Paper Finally Rights Its Wrong

Belated “For the Record”: The Daily News of Springfield, Mass., admitted Friday that it had the wrong team winning the fifth game of the World Series.

No, not Thursday night’s fifth game. The fifth game in 1929.

And now, 57 years and 10 days later, the newspaper has confessed.

“Assuming that confession is good for the soul, or at least good for the readers, we admit that we did have the Chicago Cubs winning the fifth game of the 1929 World Series, whereas the (Philadelphia) Athletics won it,” Daily News editor Richard Garvey wrote.

The paper went to press with the Cubs leading, 2-0, going into the bottom of the ninth. But the Athletics scored three runs to win the game, 3-2, and the Series.

The papers with the error were never delivered. They were ordered destroyed.

“We never admitted it,” Garvey wrote. “Why bother the reader with details like that? And anyway, we got it right the second time. Well, almost right.”

In scrambling to remake the front page, the typesetter used an upside-down V instead of an A in Athletics.

Trivia time: What do the Rams’ Michael Young, the Raiders’ Don Mosebar and the New York Mets’ Bob Ojeda have in common? (Answer below.)

God and baseball: Dick Balderson, general manager of the Seattle Mariners, says he likes to see his team’s players get angry when they lose, instead of thinking the Lord wants it that way.

“I can’t perceive God being on the mound in the ninth inning and saying (a loss) is the way it should be,” he said. “I perceive him as being an individual who would beat you any way he can as long as it’s within the rules. I think God would be mad if he got beat, not, ‘Well, I did my best, and that’s the way it was meant to be.’

“Bible studies are fine. Meetings are fine. But I don’t know if the ballpark is the place. They should be thinking about baseball.

“There are an awful lot of young men in this game as well as in all walks of society who are very religious people and indebted to their Christianity, faith or religion. But I think sometimes we use it as a crutch.”

A different perspective: Some people weren’t too impressed with Arizona’s 23-12 victory last Saturday over Oregon State, which lost to USC, 63-0, last season and to Fresno State, 27-0, this season. But Arizona Coach Larry Smith wasn’t complaining.

“Everybody says you should beat them by 50 points,” Smith said. “Oregon State isn’t like that anymore. I’m sure the public thinks Oregon State stinks, but I don’t care. I’m happy we won.”

Trivia answer: All three are from Visalia, Calif.

Quotebook

WTBS announcer Mel Proctor, after partner Paul Hornung said he’d been studying some of the tough names before last Saturday’s Ohio State-Purdue game: “Yeah, I heard you in your room last night saying, ‘Cris Carter, Cris Carter,’ over and over.”