Baseball Time Machine
With two different settings
I hit a slow time for interviews, so in the interest of consistency you’re gonna get a slightly less interesting topic. I was listening to a podcast the other day and someone had asked a question, if you could go back in time and watch any baseball game in history, which ones would you pick? But with sports there’s two types of memorable events: there’s the games you anticipate something big happening in and delivering, like a milestone or a game 7, and there are games that you go into like any other game and something historic happens.
So that leaves two lists. The first will be the top 5 games I’d go to but, as soon as I step out of the time machine, my brain gets zapped with one of those Men in Black things and I have no memory of what happens in the game. So I get to watch the moment unfold with no idea how it actually ends. The other list is the 5 games I’d go to just to see even though we all know what is going to or what did happen.
Full Memory Choices
1999 All-Star game, Fenway Park: This was the one where they honored the All-Century team, so not only were the best players of 1999 on the field, so were the greatest living players of the 20th century. Tony Gwynn stood beside Ted Williams as he threw out the first pitch. 31 of the players from the All-Century team were in attendance, including Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and I’m sure Pete Rose was somewhere in the vicinity of Boylston St signing autographs.
Dodgers vs Braves, Ebbets Field, April 15, 1947: The game Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. There’s been plenty written about his life and his impact, but I couldn’t find much beyond the box score for his first MLB game. He went 0-3 with the go-ahead run in a game the Dodgers won, 5-3. The game wasn’t a sellout, just 26,000 in attendance, so I wonder how much hype went into the actual first game. Of course, the season would go on and he’d have many, many games where the game was secondary to the social and racial tensions and issues that accompanied him. But for Opening Day, I wonder what it was like in the stands hearing everyday people’s conversations that game. Your longtime manager had just been suspended for a year for “amoral lifestyle choices”, Jackie Robinson was the only non-white player in uniform and you’re in Ebbets Field which is one of the lost wonders of the baseball world.
Cleveland Forest Cities vs Ft. Wayne Kekiongas, May 4, 1871: The first official professional baseball game. I’m going back 150 years for this one, hopefully there’s enough gas in the tank so I’m not trapped having to live in a time where people still got smallpox and used heaps of cocaine… oh wait… But also, I wonder what it was like watching that game with the knowledge of what that game was the beginning of. The box score shows only 200 in attendance and just the home plate umpire. Since back then batters got to ask for either a “high ball” or “low ball”, I guess balls and strikes weren’t as nitpicky as they are now. There aren’t any photos from that time, so just imagine a vacant lot in a sepia tone, since color wasn’t invented on Earth until 1950.
1989 NLCS Game 1, Giants at Cubs, Wrigley Field, 10/4/89: It’s my list so I’m definitely putting the game where Will Clark hit a grand slam off Greg Maddux in the NLCS. The legend goes that during the mound visit before his at bat, Clark saw Maddux mouth ‘fastball in’ to the catcher and was sitting on the fastball. Who knows if that’s true, but “The Thrill” who hit a home run in his first Major League at bat off of Nolan Ryan, had a knack for big moments. He hit .650 in the series, going 13/20 with 2 home runs and 8 RBI.
2001 World Series Game 3, Diamondbacks at Yankees, 10/30/01: This was the game George W. Bush threw out the first pitch in the heart of New York City just after 9/11. Not just a pitch, but a no-doubt strike off the mound while wearing a bullet-proof vest with 55,820 in attendance, millions watching around the globe and hundreds of snipers positioned in the rafters. A game opened by President Bush and closed out by Mariano Rivera, who struck out 4 in 2 scoreless innings to secure a 2-1 victory. That would’ve been well worth the two hour security line to get into Yankee Stadium that day.
Memory Wipe Games
Diamondbacks vs Giants, Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium, 3/24/2001: I didn’t realize this happened in Tucson, but I’m gonna buy myself a front-row seat to this unassuming late-March spring training game. I’d probably be enjoying a beer, getting some sun and watching Major Leaguers get loose for the marathon season coming up. BUT THEN:
OH NO. Listen to the crowd react to the sudden vaporization of that poor dove. Of all the fastballs to try to play chicken with, he picked Randy Johnson’s legendary 100+ mph sidearm bullet and did not make it to the other side.
Yankees vs Senators, Griffith Stadium, 4/17/1953: Mickey Mantle, in his second season, batting right-handed, hit what’s believed to be one of, if not the, longest home runs in history. By now it’s been exaggerated into mythical status like a fisherman’s tale, but Griffith Stadium was still 408 feet to left-field and then a couple dozen rows of bleachers, so hitting it out of the park at all required a massive poke. Only Josh Gibson was able to hit one before Mantle did, and he is a legendary power hitter in his own right. The longest home run I’ve ever seen was Giancarlo Stanton mashing a Stephen Strasburg pitch to centerfield at Marlins Park, and that ball was so loud and hung in the air for so long, time slowed down. Imagine seeing and hearing this blast that people still write about 70 years later.
Cubs vs Astros, Wrigley Field, 5/6/98: Just an unassuming spring weekday game at Wrigley Field with a rookie pitcher making his 5th career start. That rookie, Kerry Wood, then went on to absolutely dominate the Astros, spotting that fastball and getting hapless swings on his breaking stuff to tie a Major League record with 20 strikeouts. The feat has been matched but never topped in a 9-inning game. And he went through a lineup that featured Hall of Famers Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell, as well as all-stars Moises Alou and Derek Bell. He gave up one hit (and hit Craig Biggio with a pitch, because everyone does that). Just listen to the crowd get louder and louder with each K, and that would be awesome to be in attendance to experience without knowing how it ends.
1995 ALDS Game 5, Mariners vs Yankees, Kingdome, 10/8/95: “The Double”. The game that every Mariners fan speaks about with the same reverence and nostalgia that Americans do when they talk about the Moon landing. The Mariners had won 25 of the final 25 games that season, then had to win a one-game playoff over the Astros to get into the playoffs, and then went down 0-2 in the series to the emerging Yankees. But they came back and forced a game 5. They went down 4-2 and pulled Randy Johnson out of the bullpen to keep the game in reach. Down 5-4 in the bottom of the 11th, with two men on base, Edgar Martinez roped a double down the line and Ken Griffey Jr. edged out the throw home to score from first and send the Mariners to their first ALCS. That game was a nail-biter with the release and exhilaration that can’t be replicated. It must’ve been a wild time to be a Mariners fan.
TBD, Padres vs AL Champion, Petco Park:
Don’t have video of this one… yet.
As for the coolest games I’ve actually been to? Hmm:
Diamondbacks NLCS games 3 and 4 last season where they came back and won both of those.
July 5, 2006, Rays vs Red Sox, Tropicana Field: Carl Crawford steals 2nd, 3rd and home. That was the most impressive thing I’ve seen in a Major League game.
2016 All-Star game at Petco Park
2009 AAA All-star game at PGE Park
The next game I go to ;)
Just wondering if you've ever been to a Savannah Bananas game? I've never been but I'm in the lottery for tickets this year. They look like a lot of fun!