, I didn't pay too much attention to that," Roush said.
Now there may well have been an "awful howl" from the Sox clubhouse, if the "crooked Sox" admitted they dumped the first two games, after Gleason told them what he had learned (from lots of places). But I don't find any documentation for that. So I'm leaning toward the flap after Game One, when the Sox begin to realize they have been had.
LEFTY WILLIAMS
I've written about Lefty Williams here before over the past year, mostly about his statement to the 1920 grand jury, and about the death threat he received before Game Eight of the 1919 Series. Below are excerpts from the section on Lefty in my book. Feedback and especially corrections welcome. Reading the two depositions Lefty gave for the 1924 Milwaukee trial is very frustrating. I think you'll see why. Keep in mind that whatever Lefty said in 1920 to the grand jury, it was well-rehearsed with the lawyer who directed him to sign away his immunity -- Alfred Austrian guided the entire Q & A session -- and Lefty later repudiated it.
Claude Preston "Lefty" Williams was born in 1893 in Aurora, Missouri. Like Eddie Cicotte, Lefty started his career in Detroit. He joined the White Sox prior to the 1916 season. Williams' testimony was delivered to the 1920 grand jury the day after Cicotte and Jackson appeared. Known as a control artist, Williams walked eight in sixteen innings, losing a record three games in the 1919 Series. It is widely believed that Williams' life and that of his wife were threatened, if Lefty failed to lose the final game of the Series, by serving up a big first inning. He did.
There is no doubt that Claude "Lefty" Williams was in on the Fix. Losing the final game must have been extremely painful for Lefty -- first he had to convince his manager, Gleason, that the fix was off (and he could point to Cicotte's win in Game Seven as proof), but then he had to hand the Reds a big first inning, or risk losing his wife and his own life. But he got there on his own.
Lefty's wildness cost him dearly in Game Two, a complete game, 4-2 loss in which he gave up just four hits. He yielded just four hits in eight innings in Game Five, a 5-0 loss; the four runs off Williams came in the Reds' sixth inning. He gave up four runs in Game Eight before he was removed from the mound in the first inning. Three games, one bad inning in each, three losses.
Friends
That Williams gave his fellow-southerner friend Joe Jackson $5,000 is also certain. Lefty later testified under oath that Jackson was not in on the Fix, but his name was, and Lefty represented Jackson to the gamblers -- without Joe's knowledge or permission. That's not what friends are for.
"Where Jackson Goes Williams Follows," proclaimed a hot stove league Sporting News headline in March 1919.
They are neighbors at home in Chicago and roomies on the road and their wives are such chums that what one knows the other knows. Jackson jumped to the shipyards [in 1918], Williams followed. Comiskey forgave Jackson and Joe signed a contract to return. Presto Williams also asks forgiveness, gets it and signs.... Williams did not leave the White Sox for a shipyard job because he wanted to escape Army service, for he was safe under exemption -- he just went because Jackson did.... [He] was going like a house afire last spring when Joe quit -- and he just had to quit along with him.
When the grand jury was meeting in late September 1920, Lefty Williams appeared the day after Cicotte and Jackson at the law firm of Comiskey's lawyer, Alfred Austrian. With his manager Kid Gleason and a court reporter present, Williams responded to Austrian's questions. (Excerpts from his statement are at the Famous Trials website; see Sources.) Williams' signed statement was admitted into the grand jury hearings. Austrian also had him sign a waiver of immunity, so what he said could be used against him.
My hunch is that Austrian was taking no more chances. Joe Jackson, the day before, after careful coaching by Austrian, could not swear that he did anything to toss the games. At least he kept quiet about Comiskey, Austrian must have thought. With Lefty, Austrian did all the questioning himself, then delivered the statement with the Q's & A's to the grand jury.
