{"id":332,"date":"2014-03-21T14:27:40","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T18:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/?page_id=332"},"modified":"2015-10-18T00:09:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T04:09:31","slug":"scd-great-players-great-games","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/?page_id=332","title":{"rendered":"Sports Collectors Digest: Great Players, Great Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Marty Appel<\/span><\/p>\n

When Willie McCovey broke into the big leagues on July 30, 1959, he smacked two singles and two triples in his debut game, and by the next day, the whole nation was talking about Willie McCovey.<\/p>\n

Almost overnight he had taken a big step towards supplanting Willie Mays as the most popular player in San Francisco, and for the rest of that season, everyone watched what McCovey did. They even revised the Rookie of the Year eligibility standards so that he could win the award. (He hit .354 in only 52 games).<\/p>\n

There were still only 16 teams in 1959, about 400 players, and a debut like that one was stirring. I\u2019m not sure it would be repeated today. With almost twice as many teams and players, it is possible for a debut game like that to go unnoticed by much of the nation. Most newspapers offer one paragraph summaries of all the games in a \u201croundup\u201d and a story like that could get folded into such a summary which many would miss. Bo Hart of the Cardinals broke in with a bang last year; they couldn\u2019t get him out \u2013 but it was easy to miss Bo Hart if you weren\u2019t watching the sports news on TV in St. Louis.<\/p>\n

This got me thinking that there was a time when a memorable game was a game for the ages, and they tended to get captured forever in \u201cgreatest games ever\u201d books. They became part of baseball lore, supposedly passed on from generation to generation. At least that was the intent. I think my telling of the \u201cFred Snodgrass\u2019s Muff\u201d may have been interrupted by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle special along the way. Attention spans have changed.<\/p>\n

Lucky Fred.<\/p>\n

In 1960, Joe Reichler,then the baseball editor for Associated Press, and his colleague Ben Olan, wrote \u201cBaseball\u2019s Unforgettable Games.\u201d The Ronald Press Company, under its Ronald Sports Library division, issued the book, a year after they had put out a Reichler-driven baseball encyclopedia. According to the totally made up endorsements on the book jacket, Commissioner Ford Frick said, \u201cIt\u2019s high time baseball had such a book.\u201d (He was right). Mickey Mantle said, \u201cThis book is a grand-slam home run.\u201d (I wonder how many revisions Mickey went through working that up, tearing up drafts, crumbling them into the waste basket and starting over again).<\/p>\n

Reichler, who was a terrific baseball reporter and the guiding spirit behind the first MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia, was a great historian of the game, and the book really does capture the glory of baseball\u2019s awesome moments. He and Olan picked an even 100. Each occupies about two pages of text, includes a photo, and, wonderfully, the complete box score of the game. The obvious ones are there: Bobby Thomson\u2019s \u201cShot Heard \u2018Round the World,\u201d Don Larsen\u2019s perfect game, Carl Hubbell\u2019s five consecutive strikeouts in the \u201934 All-Star Game, the \u201cMerkle Boner,\u201d Babe Ruth\u2019s 60th home run, the end of Lou Gehrig\u2019s playing streak, and Johnny Vander Meer\u2019s two consecutive no-hitters.<\/p>\n

But there are also some treasures which have faded from memory, and it\u2019s nice that they are at least preserved in this old book. How about Floyd Giebell\u2019s \u201cMoment of Glory?\u201d Giebell was a 25-year old Detroit Tiger right-hander, who on September 27, 1940, outpitched the great Bob Feller 2-0, in Cleveland, to clinch the pennant for the Tigers. He struck out 6 to Feller\u2019s 4, allowed only 6 hits, and hurled his masterpiece despite an unruly Cleveland crowd that was pelting Tiger players with fruits and vegetables all afternoon. It was only his second start of the season.<\/p>\n

Giebell, reports Reichler and Olan, was ineligible for the World Series (he was called up too late in the season), and the following year was 0-0 in 17 games, before leaving the majors for good. Even the photo in the Giebell section is of\u2026..Feller.<\/p>\n

How about Billy Pierce\u2019s near-perfect game making the cut!? June 27, 1958, and Pierce, the White Sox fine lefthander, went to two outs in the ninth before pinch-hitter Ed Fitzgerald of the Senators hit a double down the right field line to break it up. That was one of the 100 great moments in the thinking of the authors, but it didn\u2019t make the cut in updated versions which Reichler continued to produce on into the \u201880s as \u201cBaseball\u2019s Great Moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were a couple of forerunners to the Reichler-Olan book worthy of mention. In 1944, A.S. Barnes and Company published \u201cThey Played the Game: The Story of Baseball Greats,\u201d by Harry Grayson, (introduction by Connie Mack, foreword by Grantland Rice), which featured profiles \u2013 and memorable games of course \u2013 of more than 50 immortals of baseball, including some who have faded from memory by now \u2013 Babe Adams, Fielder Jones, Nick Altrock, Mike Donlin, and Lou Sockalexis. It is always fascinating to see such a book and discover who was considered \u201cimmortal\u201d at the time.<\/p>\n

A year later, Barnes published \u201cMy Greatest Day in Baseball,\u201d as told to John P. Carmichael, the sports editor of the Chicago Daily news, which featured \u201cfirst hand\u201d accounts from 47 players. Carmichael actually wrote only 15 of them; the others were transcribed and written by an assortment of others, including Gabe Paul, the Cincinnati road secretary and later general manager, who handled Vander Meer\u2019s section. This book also includes box scores of each game, and would also be updated and revised as the year\u2019s went on. Although the big stars are all here \u2013 Ruth, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander \u2013 it also includes Satchel Paige, (\u201cthe 4th and final game of the colored World Series in 1942 when the Kansas City Monarchs beat the Philadelphia Homestead Grays\u201d), a noticeable touch given that the game was still two years away from integration.<\/p>\n

If we were doing such a book today, we might have Josh Beckett\u2019s final-game win in last year\u2019s World Series as a great game in baseball history. And, in 40 years, would someone find this book and say, \u201cwho?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marty Appel When Willie McCovey broke into the big leagues on July 30, 1959, he smacked two singles and two triples in his debut game, and by the next day, the whole nation was talking about Willie McCovey. Almost… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":2277,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-template-full.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-332","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4s5bl-5m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2517,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/332\/revisions\/2517"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}