Great Games of the Past

[Yankee4Life]

With the first day of the new year I decided to start up a new section here in the baseball history thread about famous games of the past. The first one to start off this will be the exciting 1951 playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants on October 3rd, 1951. It’s the third and final National League playoff game and the winner gets to go on to face the American League Champion New York Yankees.

 

October 3, 1951: The Giants Win The Pennant!

 

On August 11, 1951, the second-place New York Giants trailed their rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, by 13 games. From that point until the end of the season, the Giants won 39 of their final 47 games, an incredible .830 clip. The 154-game season ended with both clubs tied for the top spot in the National League, necessitating a three-game playoff series. After splitting the first two contests, the foes faced off at the Polo Grounds on October 3 for the deciding game.

 

Despite the high stakes, it was a relatively-disappointing crowd that made its way to the ballpark that afternoon. Perhaps it was the threat of rain in the forecast, or maybe the 10-0 drubbing that the Dodgers had inflicted on the Giants the previous day. Whatever the excuse, only 34,320 fans were in attendance. In the ensuing decades, tens of thousands more would claim that they were there. What the no-shows missed was one of the most legendary games in baseball history.

 

The Giants were managed by Leo Durocher, who chose Sal “The Barber” Maglie as his starting pitcher. Maglie had gotten his nickname either because he usually looked like he hadn’t shaved, or because the fearless pitcher liked to welcome batters to the plate with a little chin music. He had won 23 games so far that season, including five against Brooklyn. His mound opponent for Charlie Dressen’s Dodgers was hard-throwing Don Newcombe, who had won 20.

 

The Dodgers drew first blood, when Pee Wee Reese scored on a one-out single by Jackie Robinson in the opening frame. Maglie pitched his way out of further damage, however.

 

In the bottom of the second, the Giants Whitey Lockman singled with one out, bringing up Bobby Thomson, New York’s 27-year-old third baseman, who had been sizzling down the stretch. Earlier, on his way to the ballpark, Thomson had said to himself that it would be great if he could somehow get three hits that day. He got off to a good start in this at-bat, lining one down the left field line. Thinking double all the way, he rounded first with his head down, racing for second. The Dodgers left fielder, Andy Pafko, had a rifle for an arm, and Lockman, not wanting to get thrown out at third, held at second. Pafko threw the ball to shortstop Reese. Thomson was suddenly caught in no-man’s land between first and second, and he was out on Reese’s relay to first baseman Gil Hodges. It was a costly base-running gaffe by Thomson. Instead of runners on first and second with one out, the Giants now had a runner on second with two down. The next batter, Willie Mays, flied out to end the inning. For the moment, Thomson wore the goat horns. In the darkening gloom, the Polo Grounds lights were turned on.

 

In the fifth, Thomson, still wielding a hot bat, doubled to left. His mates, however, were unable to drive him in, and the score stood 1-0 in favor of the Dodgers. It remained that way until the seventh, when Thomson’s deep fly to center scored Monte Irvin from third.

 

In the eighth, the wheels fell off for the Giants and the exhausted Maglie, as the Dodgers scored three runs to take a commanding 4-1 lead before the Barber was replaced by Larry Jansen. Newcombe, meanwhile, was seemingly growing stronger.

 

Then came the bottom of the ninth. Many of the Polo Grounds crowd had already begun making their way to the exit ramps. Alvin Dark singled to open the inning. The next batter, Don Mueller, noticed that Dodger first baseman Gil Hodges was playing close to the bag, as Dark edged his way off first. It was an odd strategy on Hodges’s part; there wasn’t much chance of Dark attempting to steal. The Giants, after all, needed base runners. Mueller hit a slow grounder to Hodges’s right, just out of his reach. Had the first baseman been playing wider of the bag, he may have easily gobbled it up and started a double play. It went as a single to right field, however, with Dark taking third.