Asked about "everyone you talked to" at the meetings, Williams named Cicotte, Gandil, Weaver and Felsch, and several gamblers. Williams says he was promised $10,000 after losing Game Two, but got only $5,000, from Gandil, after Game Four. Later, Williams said he was paid after the Series was over. Apparently that was the last time he ever talked with Gandil -- ever. Williams did not know how much any of the players received, or even if Game Three was supposed to be tossed. All he knew for sure is that a lot of money was promised, and a lot of double-crossing went on.
At least in the excerpts, Austrian never asked Lefty about Joe Jackson, never gave him the opportunity to clear his friend, or to implicate him. Nor does he follow up on Lefty's naming of other players: they met with gamblers, but did they all agree to participate in the Fix? Why not run down the seven names he had, and ask Lefty to comment on each?
Lefty's statement disappeared with the rest of the grand jury material before the 1921 trial. Cicotte, Jackson and Williams repudiated their 1920 statements, and no player took the stand in 1921. Buck Weaver wanted to, but the defense lawyers made it a package deal, and theirs turned out to be a winning strategy, at least in court. The "conspiracy to defraud" charges were tough to make, and the case probably should not have gone to trial. Nor did it need to -- rookie Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis had made up his mind about the futures of the eight players.
Other Versions
Deposed for the Milwaukee trial on May 5, 1923, Lefty Williams said "The first I heard [of the Fix] was in 1920 when I was suspended." He could not recall talking with Gandil about it before the Series. Stonewalling, Lefty insisted that he spoke with no one and suspected nothing. He had testified once, and that was enough. Promised by Austrian that he would be taken care of, Lefty soon found himself out of his baseball career. He was not eager to be cooperative with the legal system. About all he would admit was that he made $3,300 in 1917, was cut to $3,000 for 1918, and cut again to $2,600 for 1919. Receiving even just $5,000 for his role in the Fix nearly doubled his salary.
On January 12, 1924, just weeks before the Milwaukee trial began, Lefty Williams was deposed again. This time, he opened up. He was confronted with his 1920 grand jury statements. His general response was that he did not recall what he said in 1920, but whatever he said, he believed to be true then. The Fix "has been a thing of the past for me" (MT 64).
Lefty said that he turned down Gandil's first offer to join the Fix. Asked about Joe Jackson's role, Williams said that Jackson "played his regular game all the way through" the Series (MT 68). He could recall no suspicious play by Jackson. As Donald Gropman has documented in his revised editions of Say It Ain't So, Joe!, Williams explained that he had used Jackson's name in the meetings with the gamblers, without Jackson's knowledge or his permission.
Lefty testified that he received $10,000 from Chick Gandil. "Gandil told me, 'There is five for yourself, and five for Jackson, and the rest has been called for'" (MT 768) -- meaning that the gamblers needed it to make more bets and more money. If that recollection was correct, Williams received the money during the Series, while betting was still going on.
Lefty had expected to receive some money after Game Two, but did not. Later, Williams said that he took the money, counted it, and went to Cincinnati -- that would have been after Game Five. Another time, Williams said that Gandil had given him the payoff after Game Three, saying "There is your dough, the gamblers have called it off." In 1920, he said he gave Jackson $5,000 after Game Four. He also said he "never got a nickel until after the last two games" (MT 857). Like Jackson, Williams testified that he "would have kept the money if Chicago won." Whenever Lefty was paid, he said that his wife's reaction was not positive. She was mad -- "until I showed her the money. She said 'You have done it. What can I say how I just got it? Let it go and get the best of it.'"
If Lefty Williams was vague about just when he received the money, he was also inconsistent about when he passed on the $5,000 to his friend Joe Jackson. Did he throw the money on the bed and say "We have been crossed in some way" -- suggesting that a bigger payoff ($20,000 per player) was expected? Williams said that when he delivered the cash, he told Jackson that the Fix had just been called off.
