August 29, 1967

     This is an action-packed week. There was the Yankees-Tigers brawl on Thursday (Miguel Cabrera didn't need to push Austin Romine, no matter what he said and where were the umpires in this whole mess? Besides, Gary Sanchez--what were YOU thinking throwing those ineffective and unnecessary punches--isn't 4 games going to hurt the team at this time of year?). Giancarlo Stanton hit home runs number 48, 49 and 50 (will he break 61 in a legitimate, non-steroid way?). The annual Jets-Giants exhibition game was Saturday (despite scoring 31 points, does NYJ actually have any offense and will both teams escape the injury bug which is occurring around the NFL--see Julian Edelman's ACL injury?). And of course there was Floyd Mayweather versus Conor McGregor, an undefeated boxer trying to remain undefeated with his 50th win (which he did via 10th round TKO), topping Rocky Marciano's all-time record of 49-0 battling the brash Irish MMA fighter who stood to pocket $30 million or more versus Mayweather's $100 million (why were people so crazed about this fight as to establish the greatest boxing betting Las Vegas has ever seen?). Then there are the Players' Weekend jerseys--really? Softball invades MLB?

     Any of these topics would be enough by themselves, but I want to tell a personal story. It goes back 50 years, to the date of August 29, 1967. I was on the cusp of beginning my senior year at Highland Park High School, where I was the football statistician, head basketball manager/scorekeeper and media stringer.

     I liked those sports a lot. But my first love was baseball. I thought I was pretty good, but incidents in high school relating to my small size (5'4", 120 pounds) and some real anti-Semitism by the baseball coaches kept me on the sidelines; there was no need to try out for the JV team after getting cut my sophomore year when I hit and fielded better than any other outfielder. I politely declined the varsity coach/vice principal asking me if I wanted to be on the team  for my senior year as a reward for my dedication to HPHS sports--since he was clear that I would only play when the team was ahead by 10 runs.

     It was this underdog prejudice which fueled my determination to join the Franklin and Marshall team, where I became an instant starter. I knew that all of the hours I had put in playing stick ball and shagging fly balls thanks to my friend Ron, had built up my strong throwing arm and had given me countless at bats from both sides of the plate. I would start in college but be denied the chance to legitimately make the JV's in high school. Unlike Michael Jordan, my reason for not playing was political and not for a lack of ability at that point in my life. I love baseball so much that, after the first of my shoulder surgeries, on the day before my 42nd birthday, I was able to return to the field against F&M players more than half my age and be competitive in the last baseball game I have ever played in.

     This dedication to baseball began early in my life. I lived on a dead end street in Highland Park, so rural that there was a farm in neighboring Edison and I could go up to the fence where a horse came by and say hello on a daily basis from 1956 to 1960. The dead end circle was where I learned how to catch, throw and even bat, thanks to the willingness of my father and our neighbor, Milton Reitman, who went with my father and me to my first Yankees game in 1958 and took me to my first Saturday afternoon game at Yankee Stadium in 1959. Milton, like his father, Norman Reitman, became a cardiologist. And I am indebted to my sister Laura for pitching to me at a short distance inside our garage so I could learn to hit low line drives up the middle; as great a softball player as she was, Laura starred in tennis at Monmouth College and is a nationally-renowned, glass-shattering female coin dealer on a big time level.

     What engaged me even more was the fact that the New York Yankees were the only team in town. The Dodgers and Giants had fled New York for the West Coast. WPIX, Channel 11 in New York, saturated the market with Yankees baseball. Stars Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and  Whitey Ford;  lesser lights like Norm Siebern and Jerry Lumpe; and memorable Yankees such as Bobby Richardson were on TV, in black and white, all summer long. The Yankees were a dynasty into the mid-1960's with their cadre of pitchers and fielders seemingly winning every season. Naively, I thought this winning was going to last forever.

     That Yankees dynasty came apart after the 1964 World Series. In 1965, the Yankees finished  a distant sixth to the American League Champions, the Minnesota Twins; New York ended the season with a 77-85 record, 25 games behind the leaders.

