Baseball's glorious nostalgia
by Mike Jensen
OCTOBER 27, 2009 TAGS:
Looking forward to the World Series?
Or are you prone to looking back? These days, Baseball’s Fall Classic may not match the Super Bowl for ratings or popularity, but when it comes to American sporting nostalgia, the World Series has no peers.
Baseball -- which was organized into leagues just after the Civil War -- supplies a perfect example of sports as metaphor: You take a journey, set out on a quest, and face many perils as you try to come home again.
The emotion it taps has been famously linked to fathers and sons playing catch, a quintessential male-bonding experience. (One wag points out that the males stand apart, say nothing and throw a hard object at each other. He may be a cynic, but a cynic is just a frustrated idealist, right? and baseball happily trades in ideals.)
The documentarian Ken Burns chose baseball to explain us to ourselves. If the sport lost its alleged innocence with the infamous Black Sox 1919 cheating scandal, Babe Ruth was around to call his famous (alleged) shot and to point out that he deserved a bigger paycheck than the president’s. “I had a better year,’’ Ruth (allegedly) said.
World Series memories are at their heart parochial. Minnesota Twins fans hold onto their images and St. Louis Cardinals fans treasure entirely different ones.
Your memory doesn’t have to be perfect to include Don Larsen’s 1956 Perfect Game. No Yankee fan, I have a clear vision of catcher Yogi Berra jumping into Larsen’s arms six years before I was born, since that clip is on television every year at this time.
I try to think of other bits of history from ’56 and come up only with words. Eisenhower won re-election. Elvis must have been emerging from Memphis. For better or worse, no other specific picture emerges.
If you care, you know your history. Last week when the Philadelphia Phillies clinched their second straight trip to the World Series, two security guards at Citizens Bank Park, both probably in their 40s, talked about the possibility of facing the Yankees.
One guy said, “Fifty-nine years ago, they beat us four straight.’’ His voice had a little edge to it.
He had his facts straight. The only time the Phillies and Yanks met in the World Series, the great Yankees dynasty swept away the Whiz Kids, who never sniffed another World Series as they aged.
Like no other sporting event and few other human events, World Series games are analyzed through a historical prism. It’s a game of statistics, so history can be brought in objectively. When Derek Jeter doubled in the fifth inning of Game 2 of this year's Series, it didn’t just give the Yankees a runner on second, it gave Jeter 43 career World Series hits, tying him with Yanks immortal Lou Gehrig for ninth on the all-time list. It was also Jeter’s eighth World Series double, tying him with Gehrig, Lonnie Smith and Duke Snider for sixth on that all-time list.
Shared history also means shared pain, for the World Series failures or the near-misses.
I ordered pizza to pick up the other day and was told “Number 86 … 25 minutes.’’ Instant pneumonic: 86 … Mets-Red Sox!
Visions of Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson, and where I watched it all go down in 1986, in a bar down the block from New York’s Grand Central Station.
Here’s how I remember 1960, and I wouldn’t be born for almost two years: Yes, Kennedy beat Nixon, but also Pittsburgh’s Bill Mazeroski hit his fateful home run then, a staple of the canon with Mazeroski rounding the bases after knocking out the Yankees. (The next generation can catch it on YouTube, a 29-second clip. It’s worth it to see the fan wearing a tie who reaches Mazeroski before he gets to third base.)
“You can’t imagine the deep scarring ’64 inflicted unless you endured it,’’ explained a fellow sportswriter in Philadelphia about the year the Phillies missed the World Series after leading the National League by 6 ½ games with 12 games remaining. “I’m 59. I was 14 then. And yet it still kills me even to recall that September.’’
“I’ve never really rooted for anybody since 1964,’’ chimed in another co-worker. “I just watch cynically. The fall of 1964 made me a sportswriter.’’
Winning can’t erase the scars from losing; no surprise there. My 97-year-old grandfather, who spent almost his whole life in New England, asked me just before the playoffs, “You think the Red Sox can beat the Yankees?’’ He wasn’t optimistic, or surprised when the Red Sox lost before they even reached New York.
In writing this it dawned on me that my oldest continually held possession is an orange-and-blue pennant tacked to a wall above my desk in my basement office. I’ve kept it for 40 years, since the day my mother took me to the parade celebrating the Miracle Mets triumph in 1969.
The pennant curls in at the top above the words Amazing New York Mets. A team photograph used to be stapled on, but I probably lost it 38 years ago.
.jpg)
Wait a second. I just now noticed – the pennant says 1969 National League Champs. Some street vendor was getting rid of inventory. It doesn’t say World Series Champs. Maybe that’s some kind of karmic payback: Forty years later, I remember how a lady saw my mother buying two pennants at the parade, for my sister and me. The lady, with her young son, didn’t have money to buy one, she said. Could she have one? My mother turned to her 7-year-old. I said no.
Sometimes it takes somebody passing on to understand the shared nature of all this. After the Phillies won last year, in the midst of a beautiful eulogy, a son mentioned that his mother on her deathbed hadn’t yet forgiven Chase Utley. I assumed they were referring to him dropping the F-Bomb at the Phillies victory celebration.
Looking back doesn’t always mean looking way back. A man who caught a grand-slam ball from the bat of Phillies outfielder Shane Victorino during last year’s playoffs went to a wake after the Phillies won it all. He was encouraged to bring the grand-slam ball, since the deceased, an avid Phillies fan, would have appreciated it. The survivors certainly did.