 

Monte Irvin, the leading RBI man on the Giants and their best clutch hitter, fouled out to Hodges for the first out. At that point, an announcement was made in the press box that World Series credentials for Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field could be picked up later that evening at the Biltmore Hotel.

 

Lockman, the next hitter, doubled to left, scoring Dark and sending Mueller to third. Mueller slid awkwardly into the bag, injuring his ankle. Thus, in the middle of the mounting excitement, the game was halted for several moments as Mueller was carted off the field, pinch-runner Clint Hartung taking his place. “The corniest possible sort of Hollywood schmaltz,” wrote Red Smith, “stretcher bearers plodding away with an injured Mueller between them, symbolic of the Giants themselves.”

 

Next up, Bobby Thomson. To face him, Dressen brought in Ralph Branca. The Brooklyn righty had been the starter in Game One, giving up a homer to Thomson but pitching well in a 3-1 loss.

 

Gordon McClendon was calling the game on radio for the Liberty Broadcasting System. “Boy, I’m telling you!” he declared. “What they’re going to say about this one I don’t know!” Branca somehow sneaked a fastball down the middle for strike one. “A ball I should have swung at,” Thomson, a fastball hitter, admitted later.

 

At 3:58 pm, Branca’s second pitch, another fastball, came in high and tight. Thomson swung, his uppercut driving the ball deep toward the corner in left. Pafko, dashing toward the high wall, ran out of room. The ball landed in the first row, just above the 315 ft. sign for a three-run home run. Game over. The Polo Grounds shook as the euphoric crowd erupted. Joe King wrote in The Sporting News, “(Thomson’s homer) touched off scenes in this place which never before had been witnessed in connection with the winning of a pennant.”

 

By any measure, and for pure excitement, Thomson’s home run, referred to down the years as “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” belongs on the short list of the most legendary in baseball history. Some consider it the most famous blast ever. Much of the mystique surrounding the home run lies in the iconic, delirious radio call by Giants broadcaster Russ Hodges (“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”) Dodger broadcaster Red Barber’s call summed it up: “It is…a home run! And the New York Giants win the National League pennant and the Polo Grounds goes wild!” Gordon McClendon described the home run this way: “Going, going gone! The Giants win the pennant!” Then, after a brief pause, “I don’t know what to say! I just don’t know what to say! It’s the greatest victory in all of baseball history!” Ernie Harwell, calling the game on the Giants television network, simply said “It’s gone!” Felo Ramirez, describing the game in Spanish for Latin-American listeners, cried “Los Gigantes son los campeones!”

 

As Thomson raced around the bases to be greeted at home by a throng of ecstatic teammates, the stunned Dodgers began the long walk off the field. All except Jackie Robinson, who can be seen in a well-known photograph taken from center field looking in toward second base. The photo shows the scrum of players at home plate, with Thomson somewhere in the middle. Branca, head hanging, is walking dejectedly away from the mound. Robinson, standing all alone just beyond second base, his back to the camera, is staring, hands on hips, toward home, in order to make sure that Thomson actually touched the plate. It is one of the classic photos of sport, a poignant juxtaposition of dejection and giddy victory. Bobby Thomson had certainly gotten his three hits.

 

Probably no one in the old ballpark was more delighted at Thomson’s home run than the on-deck hitter, rookie Willie Mays, who later admitted he was terrified at the prospect of having to bat in such a pressure-packed situation.

 

Branca, of course, took the loss, while Jansen, who pitched one inning, got the win, his 23rd of the season.

 

Attending the game that day was the motley quartet of comic actor Jackie Gleason, New York restaurateur Toots Shor, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, and crooner Frank Sinatra (who had been given four tickets by Durocher). The group had been drinking all day, and just before Thomson hit his home run, Gleason unceremoniously threw up in the lap of Sinatra, a Giant fan. Said Sinatra later, “The fans are going wild and Thomson comes to bat. Then Gleason throws up all over me! Here’s one of the all-time games and I don’t even get to see Bobby hit that homer! Only Gleason, a Brooklyn fan, would get sick at a time like that!”

