Recalling These Pennant Races Celebrates Baseball’s Heritage

Baseball is a game that has no past, really. Present and past are fused into one. It’s almost the only game in which yesterday and today present the same scene (except for the--yuck!--designated hitter). You could look at a game played in 1894 and one played in 1994, and it’s the same game. Even the handlebar mustaches have come back. The geometry of the game remains identical. Athletes improve, but the integrity of the game holds fast. Whether you arrive by horse-drawn trolley or stretch limo, it’s still the grand old game out there. It’s great continuity, the greatest father-and-son game ever devised.

We remember the game in song and story in its white-hot moments, most always having to do with World Series. Ruth calling his shot in the ’32 classic. Willie Mays catching Vic Wertz’s 500-foot shot in ’54. Koufax striking out one of the most-feared lineups in even Yankee history in ’63. The Miracle Braves. Pepper Martin running wild in ’31. Our family heirlooms.

But there are sagas of the game often overlooked by the bards of baseball--the pennant races. The events that get you to the World Series in the first place.

My friend Dave Anderson, of that other Times, the one in New York, addresses this history in a joyous new book that brings you all the Scene Twos of the drama of the game, all the things you always thought you knew about baseball but were afraid to ask.

“Pennant Races” (Doubleday), for a baseball fan, is like spending an evening in the owner’s box at every crucial event in the grand old game.

For instance, you probably recall the famous Fred Merkle incident of 1908, the “bonehead” play where he forgot to touch second base on a winning hit and it cost his team, the Giants, the game and, ultimately, the pennant.

But did you know that the Chicago second baseman in that storied caper, Johnny Evers, had tried that very trick in a less important game only two weeks before and that it was common practice for baserunners in those days to head for the clubhouse and not the next base on game-winning hits?

And did you know that it’s questionable that Evers found the actual ball that had been hit? Best evidence was, it was thrown away by a Giant third base coach when he caught wind of Evers’ maneuver. Did you know that Merkle was on the verge of stealing second shortly before the fatal pitch and was waved back by the batter, who feared he might be picked off?

And did you know that the president of the league, Harry Pulliam, humiliated by the storm of abuse the incident brought down on his head, resigned his post and, a year later, took his own life?

Every fan knows that the lone fatality in the annals of baseball occurred when a Cleveland third-baseman, Ray Chapman, was beaned by New York Yankee Pitcher Carl Mays. Baseball lore has it the tragedy foreshortened Mays’ career, that he could never again bring himself to pitch inside to the batter.

The truth is, he won 109 more games, pitched in two World Series and, maybe, should have had a shot at the Hall of Fame. He even won eight more games that season.

One macabre footnote was, the tragedy cost New York the pennant. The team did not pitch Mays in Cleveland the rest of that season, in fact, did not take him on the trips there. It may have handed Cleveland the pennant, which they won by 2 1/2 games over the Yankees--and Mays was a 26-game winner that year.

Cleveland fans well remember the pennant race of 1940 in which their Indians went into the final week of the season with the pennant on the line facing the Detroit Tigers. They had Bob Feller ready and Detroit was prepared to all but concede him the first game and start a sacrificial lamb. They chose a minor league pitcher who had pitched in only two big league games up to that time, a kid named Floyd Giebel.

Giebel won the pennant for Detroit. He threw a shutout and beat Bob Feller, 2-0. He put the Tigers in the World Series--and he never won another game in the big leagues in his life.

You may know the Red Sox won the pennant in 1967, but do you remember how? The Angels, who were going nowhere as usual that year, had a season-ending pair of doubleheaders with the Detroit Tigers, who were locked in a tie with the Red Sox on the season’s closing day. If Detroit won the second game of that twin bill, there would be a playoff. Trailing by 8-5 in the bottom of the ninth, the Tigers quickly put two men on base and, with one out, the tying run came to the plate in the person of Dick McAuliffe. Now, if there was one thing McAuliffe didn’t do, it was hit into a double play. He hadn’t hit into one all year, and had hit into only one in 637 at-bats.

He hit into a double play.

It’s what happens. It’s what makes America’s game America’s game.

Meticulously researched, Anderson’s book is as much fun for a fan as having a dugout seat at every crucial series over the century.

It’s baseball as it was--and is. You view other sports with the head. Baseball is for the heart. The book is full of vignettes that bring a smile. There is, for instance, the time this young rookie who had been brought up to the club for a late-September pennant drive. He had six hits in 11 times up but he was still a rookie from Class A when he took his place in the Cardinals’ batting cage.

“Get your . . . out of there, busher!” roared the team catcher, Walker Cooper. “That’s for stars!”

The rookie crept out. The rookie was Stan Musial.