August 6, 1979: The Munson Memorial Game

Bobby Murcer, hugged by Ron Guidry (left) and Lou Piniella

August 6, 1979: The New York Yankees return from Canton, Ohio, where they attended the funeral of Thurman Munson, their catcher and team Captain, who had been killed in a plane crash there 4 days earlier.

There was a question of whether they would get back in time to play that night’s nationally televised game against the Baltimore Orioles. Team owner George Steinbrenner, a man who liked to say, "To me, winning is second to breathing," said going to the funeral was more important: "If we don't make it back, we'll forfeit."

They got back in time. On ABC Monday Night Baseball, Howard Cosell, a man so often seemingly like he was born without tact, remembered that he was a professional journalist, and handled the situation superbly. He spoke well of Munson, and broadcast an interview he had done with Munson on a recent broadcast, in which Munson spoke of possibly retiring to spend more time with his family. Instead, at the age of 32, he had no future.

Keith Jackson, better known for college football, was the play-by-play announcer. Ron Guidry started for New York, Dennis Martinez for Baltimore. Munson's death had left the Yankees with only 1 catcher on their major league roster: Jerry Narron, who had played exactly 29 major league games, batting .188. The Yankees activated their bullpen catcher, Brad Gulden, who had played in 3, all the previous season, with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Orioles led 4-0 at the 7th Inning Stretch, including home runs by Lee May and Ken Singleton, who later became a Yankee broadcaster. But with 2 outs in the bottom of the 7th, Bucky Dent drew a walk, and Willie Randolph doubled. Bobby Murcer, a Yankee star who had been traded away and recently reacquired, Munson's best friend and, along with Lou Piniella, one of the eulogists at Munson's funeral, hit a home run to bring the Yankees to within 4-3.

Murcer and Munson in 1973.

Note the Yankee Stadium 50th Anniversary sleeve patches.

Felix "Tippy" Martinez replaced Dennis. (They were not related: Tippy was from Colorado and of Mexican descent, while Dennis was from Nicaragua.) The game remained 4-3 going into the bottom of the 9th. Dent led off with another walk. Randolph tried to bunt him over, but Eddie Murray, the Orioles' best all-around player, dropped the throw at 1st base, putting Dent on 3rd base and Randolph on 2nd. And Murcer hit a drive into the left-field corner, scoring Dent with the tying run, and Randolph with the winning run: Yankees 5, Orioles 4.

The Yankees mobbed Murcer, most of them in tears. A crowd of 36,314 was crying along with them. This game has been called the only time the home fans left Yankee Stadium crying after a win.

But losing Munson was the latest and worst in a series of events that had troubled the Yankees all season long. They never got going, and finished 4th, 13 1/2 games behind the Orioles, who went on to end the Yankees' 3-year run atop the American League Eastern Division, and then win the AL Pennant.

*

August 6, 1979 was, as I said, a Monday. These other 5 games were played in Major League Baseball:

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 16-12 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. Yes, that's a baseball game, not football. The Royals scored 11 runs in the 7th inning. George Brett went 2-for-4 with a walk and 4 RBIs. Pete LaCock went 4-for-6 with 2 RBIs. Freddie Patek went 3-for-4 with a walk and 5 RBIs. Despite all of that, they hit no home runs. For the Jays, former Royal John Mayberry and Rico Carty hit home runs, and Rick Cerone, who would become the Yankees' catcher the next season, went 3-for-4 with 5 RBIs.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves, 3-1 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Johnny Bench went 2-for-3 with a walk.

* The San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The California Angels beat the Oakland Athletics, 5-2 at the Oakland Coliseum. Bobby Grich hit a home run. Rod Carew went 2-for-5. Rookie Rickey Henderson went 0-for-3 with a walk, but had an RBI on a groundout.

* And the Seattle Mariners beat the Minnesota Twins, 7-4 at the Kingdome in Seattle.

June 28, 1976: The Mark Fidrych Game

Fidrych at Tiger Stadium, 1976.

The famous blue and orange seats

were installed the next season.

June 28, 1976: America -- at least, that part of it outside the Detroit area -- gets its first good look at Mark Fidrych, on ABC Monday Night Baseball.