 

Not only did the game feature perhaps the most famous home run ever hit, the most famous radio call in sports broadcasting history, and one of the most iconic sports photos, but it resulted in one of the most wonderful leads ever in a newspaper article. The day after the game, Red Smith, writing in the New York Herald-Tribune, opened his story “Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff” with the famous lines: “Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”

 

 

Please continue for that famous Red Smith article.

 

 

1951 Dodger - Giant playoff

 

By Red Smith

 

Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.

 

Down on the green and white and earth-brown geometry of the playing field, a drunk tries to break through the ranks of ushers marshaled along the foul lines to keep profane feet off the diamond. The ushers thrust him back and he lunges at them, struggling in the clutch of two or three men. He breaks free, and four or five tackle him. He shakes them off, bursts through the line, runs head-on into a special park cop, who brings him down with a flying tackle.

 

Here comes a whole platoon of ushers. They lift the man and haul him, twisting and kicking, back across the first-base line. Again he shakes loose and crashes the line. He is through. He is away, weaving out toward center field, where cheering thousands are jammed beneath the windows of the Giants’ clubhouse.

 

At heart, our man is a Giant, too. He never gave up.

 

From center field comes burst upon burst of cheering. Pennants are waving, uplifted fists are brandished, hats are flying. Again and again the dark clubhouse windows blaze with the light of photographers’ flash bulbs. Here comes that same drunk out of the mob, back across the green turf to the infield. Coattails flying, he runs the bases, slides into third. Nobody bothers him now.

 

And the story remains to be told, the story of how the Giants won the 1951 pennant in the National League. The tale of their barreling run through August and September and into October. . . . Of the final day of the season, when they won the championship and started home with it from Boston, to hear on the train how the dead, defeated Dodgers had risen from the ashes in the Philadelphia twilight. . . . Of the three-game playoff in which they won, and lost, and were losing again with one out in the ninth inning yesterday when—Oh, why bother?

 

Maybe this is the way to tell it: Bobby Thomson, a young Scot from Staten Island, delivered a timely hit yesterday in the ninth inning of an enjoyable game of baseball before 34,320 witnesses in the Polo Grounds. . . . Or perhaps this is better:

 

“Well!” said Whitey Lockman, standing on second base in the second inning of yesterday’s playoff game between the Giants and Dodgers.

 

“Ah, there,” said Bobby Thomson, pulling into the same station after hitting a ball to left field. “How’ve you been?”

 

“Fancy,” Lockman said, “meeting you here!”

 

“Ooops!” Thomson said. “Sorry.”

 

And the Giants’ first chance for a big inning against Don Newcombe disappeared as they tagged Thomson out. Up in the press section, the voice of Willie Goodrich came over the amplifiers announcing a macabre statistic: “Thomson has now hit safely in fifteen consecutive games.” Just then the floodlights were turned on, enabling the Giants to see and count their runners on each base.

 

It wasn’t funny, though, because it seemed for so long that the Giants weren’t going to get another chance like the one Thomson squandered by trying to take second base with a playmate already there. They couldn’t hit Newcombe, and the Dodgers couldn’t do anything wrong. Sal Maglie’s most splendrous pitching would avail nothing unless New York could match the run Brooklyn had scored in the first inning.

 

The story was winding up, and it wasn’t the happy ending that such a tale demands. Poetic justice was a phrase without meaning.

 

Now it was the seventh inning and Thomson was up, with runners on first and third base, none out. Pitching a shutout in Philadelphia last Saturday night, pitching again in Philadelphia on Sunday, holding the Giants scoreless this far, Newcombe had now gone twenty-one innings without allowing a run.

 

He threw four strikes to Thomson. Two were fouled off out of play. Then he threw a fifth. Thomson’s fly scored Monte Irvin. The score was tied. It was a new ballgame.