Despite all the vagueness and contradictions in Lefty Williams' statements, the Milwaukee jury at the 1924 civil suit trial -- having heard Williams, Jackson, and Jackson's wife Kate all tell about when, where and how the $5,000 was given to Jackson -- voted in their special verdict by 11-1, that the money was given after, not during the Series, and that Williams did not tell Jackson at that time that the cash was his share of the money received for the players' part in an agreement with gamblers to toss the Series.
Did Williams Try to Win Any Games?
Jackson consistently said that he played the whole Series to win. Cicotte admitted to being in the conspiracy, and to at least putting the first batter in Game One on base, on purpose, as the signal that the fix was in; whether he also threw Game One is not certain, but it seems likely; his statements for the 1924 trial make his "crooked" role in Game Four less likely. What about Lefty Williams?
Asked in his second deposition, "Did you do anything intentional to throw the games?", Lefty replied, "I did not; I was a little nervous, naturally, and there was three bases made by the shortstop." But later he admitted, "Well, I might have pitched harder if I wanted to." Weighing against this claim are the facts that Ray Schalk confronted Williams, by some reports with a physical assault, after Game Two, and did not state later (as he did about Jackson and Cicotte) that Lefty played to win.
Williams denied intentionally losing Game Five: "I pitched as hard as I ever pitched a ball game in my life" (MT 844).
Q: "Were you nervous because this [the Fix] was on your mind?"
A: Naturally it did. I was sorry, I wanted to be "out of it and not mixed up in it at all."
Lefty also insisted that he pitched Game Eight to win (MT 850). Quite probably, the death threat was still vivid to him. In his grand jury statement, Williams said that on the way to the park for Game Eight, he told Jackson "If we have been double-crossed I am going to win this game if I possibly can." But that makes no sense, the double-crossing was plain early in the Series. If Lefty made this statement to anyone before Game Eight, it would have been to Gleason, to make sure that he got the start; if he made it up, or was advised by Austrian to say it, for the grand jury, it likely was to emphasize the double-crossing that had taken place.
The Death Threat
"Requiem for a Southpaw" appeared in the December 5, 1959, issue of The New Yorker -- just after Lefty died. The author, J.M. Flagler, as a young boy (he was born in 1922), knew Lefty Williams as a friend who taught him some pitches in their games of catch. Lefty and his wife Lyra lived in the basement apartment, below Flagler's family's home. J.M.'s dad recognized Lefty's name, and mentioned it to his son, who found himself talking one day with Lefty's wife. She told him it was so -- and she wanted him to hear it from her first.
"He was wrong, I guess, but he was only a youngster when it happened" [Lefty was 26 and in his 6th year in the major leagues], she said in a rush. "All those others were doing it, and he didn't understand what it really meant, and besides, he was threatened."
She stated that if Lefty did not toss game eight, a hired gun would shoot her. Gambler Billy Maharg had hinted at this in his 1920 interview with a Philadelphia reporter. William A. Cook's The 1919 World Series: What Really Happened? has the detail that Williams would have been shot while on the mound if he didn't comply, but the source for that view is not clear.
According to Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Arnold Rothstein "is said to have arranged for a Chicago thug ... to pay a call on Lefty Williams, who was to pitch the eighth game." The thug, "Harry F." (Asinof), "the Man in the Bowler Hat" (Algren -- who says the fee was $500), or the "man in a black derby" (Koppett) made Lefty an offer he could not refuse -- he threatened his life, and that of his wife, if Lefty was still on the mound after the first inning. (In Brendan Boyd's fiction, Harry F. is in Lefty's apartment when he arrives there the night before Game Eight; Harry drives home his point just before he leaves by ordering Lefty to turn up the heat in his stove after they talk. Lefty does as he is told, and soon realizes that his cat is in the oven.) Lefty kept the threat to himself, and was pulled from Game Eight with one out, after giving up four straight hits, but avoiding his own.
Reds' star Edd Roush batted against Lefty Williams in that first inning of Game Eight, Lefty pitching with one eye on Rothstein's "designated hitter." Roush recalled hitting a curve ball just fair over first base. "I could just as easily have popped up, or the ball gone foul."