     1966 was worse. The Yankees finished in the cellar, the last of the 10 teams in the American League, and a full 26.5 games behind the young Baltimore Orioles, who would go on to sweep the defending World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers in four contest. The bottom had dropped out for the Yankees. Laden with old and lesser players, having made bad trades and receiving sub par years from injured Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, the Yankees were lucky to attain 70 wins.

     Nonetheless, I had not changed allegiance to the expansion New York Mets, whose struggles since their inception were tragically comical. I watched them on WOR-TV, Channel 9 and read about them in the Daily News, especially in the columns of Dick Young. I went to a few games at the Polo Grounds then at Shea Stadium  near the site of the 1964 World's Fair. They were a New York team. I rooted for the New York teams--Yankees, Giants, Mets, Jets, Knicks and Rangers.

     Horace Clarke, the bespectacled second baseman, enthralled me, largely because legendary Yankees shortstop turned broadcaster Phil Rizzuto extolled Clarke's virtues. 1962 Rookie of the Year, switch hitter Tom Tresh, a Michigan kid and a shortstop, was hyped as the next Mickey Mantle. I loved the pitching of Mel Stottlemyre, Lefty power hitter Steve Whitaker, first baseman Mike Hegan, son a of a major league catcher and third baseman Charlie Smith--they were my guys. I truly believed that the losing seasons after 1964 were merely a blip on the radar and this group of Yankees was going to revisit glory.

     So when my father was offered 4 seats for the Boston-New York game on August 29, 1967, there was no hesitation in my going. As it turned out, this was a twi-night doubleheader, the result of an earlier rain out. The Red Sox were headed to an A.L pennant for the first time since 1946 and there was this jinx called the Curse of the Bambino--Boston traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920 so that the Red Sox owner could salvage his Broadway losses--which was why Boston had not won a World Series since 1914. So it was a chance for my beloved Bronx Bombers to take down the best team in the American League.

     Our gang schlepped up to the Bronx, taking the bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then the subway up to 161st Street and River Avenue, where we emerged at street level to face the center field side of mammoth Yankee Stadium. The noise and sounds from the fans, the hawkers, the bars and delis was always electric. Red Sox fans were aplenty on that night. They sensed blood against the mediocre Yankees.

     We sat on the third base side of the stadium, in the mezzanine. It was a comfortable night, great for a ballgame or two. This was exciting to me. Who knew what was ahead of us?

     Game 1 featured a classic pitching match up. Top Red Sox starter, righty Jim Lonborg, who would go on to win the 1967 Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in the American League, faced Stottlemyre, the de facto Yankees ace. A couple of things I recalled vividly from this game. That both pitchers pitched complete games and that they allowed very few hits. This game went by very quickly--it was over in 2 hours and 10 minutes. I remember saying to my friends that Tresh, now a left fielder, would hit a home run--which he did--accounting for the lone Yankees run in a 2-1 defeat. I also remembered that Lonborg had a base hit which drove in the winning run for Boston. Also, for Boston, the starting catcher was Elston Howard, the first Yankees player of color, who was now with the Red Sox; he was greeted warmly by the Yankees fans in appreciation for his role on many championship teams in the 1950's and '60's.

     The Red Sox had a very formidable lineup. Led by future Hall of Fame outfielder Carl Yastrzemski and stalwarts like the switch hitting center fielder Reggie Smith, the slugging first baseman George Scott, steady second baseman Mike Andrews and the venerable shortstop Rico Petrocelli, Boston was a really good team. New York was not and the 3 hits they managed against Lonborg along with the 11 strikeouts was clear proof of how putrid the Yankees offense was.

     Game 2 was another story. Perhaps the real story of the night. I recall during the evening--whether it was between games or sometime in the second game making this outrageous statement--that the second game would last 20 innings. How absurdly ridiculous. My friends Bob and Don scoffed at me, like I was a deranged lunatic.