 

Wait a moment, though. Here’s Pee Wee Reese hitting safely in the eighth. Here’s Duke Snider singling Reese to third. Here’s Maglie wild-pitching a run home. Here’s Andy Pafko slashing a hit through Thomson for another score. Here’s Billy Cox batting still another home. Where does his hit go? Where else? Through Thomson at third.

 

So it was the Dodgers’ ballgame, 4 to 1, and the Dodgers’ pennant. So all right. Better get started and beat the crowd home. That stuff in the ninth inning? That didn’t mean anything.

 

A single by Al Dark. A single by Don Mueller. Irvin’s pop-up, Lockman’s one-run double. Now the corniest possible sort of Hollywood schmaltz—stretcher-bearers plodding away with an injured Mueller between them, symbolic of the Giants themselves.

 

There went Newcombe and here came Ralph Branca. Who’s at bat? Thomson again? He beat Branca with a home run the other day. Would Charley Dressen order him walked, putting the winning run on base, to pitch to the dead-end kids at the bottom of the batting order? No, Branca’s first pitch was a called strike.

 

The second pitch—well, when Thomson reached first base he turned and looked toward the left-field stands. Then he started jumping straight in the air, again and again. Then he trotted around the bases, taking his time.

 

Ralph Branca turned and started for the clubhouse. The number on his uniform looked huge. Thirteen.

[Yankee4Life]

This is the greatest game I have ever seen. I can still recall how nervous I was in the ninth inning.

 

 

October 2nd, 1978: And a shortstop shall lead them.

 

 

Baseball purists long for the days when baseball games, either regular-season or the World Series, were played under afternoon skies. Before the lure of television money and advertising dollars, baseball was an afternoon game. One with its one pace, no time clock, and moving with the ease of the summer breeze. But owners saw the revenue potential of playing home games, “under the lights.”

 

With the addition of an extra layer of playoffs and the need to televise every postseason game, one will see a handful of games being played in the afternoon. Many may still argue that it is not enough. For it’s one of the simple pleasures of playoff baseball, watching the action in the crisp, cool fall air.

 

There probably is not another region in the United States that better displays nature’s beauty in autumn than the New England states. The foliage is breathtaking and the scenery is magnificent with the yellow, orange, red, and brown leaves as windbreakers make a return appearance from the hall closet.

 

It was within this setting that the New York Yankees traveled to Fenway Park to face their arch-rival Boston Red Sox in a chips-to-the-middle-of- the-table, winner-take-all ballgame. Both teams ended the season with a 99-63 record. New York took the season series, winning nine of 16 games.

 

Boston led the third-place Yankees by 11½ games at the All-Star break and looked to be searching for the “cruise control” switch to coast to a division title. With one month to go in the season, Boston still led the Yankees by 6½ games. The Yankees went head-to-head with Boston seven times in September. The Bronx Bombers took six of seven and pulled ahead of the Bosox by 2½ games on September 17.

 

But Boston had a resurgence, posting a 12-2 record to close the season. Heading into the season’s final game, the Yankees held a one-game advantage. But Cleveland defeated New York, 9-2, while Boston topped Toronto, 5-0. The result was a one-game playoff at Fenway Park. There had only been one other tiebreaker playoff game in American League history. That game, too, was staged at Fenway Park, 30 years earlier on October 4, 1948. Cleveland beat the Red Sox, 8-3, to claim the AL flag.  

 

The pitching matchup featured that season’s Cy Young Award winner in the AL, Ron Guidry. “Louisiana Lightning,” as he was called because of his roots in the Bayou State, was 24-3 with a 1.72 ERA. He had started three games against Boston in 1978, going 2-0. Even though Guidry was tabbed with only three days’ rest, he declared that he was ready to go.

 

Red Sox manager Don Zimmer sent Mike Torrez (16-12, 3.92 ERA) to the hill. Torrez signed as a free agent with Boston after pitching half of the year with New York in 1977. He proved to be a valuable asset for the Yankees. He posted two complete-game victories in the ’77 World Series as the Yankees won their first world championship since 1962.

