Three memories of a truly memorable game that really did change lives
Dave Kindred |
Oct. 29, 2010 8:15 a.m.
 |
Maybe I became a sportswriter by skipping school. It was a Monday. Rather than return to school that afternoon in Atlanta, Illinois, I stayed home to watch the World Series on our new television. I have my story of that day. So do Tom Callahan and Bill Millsaps. Maybe that was the day we all decided against real work, such as the law or digging ditches in front of forest fires. Instead, we would go to ball games forever.
That Monday afternoon was bright and crisp. I pulled the curtains shut in our living room and I sat on the right end of a couch – my father’s usual place. On my lap, I had a scorebook that my mother used for our high school games. It had spiral binding at the top and silvery printing on a purple cover. With a No. 2 pencil, I recorded every at-bat by the Yankees and Dodgers. I remember Mickey Mantle – my man, a SPORT magazine photo of him on my bedroom wall – I can still see him chasing down a fly ball in left center that day. I remember the day’s last pitch, a called strike – signified in my scorebook with a backwards K.
Tom Callahan, growing up in Baltimore, was an Orioles fan since attending the first night game at Memorial Stadium with his dad. On that Monday when I sat on my couch, Callahan and two other St. Aloysius sixth-graders slipped away from class. "We went to the bathroom to listen to this huge radio that we’d pinched from somewhere," he says. " I’d sworn off the Orioles already because they made a 17-player trade with the Yankees and shipped out my guys, Bob Turley, Don Larsen, Billy Hunter. So the only reason I’m on the commode at St. Aloysius listening to the game is because Larsen is pitching. And didn’t Mantle hit a home run that day?"
Tom Callahan, growing up in Baltimore, was an Orioles fan since attending the first night game at Memorial Stadium with his dad. On that Monday when I sat on my couch, Callahan and two other St. Aloysius sixth-graders slipped away from class. "We went to the bathroom to listen to this huge radio that we’d pinched from somewhere," he says. " I’d sworn off the Orioles already because they made a 17-player trade with the Yankees and shipped out my guys, Bob Turley, Don Larsen, Billy Hunter. So the only reason I’m on the commode at St. Aloysius listening to the game is because Larsen is pitching. And didn’t Mantle hit a home run that day?"
That day in a Tennessee school, Bill Millsaps looked up from his work when his father came to the classroom door. Stern in manner, the principal, William Millsaps Sr., asked that his son leave the class. Young Millsaps, shaken by his father’s sudden appearance, followed him down the school’s hallways. He asked, "What’s wrong?" No answer. He asked, "Is Mother all right?" Millsaps the elder said, "Just be quiet and come along."
They marched past the school secretary’s desk.
They reached the principal’s private office.
He said, "Billy, shut that door behind you."
They marched past the school secretary’s desk.
They reached the principal’s private office.
He said, "Billy, shut that door behind you."
Then he said, "Sit down, son, and watch the television. You won’t believe what Don Larsen is doing to the Dodgers."
Mantle had been Mantle that day. He hit a home run off Sal Maglie in the fourth inning and made that running catch to rob Gil Hodges in the fifth.
Larsen had not been Larsen. That day, Oct. 8, 1956, he was somebody else, maybe Walter Johnson. He threw a perfect game, still the only perfect game in World Series history.
I bring this up because a sportswriter can be suspended without pay if he allows October to pass without rhapsodizing about what Tommy Lasorda once called "the Fall Classic, with a capital F and a capital C." Also, I bring it up because of something a television commentator said the other day. Roy Halladay’s no-hitter caused the TV person to declare that we would all remember where we were when it happened.
Excuse me. These were the Phillies and Mets, not the Bronx Bombers and the Bums. It was a division playoff, not the Fall Classic. A month from now, that Halladay trifle will be remembered mostly by his next of kin. Meanwhile, sportswriters of a certain age can tell you with absolute precision where they were on a Monday more than a half-century ago.
* * *
I must have heard Bill Shannon's voice in Yankee Stadium without ever knowing the man. My great loss. But I knew the type. Here I yield to Mike Vaccaro, the New York Post columnist, who not only knew the type, he loved Bill Shannon. This is Mike's "Vac's Whacks" column of Oct. 27 . . .
The sad part, to me, is that the odds are good that you didn't know Bill Shannon. Shannon was an official scorer for over 30 years at all of the New York ballparks, he was the press-box PA man at Jets games for years, he was a PR man for the Garden for about 10 years back in the '60s and '70s. He was a classic behind-the-scenes man, a guy who did his job best if you never came in contact with his name.
Bill died yesterday at 69 in a house fire, and though the details of his death were horrific, the circumstances were pure Shannon: After living many years on the Upper East Side, he'd moved in with his elderly mother. To get to Yankee Stadium and back required a total of four buses and two subway trips, something I only know because our own George King would occasionally give him a lift back to Jersey, but only when a Yankees game ran late and meant Bill had missed the last bus out of the Bronx.
It was classic Shannon, the kind of character who used to inhabit press boxes so often. His scoring decisions weren't only 99.9 percent correct, they were delivered with authority ("Eeee-SIX! Error on the shortstop") and occasional disdain (he once explained to me for a good 30 minutes why he hated the sacrifice fly, so every time he was compelled to announce it as a scoring decision it sounded like a husband finally agreeing to take out the trash after a wife's 15th exhortation). And his pitcher's summaries were one of a kind, always ending with a flair ("and nine ………. STRIKEOUTS).
Unless you were privileged to work in a press box, as I have all these years, you never knew any of this. And this is something else: It was Shannon who made you realize that being in a press box WAS a privilege, that it was an amazing way to make a living and pass a day. I probably exchanged hellos with Bill 300 times over the years and every time it felt like there wasn't a place in the world he'd rather be than where he was: watching ball, a writer's card around his neck, keeping a hand in a great game called baseball.