     Well, the game lasted 20 innings!! My memory of details of Game 2 was much sketchier than what I could fathom from the first contest. I knew that the Red Sox sent right hander Lee Stange to the mound and the Yankees countered with former Red Sox righty Bill Momboquette, and that both pitched okay--just not to the levels of Lonborg and Stottlemyre. The Red Sox did score first--on a two run homer hit by outfielder Ken "Hawk" Harrelson; Harrelson has carved out a lengthy second career as the voice of the Chicago White Sox since 1982 with some stints as the worst White Sox General Manager, and as a broadcaster outside of Chicago in the time leading up to 1992 and the start of his uninterrupted tenure as the White Sox play-by-pay man. The Yankees managed to tie the game twice, first in the 7th inning and then in the bottom of the 11th inning after Boston had scored in their half of the inning. Reliever Sparky Lyle, who would become a better known player as a Yankee on the "Bronx Zoo" teams in the 1970's, was the victim of that 11th inning homer by Whitaker.

    As the game reached the 12th inning, we were faced with a dilemma. The buses stopped running out of the Port Authority terminal at 1:00 a.m. The clock had already passed midnight and the game was still tied. We had to catch a subway train to 59th Street, changing from the "D" train to the "A" train to get to 42nd Street and the bus. After the 13th inning, we said we would leave in the 14th inning, no matter what the score. Which we did.

     The trip was uneventful. I scurried home from New Brunswick, sprinting across the Raritan River bridge and up the hills of Harrison Avenue. It was cooler and pleasant as I entered the house. I went upstairs to our family room and turned on the TV. Whereupon I saw the Yankees win the game in the bottom of the 20th inning when Horace Clarke, who went 4 for 9 in the game, singled  in John F. Kennedy (the infielder, not related to the late President); Kennedy had singled to right and was sent to second base when "Bulldog" Jim Bouton, who had pitched 5 superb innings in relief and would become a notorious figure in Yankees lore with his tell-all book, Ball Four, was permitted to hit and was struck by a pitch by pitcher Jose Santiago, normally a Red Sox starter. At roughly 2:20 a.m on August 30th the game mercifully ended.

     A crowd of 40,314 was in attendance on this night which stretched way into the morning. The second game lasted 6 hours and 9 minutes. The equivalent of 3+ games were played that evening. Yastrzemski went 0-10, lowering his batting average to .319. Charlie Smith, who played third in both games for New York, went 0-9. Tresh, who went on to hit an underwhelming 183 career home runs, had a 3 for 12 night, raising his average to .214. Clarke also raised his average by having 4 hits in 12 at bats. Steve Whitaker, who did not play in the first contest, went 4 for 7, including his 11th homer of the season. Even one of my youthful favorites, Norm Siebern played--for Boston--and he went 1 for 1 as a pinch hitter in Game 2. Perhaps the happiest person in the whole Stadium when the Yankees were victorious might have been home plate umpire Bill Haller, who had to endure this marathon to its conclusion...unless it was Ed Runge, who luckily had the assignment to call balls and strikes in Game 1.

     I was razzed by my friends the next day for picking a game that went so long. I don't know if they remember that or even the trip. Because of Game 2's duration, I have been very reluctant to attend a twi-night doubleheader; thankfully, the MLB owners' greed in scheduling separate admission day-night doubleheaders has made this quandary nearly moot.

     In the 50 years since the night of August 29, 1967, I have seen many other games in many other locales. I have not seen the Red Sox in New York because of the raucous 1967 crowd--fights were breaking out everywhere. Mets-Yankees games are tamer. For me, no other regular season match ups have matched what occurred on that night and into the next day. It was the first time that I made an outlandish comment about something happening and it did; those instances when I have predicted an event do not occur often, and they carry good and bad outcomes when uttered.

     August 29th may have been a sad day to be a Yankees fan. Briefly, the memorable early hours of August 30 made me a happy Yankees fan in another lost season. Let's hope that this August 29th, when I am fortuitously at the new version of Yankee Stadium, the edifice just northwest of where I was many, many years ago, will bring another Yankees victory for a team with a resume which looks like they may be playoff-bound.