Flagler liked Lefty, as a friend. He concludes his tribute by noting that Lefty spent much of his time in his later life working in his garden nursery business in Laguna Beach, California. Flagler imagined Lefty enjoying the quiet of that occupation, which afforded him lots of time to reflect.
[In issue #294, I began running DEAR PATRICK: HOT STOVE DELIVERIES FROM A FATHER TO A SON, a book I started writing in 1989 and continued for a few years, till I set it aside. Some of DEAR PATRICK has found its way into NOTES before, but never the whole thing, beginning to end -- until now. Here is Chapter 9.]
CHAPTER 9
HAD 'EM ALL THE WAY
January 19, 1990
Dear Patrick:
In two months, the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano. But will the Cardinals, Blue Jays, and Orioles be in their winter havens by mid-March? We don't know and there's nothing we can do about it. We are fans held hostage, and it doesn't feel good.
You asked me the other day if the Pirates had ever won a World Series. The answer is yes -- in 1909 (I suspect my grandfathers rooted then), 1925 (when my father was eleven), and then not until 1960 -- when I was fourteen.
They've won a few times since then, but there will never be another 1960. Let me tell you about it.
A young Irishman named Kennedy was running hard that year to succeed an old general named Eisenhower in the White House. And another Irishman, Danny Murtaugh, had his team running hard, too; and he wasn't going to settle for .500 ball this time.
1960 was 1958 all over again, but with an ecstatic ending. After coming close, then falling back, 1960 was a take-a-deep-breath-and-charge rush to the pinnacle of baseball and the country's, the world's, attention.
It was a heady, nerve-racking summer. The Pirates were in first place for most of the season and wound up in front by seven games, but no one was completely comfortable until it was clinched, in late September. Forbes Field became the center of the city, just as the Tennis Court had been the hub of my neighborhood; in fact, the Pirates' dramatics shrunk Pittsburgh from a city into a neighborhood.
It was a wild summer, too, with thrills galore scattered throughout every month. Come-from-behind, impossible wins. The players never gave up, and the confidence was contagious. The team had character (and characters), and its excellence was being rewarded.
The script must have been written by Alfred Hitchcock, or was Danny Murtaugh the new "Master of Suspense"? Benny Benack's battle-song, "Beat 'Em, Bucs!" blared on the radio, at the stadium, echoed in your head, louder than Chubby Checker's twist, when you closed your eyes ("Yes the Bucs are going all the way, all the way this year.") The team was chock full of heroes, and they all took turns at it. It was all fiction, all stuff from Tunis and Meriwether, but it was happening!
There is nothing else like the climax of a pennant race: the countdown of the Magic Number -- the combination of your team's wins and your closest opponent's losses, that are needed to finally secure first place, to "clinch."
"Magic Number" tension is deliciously torturous. Each day brings a fresh chance to bump that number down a notch or two (if the team chasing you fails to win its game).
Before you get to the countdown, the number most closely watched is in the "GB" column of the daily standings -- "Games Behind." It's a measure of distance between teams. GBs are more like lengths in a horse race, than seconds in a foot race, because GBs have nothing to do with time. Everyone finishes on the same day, so many "games behind" or -- for one team -- in front. The sage Paige advice "Don't look back" is never better taken than in the heat of a pennant drive; and that is precisely when the advice is hardest to follow.
The one time the Pirates challenged for a flag between 1927 and 1960, the championship went to the Chicago Cubs because, according to Buc star Paul Waner, the Pittsburgh team was trying to win by watching the scoreboard. That was 1938, stuck in the memory of Pirate fans like a splinter under a fingernail, remembered for Gabby Hartnett's twilight homer that turned out the lights for the Bucs' chances that year. I'm sure that '38 was far fresher in mind to fans like my father, than the triumphant seasons of the mid-twenties.