 

Boston broke on top in the bottom of the second inning when Carl Yastrzemski homered to right field off Guidry for a 1-0 lead. The Red Sox did not cash in on an opportunity to increase their lead in the third inning. George Scott doubled to center field. He moved to third base on a sacrifice bunt by Jack Brohamer. But Guidry settled down to retire Rick Burleson and Jerry Remy and escaped the inning unscathed.

 

Other than Mickey Rivers, Torrez was having little trouble with his old teammates. Rivers walked in the first inning and stole second. But he was left stranded. In the top of the third inning, Rivers smacked a two-out double to right field, but again did not score.

 

In the bottom of the sixth, Boston increased its lead to 2-0. Burleson led off with a double to right field. Remy laid down a bunt to third base and Burleson took third. He scored when Jim Rice singled to center field.

 

The Yankees mounted their comeback in the top of the seventh inning. With one away, Chris Chambliss singled to center field. Roy White followed suit with another base hit to center. Yankee manager Bob Lemon sent the left-handed Jim Spencer to pinch-hit for Brian Doyle. Spencer flied out to left field. Bucky Dent came to the plate and sent a Torrez pitch high over the Green Monster to give the visitors a 3-2 lead. The partisan crowd of 32,925 at Fenway fell silent as Dent made the grand tour around the bags. For Dent, the number-nine hitter in the Yankees lineup, it was his fifth home run of the year.

 

New York owner George Steinbrenner was watching the game from the box seats by the Yankees’ third-base dugout with the club president, Al Rosen. “Al called Bucky’s home run just before he hit it,” the Boss said. “ ‘He’s gonna hit one out,’ and sure enough he did. It couldn’t happen to a finer young man.”

 

However, the Yankees were not done. Rivers walked for the second time in the game. Zimmer pulled Torrez from the game and Bob Stanley replaced him. Rivers stole his 25th base of the season, and scored when Thurman Munson doubled to center field.

 

Reggie Jackson led off the eighth inning by once again showing that his “Mr. October” moniker was well deserved. He blasted his 27th home run of the year to right field off Stanley. The Yankees’ lead was now stretched to 5-2.

 

Guidry gave way to Goose Gossage in the bottom of the seventh inning. Goose was still on the mound in the eighth when the Bosox mounted a comeback of their own. Remy led off the frame with a double to right. After Rice flied out, Remy scored when Yastrzemski singled to center field. Carlton Fisk followed with another single to center and Yaz moved up to second base. He scored one batter later when Fred Lynn singled to left field. Lynn’s RBI cut the Yankees’ lead to one, 5-4, headed to the ninth inning.

 

The Yankees were unable to add another run as the action moved to the bottom of the inning. With one out, Burleson walked and Remy singled to right field. Burleson took second on the base hit. He moved to third when Rice flied out to right field. But it was there where Burleson would stay. He was unable to close the final 90 feet needed for a tally when Yastrzemski popped out to Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles in foul ground. It was Gossage’s 27th save of the year.

 

The New York Yankees were the champs of the AL East Division.    

 

“Well, I’ll tell you, I was dreaming, dreaming about something like that,” Dent said. “There’s no way you can feel tired now. This is all we’ve been playing for, the playoffs.”

 

“This is the worst feeling I’ve had as a professional,” Remy said. “We have nothing to be ashamed of. The Yankees have a great club and we fought back and took them to the final out in the bottom of the final inning.”

 

“It just wasn’t meant to be, that’s all,” Yastrzemski said. “But I’ll tell you something. Yaz is gonna be on a world champion before he retires from this club. There’s just too much talent on this club not to win it.”

 

The Yankees went on to defeat the Kansas City Royals in four games in the ALCS. Similarly, they defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series in six games. For the Bombers, it was their 22nd world championship.

 

For Yastrzemski, his proclamation did not come true. He retired after the 1983 season. The Red Sox did not return to the postseason until three years later, in 1986.   

