Sometimes the Legendary Games are thrust in front of us, so it is best to just follow the path to see where they lead. We first introduced the Baseballisms community to the 1962 World Series during a Cover the Bases podcast with author Cecilia Tan, who wrote about the 7th game in her book The 50 Greatest Yankee Games. We also received a submission from a fan, Dave Schaub who vividly recalls this game in his story A Yankee Fan Recalls the 1962 World Series.
Finally, we heard about Willie McCovey’s comments regarding his final line drive out when we recorded a podcast with Dan Fost, about his book Giants Past and Present.
With all of these signs pointing us to this moment in baseball history, how could we not include it as part of our Legendary Games Scoreboard series? Here we see the final scoreboard posting from yesterday’s Card from the Diamond, showing with detached emotion, an unassisted putout by Yankees secondbaseman Bobby Richardson. Missing from this image is the emotion and intensity that went along with this defining play.
For those who may not remember, this game 7 was a classic pitchers duel between Ralph Terry and Jack Sanford, with the only run coming in the top of the 5th, when Tony Kubek grounded into a double play scoring Moose Skowron who had singled to open the inning. So not even an RBI!
The rosters for these teams are loaded with Hall of Fame names, as well as many significant contributors recognizable to any baseball fan. Yankees skipper Ralph Houk could pencil in names like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Elston Howard on his scoresheet. While Alvin Dark used Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda in the 3 – 4- 5 spots on his batting order.
Leading up to the final at bats, the Giants had to work their way out of a bases loaded, no outs top of the 8th. Pitcher Billy O’Dell came on in relief of Jack Sanford, and was able to get Roger Maris to ground into a 4 – 2 force at the plate, followed by a double play ball by Elston Howard to keep the deficit at one run.
The bottom of the ninth inning is the reason that this has become such a well known Legendary Game. Willie Mays doubled with Matty Alou on first, putting runners on second and third with two outs. All that the home team fans wished for was a base hit from clean up hitter Willie McCovey to score the tying run, and surely drive the speedy Mays around from second base with the World Series clinching run!
Keep in mind that Ralph Terry is on the mound and Yankees fans everywhere must have been thinking about the 1960 World Series, when Terry gave up Bill Mazeroski’s Series winning homerun for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Could lightning strike twice or was redemption a possibility?
With the count 1 – 1, the left handed hitting McCovey pulled a line drive rocket at second baseman Richardson, who with a small step and a leaping stab was able to grab the final out for the Yankees. Giant fans were deflated by the thought that a hit a little bit higher or a little bit wider would have turned the final score in their favor.
We hope you enjoy these little games that we produce every single day .. tomorrow we start our 9th Legendary Game. Let us know in the comments if you have any guesses as to which Game we are presenting. The first to guess correctly 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!
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