Or are you prone to looking back? These days, Baseball’s Fall Classic may not match the Super Bowl for ratings or popularity, but when it comes to American sporting nostalgia, the World Series has no peers.
Baseball -- which was organized into leagues just after the Civil War -- supplies a perfect example of sports as metaphor: You take a journey, set out on a quest, and face many perils as you try to come home again.The emotion it taps has been famously linked to fathers and sons playing catch, a quintessential male-bonding experience. (One wag points out that the males stand apart, say nothing and throw a hard object at each other. He may be a cynic, but a cynic is just a frustrated idealist, right? and baseball happily trades in ideals.)
The documentarian Ken Burns chose baseball to explain us to ourselves. If the sport lost its alleged innocence with the infamous Black Sox 1919 cheating scandal, Babe Ruth was around to call his famous (alleged) shot and to point out that he deserved a bigger paycheck than the president’s. “I had a better year,’’ Ruth (allegedly) said.
World Series memories are at their heart parochial. Minnesota Twins fans hold onto their images and St. Louis Cardinals fans treasure entirely different ones.
Your memory doesn’t have to be perfect to include Don Larsen’s 1956 Perfect Game. No Yankee fan, I have a clear vision of catcher Yogi Berra jumping into Larsen’s arms six years before I was born, since that clip is on television every year at this time.
I try to think of other bits of history from ’56 and come up only with words. Eisenhower won re-election. Elvis must have been emerging from Memphis. For better or worse, no other specific picture emerges.
If you care, you know your history. Last week when the Philadelphia Phillies clinched their second straight trip to the World Series, two security guards at Citizens Bank Park, both probably in their 40s, talked about the possibility of facing the Yankees.
One guy said, “Fifty-nine years ago, they beat us four straight.’’ His voice had a little edge to it.
He had his facts straight. The only time the Phillies and Yanks met in the World Series, the great Yankees dynasty swept away the Whiz Kids, who never sniffed another World Series as they aged.
Like no other sporting event and few other human events, World Series games are analyzed through a historical prism. It’s a game of statistics, so history can be brought in objectively. When Derek Jeter doubled in the fifth inning of Game 2 of this year's Series, it didn’t just give the Yankees a runner on second, it gave Jeter 43 career World Series hits, tying him with Yanks immortal Lou Gehrig for ninth on the all-time list. It was also Jeter’s eighth World Series double, tying him with Gehrig, Lonnie Smith and Duke Snider for sixth on that all-time list.
Shared history also means shared pain, for the World Series failures or the near-misses.
I ordered pizza to pick up the other day and was told “Number 86 … 25 minutes.’’ Instant pneumonic: 86 … Mets-Red Sox!
Visions of Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson, and where I watched it all go down in 1986, in a bar down the block from New York’s Grand Central Station.
Here’s how I remember 1960, and I wouldn’t be born for almost two years: Yes, Kennedy beat Nixon, but also Pittsburgh’s Bill Mazeroski hit his fateful home run then, a staple of the canon with Mazeroski rounding the bases after knocking out the Yankees. (The next generation can catch it on YouTube, a 29-second clip. It’s worth it to see the fan wearing a tie who reaches Mazeroski before he gets to third base.)
“You can’t imagine the deep scarring ’64 inflicted unless you endured it,’’ explained a fellow sportswriter in Philadelphia about the year the Phillies missed the World Series after leading the National League by 6 ½ games with 12 games remaining. “I’m 59. I was 14 then. And yet it still kills me even to recall that September.’’
“I’ve never really rooted for anybody since 1964,’’ chimed in another co-worker. “I just watch cynically. The fall of 1964 made me a sportswriter.’’
Winning can’t erase the scars from losing; no surprise there. My 97-year-old grandfather, who spent almost his whole life in New England, asked me just before the playoffs, “You think the Red Sox can beat the Yankees?’’ He wasn’t optimistic, or surprised when the Red Sox lost before they even reached New York.
In writing this it dawned on me that my oldest continually held possession is an orange-and-blue pennant tacked to a wall above my desk in my basement office. I’ve kept it for 40 years, since the day my mother took me to the parade celebrating the Miracle Mets triumph in 1969.
The pennant curls in at the top above the words Amazing New York Mets. A team photograph used to be stapled on, but I probably lost it 38 years ago.
Wait a second. I just now noticed – the pennant says 1969 National League Champs. Some street vendor was getting rid of inventory. It doesn’t say World Series Champs. Maybe that’s some kind of karmic payback: Forty years later, I remember how a lady saw my mother buying two pennants at the parade, for my sister and me. The lady, with her young son, didn’t have money to buy one, she said. Could she have one? My mother turned to her 7-year-old. I said no.Sometimes it takes somebody passing on to understand the shared nature of all this. After the Phillies won last year, in the midst of a beautiful eulogy, a son mentioned that his mother on her deathbed hadn’t yet forgiven Chase Utley. I assumed they were referring to him dropping the F-Bomb at the Phillies victory celebration.
Looking back doesn’t always mean looking way back. A man who caught a grand-slam ball from the bat of Phillies outfielder Shane Victorino during last year’s playoffs went to a wake after the Phillies won it all. He was encouraged to bring the grand-slam ball, since the deceased, an avid Phillies fan, would have appreciated it. The survivors certainly did.
RELATED CONTENT
Latest News Delivered to Your Inbox - Sign up with our site and you will get the latest news about people and subjects that interest you.
RELATED CONTENT
