When Pennant Race Was Really Pennant Race

It’s difficult determining when, exactly, a kid becomes a baseball fan. I mean, a card-collecting, lineup-memorizing, argue on the playground, ear next to the radio all summer baseball nut. There’s a sneaking suspicion that a mad pennant scramble or two might have something to do with it, however.

Approximately 70,000 games ago, the kids around my way were under the impression that pennants were never decided before the last weekend of the season, if then. Who could blame us?

The year was 1948 and the Boston Braves had clinched the National League flag with about a week to go, so all attention turned to the American League where the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians were stepping on one another’s toes entering the final weekend.

Boston eliminated New York with a victory in the next to last game, and visions of a “Trolley Series” prevailed in Beantown. After all, anyone who could beat a pitching staff of Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds and Eddie Lopat, with Joe DiMaggio knocking in 166 runs, could prevail over Cleveland, certainly.

The Tribe hung tough behind 20-game winners Gene Bearden and Bob Lemon, and Bob Feller wasn’t bad either with 19. Clear to memory is the Sox bypassing Jack Kramer, Joe Dobson, Mel Parnell, Earl Johnson and Ellis Kinder and sending Denny Galehouse to the mound to face Bearden because, it is reliably reported, when Manager Joe McCarthy asked who wanted to pitch the playoff, Galehouse (8-8) was the only one to raise his hand.

It probably didn’t matter because by the fifth inning the Sox were hopelessly out of it as Indians manager and league MVP Lou Boudreau already had swatted two home runs ... just as Robin Yount did against the Baltimore Orioles a few years back on swan-song Sunday.

After not missing so much as an inning or two all summer, the old Zenith was shut down with the home team foundering somewhere in the sixth inning.

New England was still in deep mourning the next summer when an even better race to the wire surfaced. The Red Sox of Ted Williams (43 homers and 160 runs batted in), Vern Stephens (39 and 159) and Bobby Doerr (18 and 109) could no doubt nurse a one-game lead over the Yankees through the final weekend.

They couldn’t and, after winning twice, the hated New Yorks traipsed off to the World Series to meet the Dodgers, who won in extra innings the last day to edge St. Louis by one game.

Back then, the leagues were compact enough (two time zones) and several cities had entrants in both loops, so radio moved to serve everyone’s interest well. A good example was the Dodgers-Philadelphia Phillies last-day showdown in 1950, which suddenly created a Boston-to-St. Louis network.

The Phillies were backing up in the stretch, but Richie Ashburn saved them one more time by throwing Cal Abrams out at the plate with two outs in the ninth to force extra innings. Dick Sisler’s three-run shot in the 10th won it.

Beginning to get the picture? Year after year with pencils, scorecards and radio at the ready, fans settled in for final-day delirium. Adding to the fall frenzy, and as if to celebrate the advent of national television, Bobby Thomson stroked the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” as the Giants swept away a Brooklyn lead of 13 1/2 games in mid-August and prevailed in the last inning of a best-of-three playoff in ’51.

Nerves had just about become unharried when, in 1956, another series of garrison finishes ensued. The Dodgers trailed the Braves by a game with three to play, but they won out by sweeping Pittsburgh as St. Louis was taking two of three from Milwaukee.

With a week remaining in 1959, the Giants led the Dodgers and Braves by two games before stepping aside and allowing their pursuers to move on to a playoff won by Los Angeles.

The cross country rivals, Los Angeles (nee Brooklyn) and San Francisco (nee New York) engaged in a best-of-three playoff in 1962 that had everyone waxing poetic about the fabled showdown 11 years previous. The teams had won a game apiece and the Dodgers led, 4-2, entering the ninth inning of Game 3. Once again, the Giants pushed across three runs to win. Deja choke.

Indeed, fantastic flag finishes used to be the rule and not the exception before expansion, division play, the DH, trampoline fields and championship series stealing thunder from the World Series took over.

Being of a generation where a couple of teams ending up all but tied on the last day of the season was fairly commonplace, one assumes a blase attitude toward the Orioles and Blue Jays being head-and-head with a millennium-like four days to go.

Sunday should prove an interesting day, particularly if it leads to another game Monday.

Suddenly, the baseball season doesn’t seem so long anymore, does it? Welcome aboard, you’re a fan.