Our Sixth Legendary Scoreboard Game on Baseballisms.com featured two emerging powerhouse teams of the Seventies, The Oakland Athletics and the Cincinnati Reds. The final scoreboard below, which appeared on yesterdays Cards from the Diamond, was from the Seventh Game of the 1972 World Series, and indicates Rollie Fingers was on the mound for the visiting team getting the last batter to fly out to the left fielder. We had no correct answers in the comments for this particular game.
Our previous Legendary Scoreboard Games have presented batter by batter; World Series perfect games, great walkoff wins in Toronto and Los Angeles, and tough losses for Braves and Red Sox fans.
We try to pick games that are dramatic to the end, so that we can maintain the mystery as each scoreboard is posted, but most importantly they are chosen because they represent something meaningful to us as fans. Are you of the age where you remember the beginnings of these two great dynasties, one of which flourished throughout the decade while the other was dismantled?
In this game for the A’s you had names like Campaneris, Rudi, Tenace, Bando, Odom, Hunter and Fingers appearing on your lineup card. For the Reds you will recognize a core of Rose, Morgan, Bench, Perez, Geronimo, and Concepcion with some pitching help from Billingham, Borbon and Carroll. All of these names will appear throughout the 1970′s World Series highlight reels.
The choice of a World Series game in which the A’s appeared is also a reflection of some memories that I have playing our version of “stickball” in the driveway growing up. Using a wooden bat and a tennis ball, my brother and I would proceed batter by batter through the lineups of two teams, The Boston Red Sox facing the Oakland Athletics. The choice of the teams was simple actually. The Red Sox of course because we grew up as fans of the home town team, and the A’s because we somehow happened to obtain a plastic green and gold batting helmet.
The batter would don his appropriate helmet in order to really get into the feel for the game 
and take either a righty or lefty stance depending upon the team lineup. Burleson, Remy, Lynn, Rice etc., versus Campy, Rudi, Tenace, Bando etc.. The lineups were mostly a reflection of the 1975 season when the two teams faced off in the American League Championship Series.
We would battle back and forth with the divider between the garage doors acting as the strike zone, but mostly it was a matter of K’s or blasts that settled these high scoring affairs.
High scoring was not the case for most of the ’72 Series, and was not the case for this Legendary Scoreboard Game either, as the big inning for the victorious A’s came on two run producing doubles in the sixth, one by Gene Tenace (my favorite, a catcher and infielder like me, and World Series MVP) and his team captain Sal Bando.
We hope you enjoy these little games that we produce every single day .. check out our Seventh Legendary Game beginning tomorrow, and let us know in the comments if you have any guesses as to which Game we are presenting. The first to guess correctly (Game Five winner was @Faceyman) gets a Baseballisms t-shirt!
We would also like to thank a couple of web sites which are so valuable to pulling these Legendary Games together. The great Baseball Almanac helps us with the rosters and uniform numbers, while Baseball-Reference gives us the play by play accounts of the game. Thanks again for all of your awesome work!
We would love to hear from you. Send a Tweet to @baseballisms with a quick message, send us an email or visit our Upload page with a video message. We look forward to growing a community of fans interested in the poetry of the game of baseball!
{ 0 comments }
Loading ...