He took the American League by storm in 1976, and when he pitched, the Detroit Tigers, then an awful team in a suffering city, went from an average attendance of 14,000 at already-creaky Tiger Stadium to 40,000. His start on on June 28, in front of 47,855 paying customers, was a national phenomenon, and he beat the soon-to-be-Pennant-winning New York Yankees, 5-1.

He went the distance, advancing to 8-1 on the season, allowing 1 run on 7 hits. He only struck out 2 batters, but he didn't walk any. The only Yankee run came in the top of the 2nd inning, a home run by Elrod Hendricks, who was catching that day due to an injury to Thurman Munson.

The Tigers scored 2 in the 1st. Their other storybook player, the speedy ex-con Ron LeFlore, led off with a walk, and Rusty Staub hit a home run off Ken Holtzman. It was still only 2-1 Detroit into the 7th, when Aurelio Rodríguez homered. The Tigers iced the game with 2 runs in the 8th.

It wasn't just that he was talented. He was also a big character. He tried to explain that he would talk to himself on the mound, saying things like, "Settle down, you're getting too nervous." But somehow, it incorrectly got around that he was "talking to the ball," telling it where he wanted it to go, where in and around the strike zone, or, after being hit, to which fielder. He would smooth out the mound. He would walk over to an infielder who'd made a great play and shake his hand.

You see, in baseball, which has so often been culturally behind the times -- the world's 1970s were baseball's "Sixties" -- this was considered weird. What's wrong with thanking your fielder for making a great play, or fixing the mound the way you want it?

Fidrych finished the season 19-9. In all other games, the Tigers were 53-78. He led the AL with a 2.34 earned run average (ERA), and started for it in the All-Star Game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, although he ended up as the losing pitcher. He was named the AL's Rookie of the Year, but finished 2nd in the Cy Young Award voting, to Jim Palmer of the Baltimore Orioles, who went 22-13 with a 2.51 ERA.

Fidrych was just 21 years old, from Northborough, Massachusetts, a town of 14,000 people, an hour's drive west of Boston, and he was as amazed by his sudden fame as anyone else. He seemed both goofy and cool at the same time. A Massachusetts "Park ya cah" accent, so often sounding obnoxious from some guys, sounded charming (or "chahming") coming from him. After the season, he dictated a quickie autobiography to sportswriter Tom Clark, choosing the title No Big Deal.

For all of this, he was making what was then the major league minimum salary of $19,000, although, through bonuses, the Tigers bumped it to $60,000.

In Spring Training the next season, Fidrych, known as "the Bird" because his curly blond hair reminded someone of the Sesame Street character Big Bird -- hurt his knee. Trying to favor it, he hurt his shoulder, tearing his rotator cuff. He wasn't the first pitcher to cause a new injury by favoring an old one, but he may have been the most costly. At least when Dizzy Dean, a great character from an earlier era of baseball, hurt his arm by changing his motion to favor a bad toe, he was at his peak, and had already (if just barely) won enough games to make the Hall of Fame. Fidrych was still near the beginning of his career.

The amazing thing is -- forgive me if this sounds like a Yogi Berra line -- when he could pitch, he could still pitch. He had a nine-strikeout, no-walk 2-1 win over the Yankees in that 1977 season. But he couldn't pitch without pain often enough, and that was his last season of any productiveness. After 1980, he was done, a nobody at 21, a superstar at 22, a has-been at 24.

The amazing thing about Fidrych is that he didn't look at his career as tragic. Even though he got hurt and left baseball before salaries really took off, he had the attitude of, "So what? It's not the end of the world. I've got another life." And for about 30 years, he did have another life, running a farm and a gas station in Northborough. He married in 1986, and had a daughter. He thought it was a good life, and who are we to doubt him?

Still, he accepted that baseball fans liked him, and participated in memorabilia shows, old-timers' games, the Tiger Stadium finale in 1999, things like that. I know this is going to sound like another Yogi-ism -- so what, Yogi was a character, too -- but it was good that the good things that happened to him happened to him.

Fidrych at the Tiger Stadium finale in 1999

On the morning of April 13, 2009, he was working on his farm, trying to fix his truck, and an accident with it brought his strange and amazing life to a painful close. He was 54 years old. He remains a cult figure in baseball, a symbol of an age of weirdness and wonder.

