Those of us who are baseball fans of a certain age sometimes are guilty of romanticizing the game we knew in our youth, when baseball commanded the national sporting stage, and all the other games were bit players.
This was 50 years ago (50 years: no way to disguise what saying that means). College sports, pro hockey and pro basketball were regional affairs. Pro football had yet to become a scene-stealer and eventually hog the stage with the Super Bowl.
The transistor radio–great-granddaddy of the iPod–was the hot new item back then. It gave us the chance to listen covertly to the new music, rock ‘n’ roll, that our parents were scared of. We snuck it into classrooms, hiding the earplug (not earphones; this was a single plug for just one ear) to listen to the World Series, played mainly on weekday afternoons.
Sometimes we would get lucky, and the game would last long enough that we were home in time to see the final few innings on TV. One of those days provided the moment that is my enduring memory of baseball.
It is quite a memory, one that four years ago would be selected by The Sporting News as one of baseball’s 25 greatest moments, one that is called simply, “The Catch.”
This was Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, played Sept. 29 (September!) at the Polo Grounds, home of the then-New York Giants. It matched the Giants, led by a young star in his second full major-league season, Willie Mays, and a Cleveland team that had won an astounding 111 of 154 games.
With the score 2-2 in the eighth inning, the Indians’ Vic Wertz came up with runners on first and second and none out. Mays, in center field, moved in a few steps to allow him a better chance to throw out a runner at home should Wertz hit a soft single.
Instead, Wertz sent the 2-1 pitch into orbit over Mays’ head. But he reacted instantly, turning his back to the plate and running at full speed. Not only did he make an over-the-head catch, he whirled and threw the ball back to the infield without a second’s hesitation.
This is how Jack Brickhouse described it for NBC-TV:
“There’s a long drive way back in center field . . . way back, back! It is . . . oh, what a catch by Mays! . . . Willie Mays just brought this crowd to its feet with a catch . . . which must have been an optical illusion to a lot of people.”
The Giants went on to win in extra innings and sweep the invincible Indians in four games. I went on to run home as fast as I could after every elementary-school day when there was a World Series game. Who wanted to miss another great play?
I saw Willie Mays make that catch on our family’s first TV, which had a 12-inch, round screen that looked like a porthole. It was, instead, a wormhole through which, as years passed, I could be transported both back in my time and back to my future.
By 8, I had been romanced by the World Series, and watching it had become a ritual in my life.
