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OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
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INNINGS TO DIE FOR |
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The Cubs-Sox World Series that just wasn't to be
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
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My informants
tell me that in Chicago and Boston, they are not aware there
is a World Series in progress. I understand. Those innings are now part
of the glorious baseball lore of New York and Florida. They are
living in infamy in Boston and Chicago. The subject of that 1929 World Series came up at an extraordinary gathering of baseball people at the 1969 All Star Game in Washington. This was the reception for baseball people hosted by Pres. Richard Nixon the afternoon of the game. In the East Room of the White House were, among others, Casey Stengel, Jackie Robinson, Carl Hubbell, Joe DiMaggio, Sandy Koufax, Lefty Grove, Henry Aaron and Bob Feller. Baseball personalities who usually are so cool in public they can freeze people in their tracks turned goo-goo eyed in the face of the audience with the President. And Nixon was awed as well by the great baseball players in front of him. To show what a fan he was,
Nixon started telling about being a student listening to the
1929 World Series on the radio. Hearing about hit after Athletics’
hit, he said the 10-run rally made such an impression upon him,
that he “could remember it to this day.” He then recited
the whole inning--a batter-by-batter description of the 10-run
rally. It was an astounding performance that dazzled the old
ball players on hand. Nixon was a true baseball fan; he didn’t have to impress anybody on that score, but he ever had to be Tricky Dick, the consummate flim-flammer. ************************************************************************** Plus: Telecasts of big games invariably end with a montage
of highlights from past games. The Fox people dutifully did this
with the Yankee-Red Sox finale. The sequence of scenes led up
to the climax of Aaron Boone’s home-run and the Yankee celebration.
The Fox people then added an ingenious touch conceived by production
man Aaron Stojkov. In a bow to the legend of The Curse of the
Bambino bedeviling the Red Sox, the final image was one of the
broad face of a smiling Babe Ruth winking at viewers. Plus: As ever, Fox Producer Mike Weisman and Director Bill Webb had their trio of announcers keep quiet as the screen showed all the moments of ecstatic celebration by the Yankees and fans at the end. Amidst the silence was an image showing analyst Bret Boone, the brother of hero Aaron Boone, standing in the announcers’ booth looking down at the field with perhaps a trickle of a tear forming in his eyes as he enjoyed his brother’s triumph. Minus: The telecast of the seventh game of the Cubs-Marlins series missed the ever-important, curtain-opening first pitch of the game because Fox was still in a commercial. Minus: While ESPN’s Rick Sutcliffe was an irritating scold, Fox’ Bret Boone was too often an apologist for poor play. ESPN’s David Justice came up with stupid comments as often as not and Fox’ Steve Lyons’ abrasive and ceaseless knowitall second-guessing was enough to make one turn down the sound. Happily, Fox went with a two-man team in the World Series and the added-on jocks disappeared. Plus: The wonderful vignette of the Red Sox' Johnny Damon, returning from an injury, with his little boy and girl before a game. He showed his kids his bruise, asked them to kiss it to make it better, and they did. Plus: Tim McCarver has rallied from the churlishness of last year and was at his best explaining, not complaining. And he was politic in the needed criticism of Red Sox manager Grady Little allowing Pedro Martinez to stay too long in the eighth inning of the seventh game. As Yankee hits rained, McCarver said that Martinez must have told Little he wanted to stay in the game but that “there are times when a manager must overrule a pitcher.” Minus: Shots of fans cheering because they know the cameras are on them. This became a mockery with constant shots of mugging by patrons in a Boston bar when the Red Sox were fighting for their lives and winning against Oakland. Plus: A shot of author and Red Sox fan Stephen King coming up with a new version of the rally cap, extending his Sox cap in front of him like a skillet in urging the Sox on during Game Five at Fenway Park. Minus: The constant focus on pitches to the slighting of other aspects of the game. Some of Al Leiter’s discourses during National League action made baseball as obtuse as physics. And Lyons would not allow that a home run could have come off a good pitch. Plus: The post-seventh-game interviewing by Kenny Albert in New York. He kept the superlatives and fawning down to a minimum and didn’t fall into the trap of asking dumb questions. Minus: The idiocy of instant internet polls was brought home when 40 per cent of the respondents actually answered that the Cubs’ futility of 84 years of not winning a World Series was not as bad as the Braves’ failure to win more than one World Series in a decade of getting into the playoffs. Plus: Fox hijinx, such as the graphic pinning the label “objective” Yankee fan on the fellow who insisted an obvious home run by the Red Sox' Todd Walker was foul in Game One of the Yankees-Red Sox series. And director Bill Webb had his own little joke before the fourth game when the first player's image he showed during the singing of the Star Sparngled Banner was the Yankees' Japanese guy, Hideki Matsui. Minus: Fox pre-game hostess Jeanne Zelasko saying the newspapers
love the fighting in the Sox-Yanks series--as if TV was any different. Plus: HBO’s special on The Curse of the Bambino. It
captured the humor of the frustration in New England over the
Sox and it did not leave out the significant factor that much
of Red Sox woe stemmed from its racist owners being the last
to field a black player. |
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