MLB 2007

[Sir Stewart]

It's a tough day to be a Red Sox fan, Rico.

[gogo]

It's like magic!

[jenbobblehead]

???

huh.

new thread.

[caliber66]

Well, that was exciting.

[jenbobblehead]

Nice work, Clay.

[Wilco Worshipper]

Go bo-iy!!!

[jenbobblehead]

we were watching the game, and frankly i wasn't paying enough attention to the fact that the O's had no hits thru the 8th inning...Very exciting night in Red Sox Nation. Where's Lammycat when i want to talk baseball!??

[ction]

At 7:08 pm, I think I might have told the Cox Cable automated voicemail system that I was going to "drive over there and strangle you with a fucking tube sock" (the O's/Sox game was not on yet due to what looked like someone there forgetting to do their job...at least that's how it looked to this uneducated observer).

 

Apparently the automated voice mail system does not know how to route such a request...

[jenbobblehead]

At 7:08 pm, I think I might have told the Cox Cable automated voicemail system that I was going to "drive over there and strangle you with a fucking tube sock" (the O's/Sox game was not on yet due to what looked like someone there forgetting to do their job...at least that's how it looked to this uneducated observer).

 

Apparently the automated voice mail system does not know how to route such a request...

did the game eventually come on for you? because if that sort of thing is gonna happen then i'm going to have to take a pass on VA. BTW, i thought the O's games were blacked out?

[caliber66]

Nats games are blacked out.

[bobbob1313]

So nobody posted 'NO HITTER NO HITTER NO HITTER" during it? I'm disapointed.

 

Congrats for Clay, pretty awesome. Too bad, he's got nowhere to go but down from here.

[jenbobblehead]

So nobody posted 'NO HITTER NO HITTER NO HITTER" during it? I'm disapointed.

 

Congrats for Clay, pretty awesome. Too bad, he's got nowhere to go but down from here.

you need to PM me your cellio. I wanted to call you and i realised neither of us have it.

[Duck-Billed Catechist]

Jose Contreras has a no hitter through 3 innings!

 

Baby steps.

[ction]

I can't quote without my computer throwing up on me, but to address several points above:

 

1. Yes, the game eventually came on. I think I just missed the top of the 1st and one batter in the bottom of the inning.

 

2. Nats games are no longer blacked out. There's a regional sports network here called MASN which carries both Nats and O's games. I will discuss this issue in person with whoever wishes to see me act like a retard because of baseball television rights issues and my inability to cope with perceived injustices with the aforementioned rights.

[Duck-Billed Catechist]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC2QDShkQw0

[El Picador]

I hate the Red Sox but I'm stoked for Clay B.

 

Go Angels!

[bobbob1313]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC2QDShkQw0

 

Logan Morrison (the guy who got hit in that video) is supposed to be a decent prospect. Who knows.

[rareair]

after a rough start, pedro seems to be hanging in there.

[Sir Stewart]

So nobody posted 'NO HITTER NO HITTER NO HITTER" during it? I'm disapointed.

I would've if I had been around.

[bjorn_skurj]

Oh yeah. My John Thorn story.

 

Oh, the Glory

Ulster’s John Thorn helps assemble exhibit on zenith of New York baseball

By Dan Barton

 

It was a time, both in baseball and in history, which will not come again.

Like Athens at the time of Pericles or London at the height of the British Empire, there are times when the forces of history and culture combine in such a way to make a certain point on the globe the most important place in the world. And so it was in New York City in the era following the end of the Second World War, when America was far and away the most powerful country in the world and Gotham unquestionably its greatest city.

But what’s remembered most fondly from this time is not so much the politics or the high culture, it’s what happened at the city’s three Major League Baseball stadiums. The names — Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra — and their deeds — Don Larsen’s perfect game in the ’56 series; Mays’ preternatural over-the-shoulder catch in the ’54 fall classic; Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in ’51; and the Bums winning Brooklyn’s only championship in ’55 — are seared into the memory of fans alive at the time and revered as legend by those who weren’t. The central question of the day was not what would be done about the Iron Curtain or how suburbanization would change the city forever. It was, “Willie, Mickey or the Duke?”

A newly-opened exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, “The Glory Days: New York Baseball 1947-1957,” evokes the time when the New York Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants enthralled the city with their storied exploits. John Thorn, a top baseball historian and writer, Ulster Publishing columnist and Saugerties resident, served as curatorial consultant to guest curator Ann Meyerson for the exhibit, helping to collect hundreds of items. Thorn also edited the exhibit’s companion book, a collection of essays on the period by writers Jules Tygiel, Michael Shapiro, Lee Lowenfish, George Vecsey, Andrew Zimbalist, Steven A. Riess, Jonathan Eig, Kevin Baker, Jane Leavy, Ray Robinson and Alan Schwarz.

There was no greater time to be a fan on New York baseball, said Thorn. “You were on top of the world — New York City was not only the golden door for immigrants, it was the style capital, it was the music capital, it was the entertainment capital.”

It is “certainly open to debate” whether the “Glory Days” was the greatest era of baseball era, but, said Thorn, “it is, without question, the greatest baseball era for New Yorkers. New Yorkers dominated the game on the field.”

The best of the best were, of course, the Yankees, winning nine pennants and seven World Series during the stretch covered by the exhibit. But the Dodgers won five pennants of their own and the Giants, whose own glory days took place 50 years prior and who played to a mostly-empty Polo Grounds, won two.