*

June 28, 1976 was a Monday. These other games were played in Major League Baseball that day:

* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-4 at Shea Stadium. Tom Seaver started for the Mets, but Skip Lockwood blew the lead. He ended up as the winning pitcher, anyway, on an 8th-inning wild pitch by Al Hrabosky, "the Mad Hungarian," another pitcher of the era who developed a "character" that became exaggerated. Part of that rally was a pinch-hit single by former Cardinal Joe Torre, and a single by Dave Kingman, who earlier hit a home run. Lou Brock went 1-for-4 with a stolen base.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Montreal Expos, 6-2 at Jarry Park in Montreal. Mike Schmidt hit a home run.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 12-8 at Fenway Park in Boston. Jim Palmer, a Hall-of-Famer, started for the O's, but did not figure in the decision. Fergie Jenkins, another Hall-of-Famer, didn't start for the Sox, but was the winning pitcher. For the Sox, Butch Hobson hit a home run, and Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4 with an RBI. For the O's, Bobby Grich and Dave Duncan homered, Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4, and Reggie Jackson, in his only season in Baltimore, went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 9-2 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Al Oliver hit a home run. Willie Stargell went 1-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Bill Madlock hit a home run for the Cubs, and would be a part of the Pirates' 1979 World Series winners.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-3 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Indians manager Frank Robinson, in his last season as a player, did not put himself into the game. Hank Aaron, in his last season, went 2-for-4, but did not hit a home run.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Royals, 4-3 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Rod Carew went 0-for-3 with a walk. George Brett also went 0-for-3, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Oakland Athletics, 3-2 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Jeff Burroughs singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the San Diego Padres, 7-3 at San Diego Stadium. (It was later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium.) Pete Rose went 2-for-5 with an RBI. Johnny Bench went 0-for-3, but did draw 2 walks. Joe Morgan hit a home run.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves, 5-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Houston Astros beat the San Francisco Giants, 8-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

* And the California Angels and the Chicago White Sox were not scheduled to play.

May 15, 1943: ABC Is Founded

May 15, 1943: The American Broadcasting Company (ABC), takes over the radio stations of the NBC Blue Network. This is recognized as the birthdate of "The Alphabet Network."

ABC would lag well behind NBC, CBS, and even MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) for many years. And the DuMont Television Network would lead it in TV operations for a while. It was the Army-McCarthy hearings, broadcast live from the U.S. Capitol Building in June 1954, that are said to have "made" ABC as a major network -- if only the 3rd-biggest, behind NBC and CBS. It did, however, surpass DuMont, which went out of business in 1956; and Mutual, which never made the jump to television, limiting itself to radio for its entire existence, 1934 to 1999.

It would be sports that lifted ABC up. In 1960, broadcasting from Rome, it brought the Olympics to America live. The following year, ABC Wide World of Sports began, showing people sporting events, as the title suggested, from all over the world. In 1970, it began broadcasting ABC Monday Night Football. Monday Night Baseball followed in 1976.

By that point, ABC was airing situation comedies like Happy Days, and police dramas like Starsky & Hutch, and the two bigger networks had slipped. NBC entered the darkest period in its history, and CBS dipped in the ratings just enough for ABC to become Number 1 for the 1st time. Now, when people spoke of the "Big Three networks," it was not only no longer a joke to include ABC, they were, for a time, an obligatory 1st.

Despite the encroachment of Fox in the 1980s, and the cable boom thereafter, ABC remains one of the Big Three.

*

May 15, 1943 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1 at the Polo Grounds. Mel Ott, by this point also the Giants' manager, hit a home run to win it the game the bottom of the 11th inning. It is the 447th home run of his career, the most in National League history to that point, a record he will extend to 511, and hold until surpassed by a later Giant, Willie Mays, in 1966.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 13-6 at Ebbets Field. Al Glassop hit a home run. 2nd baseman Billy Herman, a future Hall-of-Famer, went 3-for-5 with 5 RBIs against his former team.

* The Boston Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 1-0 at Braves Field in Boston. Nate Andrews pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Johnny Vander Meer.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-3 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Stan Musial went 1-for-5. Mort Cooper was the winning pitcher, and helped his own cause with a home run.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 2-0 at League Park in Cleveland. Jack Salveson pitched a 4-hit shutout.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Washington Senators, 8-1 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.

* The New York Yankees and the St. Louis Browns were rained out at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The game was made up on August 10. The Browns won, 10-2.

* And the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox were rained out at Comiskey Park in Chicago. This game was also made up on August 10. The White Sox won, 4-2.