 

                  

[Yankee4Life]

June 23, 1984: The Sandberg Game

 

The Chicago Cubs were struggling.

 

For the first two months of the season, they were a cute story. Since mid-May, the lovable losers of recent years had spent much of their time in first place in the National League East. Starting on June 6, however, the team lost ten of 16 games. The lowlight was a four-game sweep in Philadelphia in which they were outscored, 33-13. That knocked them out of the top spot, and it looked for a while like things were reverting to form at 1060 West Addison.

 

As the day began on June 23, the Cubs found themselves in third place, a game and a half behind the division-leading Mets. The St. Louis Cardinals were in town, a team that was barely treading water at 34-37. The Cubs sent Steve “Rainbow” Trout to the mound, while the Cardinals countered with virtual-unknown Ralph Citarella, making his first big-league start. It was a nationally televised Saturday afternoon Game of the Week on NBC, with Bob Costas and Tony Kubek doing the honors. Before the contest began, Kubek observed, “The wind…blowing in from right field, so it’ll kill any ball hit to the right field sector. Anything hit to left-center will be…given a little help, if it’s up in the air.”

 

It looked at the outset like the Cubs’ swoon was going to continue. Trout bombed early, and by the time they came to bat in their half of the sixth, they were down 9-3. Suddenly, however, their bats woke up. They scored five runs in that frame, sending Citarella to the showers, to quickly turn a yawner into a tense, exciting one-run game.

 

That is how the score remained until the bottom of the ninth. “This has been one entertaining ball game, folks,” Costas commented, just in case any of the viewers at home didn’t already know it. On the mound for St. Louis was their ace reliever (and former Cy Young Award-winner with the Cubs) Bruce Sutter, who had entered the game in the bottom of the seventh. He had faced four batters so far, and gotten four harmless groundball outs. Leading off for the North Siders was their fine young second baseman Ryne Sandberg, who already had three singles and four RBIs in the game. On a 1-1 count, Sandberg took Sutter downtown, drilling a hanging curve over the left-center-field bleachers, onto Waveland Avenue. The game was tied, to the delight of the frenetic Wrigley Field faithful. The Cubs got the winning run to third base with two out in the person of Gary Matthews, but a groundout ended the inning, sending the game into extras.

 

St. Louis put a quick stop to the buzz going on at the ballpark, by scoring a pair of runs in the top of the tenth. Sutter was still on the mound, and Chicago appeared to have its work cut out as the bottom half of the inning loomed. Two quick ground-ball outs did nothing but deflate any remaining air left in the Cubs’ party balloon. But Bob Dernier walked, and Sutter was left to again face Sandberg. The count went to 1-1, at which point Costas began rapidly reciting to the TV crowd that “our game today was produced by Ken Edmundson, directed by Bucky Gunts, Mike Weisman is the executive producer of NBC Sports, coordinating producer of baseball Harry Coyle. One-one pitch.” Sutter served. Sandberg swung. Kubek belted out a distended “Ooooooh myyy!” Costas was surely more descriptive: “And he hits it to deep left center! Look out! Do you believe it! It’s gone!” Both said nothing for the next 50 seconds. Viewers across the nation watched dumbfounded as 38,079 people suddenly went certifiably insane at Wrigley Field.

 

In the next booth over from Costas and Kubek were Harry Caray, Lou Boudreau, and Milo Hamilton, who had spent the afternoon taking turns describing the game for Chicago’s WGN radio. As Sandberg’s second home run soared toward the bleachers, the three went into a collective fit of frenzy, and Caray’s voice was nearly drowned out in his broadcast partners’ delirious “Oh-hohs!” and “Hey-heeeeys!” “THERE’S A LONG DRIVE,” Caray shouted. “WAY BACK! MIGHT BE OUTTA HERE! IT IS! IT IS! HE DID IT! HE DID IT AGAIN! THE GAME IS TIED! THE GAME IS TIED! HO-LY COW!” It was Caray at his flabbergasted finest. “EVERYONE IS GONE BANANAS! HO-LY COW! WHAT WOULD THE ODDS BE,” Caray asked, his voice betraying his emotion, throwing out the question to anyone with a calculator, “IF I TOLD YOU THAT TWICE SANDBERG WOULD HIT HOME RUNS OFF BRUCE SUTTER?!” Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog kept Sutter in the game. “Here now is Gary Matthews,” Caray noted. “C’MON, YOU GUYS!”