“What made this era special was the opening of the era — Jackie Robinson of the Dodgers integrating baseball,” said Thorn. “The early integration by the Dodgers and the Giants, and over in the other league, the Indians and the Browns, was the story of the entire era. By the early 1960s, you had 22-23 percent of all players being of African-American descent, where 15 years earlier, not even a generation, there were none. That is the most dramatic story of the era.”

The exhibit, (which opened June 27 and runs through December 31), doesn’t take the same approach as the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown does. There are some pieces of old equipment used by the greatest stars of the era, but much of what’s in Glory Days is the kind of things one might find while cleaning out their boyhood bedroom — not perfect in condition or particularly valuable in a monetary sense, but unmatched in terms of their power to evoke the fondest memories.

“If your definition of great memorabilia is bats, balls, gloves, trophies — hardware — Cooperstown’s got us licked. We were not trying to build a mini-Cooperstown,” said Thorn. “The exhibit is as much about New York as it is about baseball and I think the fans, and their lives from ’47-’57 are a fourth team, as important as the Dodgers, Giants or Yankees. We’re trying to recreate how it felt to be alive then.”

Among the items on display, said Thorn, are mementos like the “Golden Stampbook of the Dodgers,” little pins that came with Topps bubblegum, “ice cream lids with the ice cream still smeared on Preacher Roe’s face.” There’s also a Whitey Ford card with “parallel striations and creases that show it was in a bicycle’s spokes.”

And there’s a Mickey Mantle rookie card which would fetch $300,000 or more if it was in pristine condition. “We’ve got one with a corner missing,” Thorn said. “[We] tried to recreate the ordinary lives of ordinary fans — nobody then thought in terms of, ‘I’m going to preserve the corners on my Mickey Mantle card.’”

But there are some Cooperstown-worthy items to be seen as well, Thorn said. “The fans will be amazed by the ripped jersey Johnny Podres wore during the shutout that won for Brooklyn its only World Series. They’ll be amazed by Willie Mays’ glove or Mickey Mantle’s uniform or Yogi Berra’s bat.” Also to be seen is the banner raised at Ebbets Field to mark Brooklyn’s World Series win.

Assembling all this was not easy, as the bits and pieces of the era followed its owners all over the world. “Many of the great things have traveled to Hong Kong, have traveled to the opposite coast,” said Thorn, who added that it took about two years to get everything together. “There is very little in our exhibit that has a Cooperstown base; there is very little that has an institutional base.”

Sarah Henry of the museum said attendance was so far very good — 50 years down the line, these teams can still draw fans. “The attendance has been great — the exhibit is full of grandparents, parents and kids … sharing their collective memories. We’re thrilled.”

 

Times change, and an era ends

While Gothamites were reveling in the baseball excellence that surrounded them from 1947-57, forces were at work that would bring the curtain down. Repulsed by the crumbling city and enticed by the G.I. Bill-spawned suburbs, people were fleeing the city in huge numbers and the rise of air travel made parts of the country which previously seemed as far away as Shangri-La as near as the Borscht Belt.

“Population was leaking out of the Northeast long before it was finally recognized — after World War II and the GI Bill, and a lot of other factors … the migration to other parts of the country was a fact,” said Thorn. It was a fact that Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley and Giants owner Horace Stoneham could not ignore. After the 1957 season, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Giants set up shop in San Francisco.

“The Dodgers and the Giants determined that they could not sustain their payrolls and be competitive while staying in New York City, so they both fled to the West Coast. Bad for New York, but good for the country, good for baseball.”

Few people currently drawing breath are more qualified than Thorn, author of dozens of books on the sport, to say if the baseball then is better than the baseball played today.

“Older people, in a delusional state, will maintain that baseball on the field was better then than it is today,” Thorn said. “I’ve been watching baseball long enough to know that [Mets shortstop] Jose Reyes makes plays every other day that Pee Wee Reese and Phil Rizzuto couldn’t make at any point in their careers. Baseball on the field is better. If it feels worse, and for many people it does, that presents an interesting curatorial question — what is it that was lost? I believe that is the central question of the ‘Glory Days’ exhibit.”

What it was that was lost, Thorn said, is the feeling of community brought by that era of baseball excellence. “We talked about it more back then. It was more central to our daily lives.”

And Thorn offers his own answer to the great question of the day, “Willie, Mickey or the Duke?”

“I think any sensible person would say Willie Mays, but from an affection standpoint, it would be Mickey Mantle. We love Mantle; we are in awe of Mays,” said Thorn. Snider is a definite third. “Willie and Mickey are arguably among the 10 greatest players in the history of the game.”

The Museum of the City of New York is located at 1220 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan; its Website is http://www.mcny.org/.

[Oil Can Boyd]

Rick Ankiel is having a pretty nice day.

[bobbob1313]

Rick Ankiel is having a pretty nice day.

 

He did HGH, apparently.

 

So the whole "The Natural" thing doesn't seem to fit anymore.

[bjorn_skurj]

Ooo. This is embarrassing.

[bobbob1313]

I wonder if the same people who got so mad about Bonds will be just as mad about Ankiel?

[tongue-tied lightning]

but, do you think he's still on it ? that was 2004 when he was still pitching ? or maybe that was when he started hitting ?