The pleasure of winning a pennant surely is heightened by the sense of relief felt when the race is won. Any season is more like a marathon than a sprint; more a Russian novel than a short story. And Pittsburghers were quite conscious that in 1960, we had been running for over thirty years without breaking any finish-line tape.
Imagine going for years without a Christmas or a birthday party, then being allowed to indulge in a celebration as long and as loud as you could make it. That's how 1960 was, when the swashbuckling Pirates finished on top.
In the Series. We were in the Series!
The Pirates' Series opponent? Who else but the New York Yankees. These teams had last faced-off in an October classic in 1927 when Murderers' Row steamrollered the Bucs in four straight. An embarrassment, a public humiliation. It took thirty-three years to recover -- and now, the Yankees again?!
The '60 Pin-stripers were compared often to that dynastic wrecking crew led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. They had Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and few soft spots. Their manager was the clownish "Perfesser" Casey Stengel, who was nearing seventy now. Facing the Yankees was, for the Pirates (and thus for the City of Pittsburgh) a chance for redemption -- or for falling short, perhaps to plummet again, and to wait thirty more years for the next opportunity.
My brother Mick was volunteered to brave the long lines for Series tickets. He came home with a pair for Game Seven. Groan! So many Series are settled in fewer than seven games. We could be shut out!
The '60 Series was one of the most exciting ever played. The Bucs won the opener at Forbes Field, then took two terrible drubbings, by scores of 16-3 and 10-0. But Vern Law, the Buc's ace righty (he won twenty during the regular season), who won the opener, evened the Series at two games each, with a 3-2 squeaker. ElRoy Face and his fork-balls had saved both Buc wins.
Harvey Haddix came on to win the crucial Game Five in Yankee Stadium, 5-2, and the city braced to celebrate. All that was needed was one win, at home in Forbes Field. But the roof caved in, with Game Six going to the Yanks, 12-0.
It was hard to be optimistic about Game Seven, but at least it would be played -- our tickets were not only usable, they were now like gold! If only the game could be kept close ...
Mick was a senior at North and had not missed a day of classes yet. I had just started there. It was a strict school, and having tickets to the Series would not entitle anyone to miss a day. If Mick or I went, we would forfeit our chances for a "Perfect Attendance" plaque. So our tickets were used by my mother and Sue -- Dad didn't go.
Why did my father back out for a pinch-rooter? My sister recalls him sneezing that cool October morning, throwing his back out of joint and winding up on the fans' DL (disabled list.) But my mother thinks he removed himself from the lineup because he was too, too nervous to stand the drama -- if there was to be drama. Boy, was there ever.
I have no deeper regret in my life to date, and expect to have none deeper, than that decision to pass up Game Seven in favor of a routine day in school.
On the other hand, I have a batch of other memories and images from that crisp Fall afternoon. Scores were announced from the beginning of the game by sympathetic teachers at the start or end of each class (or by transistor-smuggling students, at every change of the score.) And there was plenty to report. It was a high-scoring, see-saw game, that went right down to the wire.
After my final class, I raced (with a gang of others) into the physics lab where a portable black and white television was perched on a teacher's swivel chair, high on a desk, for all to view. It was the bottom of the eighth already, the Pirates were in dire straits, trailing by 7-4, but they had a rally going. With a man on first, Bill Virdon's double-play grounder to short took a bad hop off a pebble, hitting the New York shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat, knocking him out of the game and keeping the Pirates in it.
The classroom buzzed like a stadium. The momentum had changed again. We got a lucky break -- now, can we capitalize on it? Hang on.
A single for one run, a sacrifice bunt, but then a short fly out to Roger Maris, and the Yanks were almost safe again. But Clemente beat out an infield bounder (YES!), scoring the Quail and making it 7-6. Then Hal Smith, the Buc catcher, drove one over the wall. The room erupted. It was 9-7 Bucs with just three outs to go! The physics lab couldn't have gone crazier if the principal stepped in and announced that classes were cancelled for the next week!