 

But the guys didn’t come on. Matthews grounded out, and the inning was over, much to the relief of Sutter.

 

St. Louis threatened but didn’t score in the 11th. Finally, mercifully, Dave Rucker replaced Sutter to start the Cub half of the inning. Leon Durham led off with a walk, stole second, and advanced to third as catcher Darrell Porter’s throw bounced into center field. Jeff Lahti replaced Rucker on the mound. Keith Moreland and Jody Davis were both intentionally walked to set up a force at any base. “What a ballgame!” Caray exclaimed, apparently still unable to believe what he had witnessed moments before. “Hey! Was that 23-21 game against the Phillies any more exciting?” he asked, referring to a legendary 1979 Wrigley Field game (actually 23-22). “No, nope, no way,” Boudreau and Hamilton stated emphatically. Dave Owen, the last position player available on the Cub bench, came on to pinch-hit. A switch-hitter, he batted left-handed against the righty Lahti. The trouble was, Owen was hitting .133 from the left side. It would not matter this day. Owen drove a single into right field, Durham scored, and just like that, the rollercoaster affair had come to an end. “CUBS WIN!” Caray shouted. “CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN! HO-LY COW! LISTEN TO THE CROWD!” After letting the noise wash over him for a few seconds, Caray declared: “I NEVER SAW A GAME LIKE THIS IN MY LIFE, AND I’VE BEEN AROUND A LONG LIFE! WHAT A VICTORY! WHAT A VICTORY! LISTEN TO THE HAND THE CUBS ARE GETTING!”

 

Costas, on the other hand, chose a more understated description of Owen’s hit. “That’s it!” Moments later, before cutting to a commercial, he would confess, “Can’t remember the last time I saw a better one!” Indeed, neither could many people. It was a thrilling game, an instant classic, highlighted by two unforgettable at-bats involving two future Hall of Fame players in Sutter and Sandberg.

 

It was a coming-out party, both for Sandberg and the Cubs, as their grand performances occurred on a national stage. Back in the days before the proliferation of cable television, NBC’s Game of the Week was so named because it was just that. For just about everyone, it was the only baseball game they could watch during the week, other than their local team’s broadcasts. The victory was a catalyst for the Cubs, who went on to win the division title that year. For Sandberg, it put his name in the public consciousness, and started him on the way to a glorious career in Cub pinstripes. “It is the kind of stuff of which Most Valuable Player seasons are made,” sportswriter Dave Van Dyck proclaimed soon after the game. Indeed, Sandberg was named the NL MVP in 1984. He recalled years later, “It was a one-game thing that elevated my thought of what I was as a player, more of an impact-type of a guy, a game-winning type of a player.” As the decades passed, the contest was elevated to the status of myth, eventually becoming known simply as “The Sandberg Game.”

 

To many Cubs fans, the game became a cultural touchstone. “Fans come up to me all the time and they want to talk about that game,” Sandberg says. “They tell me where they were. They were either driving in a car listening to the game…or they were at the game or watching it on TV. They were calling their relatives, (saying) ‘you’ve got to turn this game on!’”

 

Nearly lost in all the brouhaha was the fact that Willie McGee, star center fielder for the Cardinals, hit for the cycle that day, with six RBIs. For Sutter, it was the low point of perhaps his most brilliant season, as he finished with a career-high 45 saves and a 1.54 ERA. Reflecting back on his days on the diamond, Sandberg admitted, “It was nothing to [Sutter’s] career. It was everything to mine.”