And one last thing: A few years ago, after I'd started up at the Post, Bill congratulated me with a fervor that he couldn't contain. "That is the greatest job in the world," he told me, and I concurred, and still do. Then he said: "If you ever get around to doing a bits-and-pieces thing like (Jimmy) Cannon did in the Post for all those years, I have the perfect name for it."
"What is that, Bill?"
"Vac's Whacks." he said.
Today's daily edition is dedicated to my esteemed friend, Mr. Shannon. I hope in some small way, every time I write them, he'll be a small but authoritative presence hidden in back of every word.
Dave Kindred's latest book, "Morning Miracle," is an inside-the-newsroom account of two years in the life of The Washington Post. Now a contributing writer at Golf Digest, Kindred is a Red Smith Award winner and member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame. He can be reached at inkstained1@aol.com. He can be followed at Twitter.com/DaveKindred and facebook.com/people/Dave-Kindred/509353295.
I bring this up because a sportswriter can be suspended without pay if he allows October to pass without rhapsodizing about what Tommy Lasorda once called "the Fall Classic, with a capital F and a capital C." Also, I bring it up because of something a television commentator said the other day. Roy Halladay’s no-hitter caused the TV person to declare that we would all remember where we were when it happened.
Excuse me. These were the Phillies and Mets, not the Bronx Bombers and the Bums. It was a division playoff, not the Fall Classic. A month from now, that Halladay trifle will be remembered mostly by his next of kin. Meanwhile, sportswriters of a certain age can tell you with absolute precision where they were on a Monday more than a half-century ago.
* * *
I must have heard Bill Shannon's voice in Yankee Stadium without ever knowing the man. My great loss. But I knew the type. Here I yield to Mike Vaccaro, the New York Post columnist, who not only knew the type, he loved Bill Shannon. This is Mike's "Vac's Whacks" column of Oct. 27 . . .
The sad part, to me, is that the odds are good that you didn't know Bill Shannon. Shannon was an official scorer for over 30 years at all of the New York ballparks, he was the press-box PA man at Jets games for years, he was a PR man for the Garden for about 10 years back in the '60s and '70s. He was a classic behind-the-scenes man, a guy who did his job best if you never came in contact with his name.
Bill died yesterday at 69 in a house fire, and though the details of his death were horrific, the circumstances were pure Shannon: After living many years on the Upper East Side, he'd moved in with his elderly mother. To get to Yankee Stadium and back required a total of four buses and two subway trips, something I only know because our own George King would occasionally give him a lift back to Jersey, but only when a Yankees game ran late and meant Bill had missed the last bus out of the Bronx.
It was classic Shannon, the kind of character who used to inhabit press boxes so often. His scoring decisions weren't only 99.9 percent correct, they were delivered with authority ("Eeee-SIX! Error on the shortstop") and occasional disdain (he once explained to me for a good 30 minutes why he hated the sacrifice fly, so every time he was compelled to announce it as a scoring decision it sounded like a husband finally agreeing to take out the trash after a wife's 15th exhortation). And his pitcher's summaries were one of a kind, always ending with a flair ("and nine ………. STRIKEOUTS).
Unless you were privileged to work in a press box, as I have all these years, you never knew any of this. And this is something else: It was Shannon who made you realize that being in a press box WAS a privilege, that it was an amazing way to make a living and pass a day. I probably exchanged hellos with Bill 300 times over the years and every time it felt like there wasn't a place in the world he'd rather be than where he was: watching ball, a writer's card around his neck, keeping a hand in a great game called baseball.
And one last thing: A few years ago, after I'd started up at the Post, Bill congratulated me with a fervor that he couldn't contain. "That is the greatest job in the world," he told me, and I concurred, and still do. Then he said: "If you ever get around to doing a bits-and-pieces thing like (Jimmy) Cannon did in the Post for all those years, I have the perfect name for it."
"What is that, Bill?"
"Vac's Whacks." he said.
Today's daily edition is dedicated to my esteemed friend, Mr. Shannon. I hope in some small way, every time I write them, he'll be a small but authoritative presence hidden in back of every word.
October 31st, 2010 at 11:11 am
You're a great sportswriter, but you're showing your age when you presume those who watched Halladay's no-hitter will disappear into memory fog by Thanksgiving. For example, I haven't met a football fan who doesn't remember where they were for the 1981 (January 1982) San Diego-Miami classic, an AFC Divisional Round game in which the winner lost badly the following week.
You might be right, but more because we have more great moments pounded at us so constantly that the memory banks fill quickly. We see more regular season games in every sport, more playoff games, our seasons overlap and we see them from an ever younger age. Also, sports interests are more diversified, especially among the young.
November 1st, 2010 at 9:54 am
David
Absolutely, over the last 30 years, the conveyor belt of "moments" has never stopped moving. Still, Halladay's no-hitter in a year ripe with no-hitters is no match for the only perfect game in more than a century of World Series games. I'd also argue that "great" has been devalued by the torrent of hyperbole attendant to the media's incessant demands for the public's attention — and I'm as guilty as the next guy in making those demands.
November 21st, 2010 at 8:44 pm
You may be right about the Halladay no-hitter, but I’ll remember where I was.
I’d just finished teaching an afternoon class in Boston — one of the many parts of my day job — and was bouncing back in a taxi to my hotel, where ordinarily I’d have put my feet up and taken a pre-dinner snooze. But in the cab I fired up the Droid and saw what was going on.
While I’m not usually inclined to crank on the TV after a day in front of the classroom, I made an exception on that afternoon. And I’m glad I did, even if all I saw was the last three innings.
It made me wish I’d been in that CBP pressbox. Maybe some day I’ll get my work priorities straight.