I then made a tough decision. Instead of sticking it out in the lab, I caught the next bus, figuring to catch the end of the game in a department store, just five or ten minutes away. On the bus, there were plenty of radios going -- and I listened with dismay as the Yankees came back. Two singles, one by -- of all people -- Dale Long! There he was again!
Haddix on in relief. No tomorrow. No perfect game needed, Harvey, just a few outs. Maris is one, but Mantle gets a hit, and it's 9-8, first and third occupied, one down. Yogi Berra up. A shot down toward first base -- thank goodness it's Rocky Nelson there, and not Stu! -- but Rocky can only nail one out and the tying run comes across. Even-Stephen! Oh, no. We were so close!
I tore off the Troy Hill bus and burst into Sears, heading for the TV department. There must have been thirty or forty sets on, pointing in all directions, and the store was elbow-to-elbow in people. No one was buying or selling. I found a spot and held my breath.
It was the same all over the city: every television and radio drew a cluster of hopefuls, thousands of extensions of Forbes Field, all on the edge of their sanity.
The Pirate second-baseman, Bill Mazeroski, led off the Buc ninth. Bottom of the order. Expectations low. At the age of 24, Maz is the best-ever at fielding his position, but we needed a hit now, and then -- BANG! Time stood still, at 3:36 PM, as Maz' homer flew over Yogi Berra, over the ivied 406 mark, over the rainbow!
The department store went bonkers -- total strangers, of all ages, sexes, races and religions, clapping each other on the backs and shaking hands. We did it! And, as Bob Prince would say, "we had 'em all the way." We plainly didn't have the Yankees even most of the way, of course. But the Series was ours.
The world was temporarily upside-down, and reeling -- the unsinkable Yankees had gone down suddenly, like the Titanic. It wasn't supposed to be possible, and now it was headed for the history books.
Outside, car horns honked away, like there was a wedding caravan on every street. Those who had lived through the World Wars said it was like this when those wars ended -- everyone was outside, acting like New Year's Eve on a sunny afternoon. I caught the 8 Perrysville streetcar home, numb with excitement. Radios continued to blare out interviews and reactions. There were no strangers on that trolley, either -- there were none in the city -- we were all friends and relatives that day.
My family was not in the habit of watching the six o'clock TV news, but that evening we were all gathered in front of the cellar's set, to confirm that we hadn't dreamed the whole thing. And to hear Pittsburgh proclaimed World Champion, before the nation. When David Brinkley mispronounced Maz' name "Ma-ZOR-ski," we booed, and NBC received hundreds of calls.
It is absolutely true that any Pittsburgher around then can tell you exactly where they were at 3:36 PM on Thursday, October 13, when Maz' homer happened. Probably many stories are like mine. Everyone has a story though, and by now has told and retold it countless times. If they are like me, they will probably never tire of telling it.
My parents' generation can do the same thing, tell you precisely where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed, or when President Roosevelt died. My generation can recall President Kennedy's death the same way, and Martin Luther King's. I wonder what the events will be for your generation, or your children's?
Oh, yes -- I still have the ticket stubs from Game Seven. On one of them, my father penned in the date and the score of the game, and on the back of the rain check, "Marie and Sue there." His way of saying, I think, "remember this always."
Today, I look at those stubs and am reminded of a five-inch piece of driftwood in my odds-and-ends collection. My father wrote on it, too: my name, then "Lake Erie, March 22, 1953. Ashtabula, Ohio." We had taken a Sunday drive there, on an uneventful gray day, and had paused to inspect a quiet beach, which had thawed out and was looking ahead to summer. Nothing more.
But I know now why my father did it. A year earlier, he had come close to death. The sense of his own mortality was still fresh. He knew how fragile life was. He wanted me to remember that we were together, that day.
Just that. And always.