Baseball; the Last Great American Pastime by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Baseball; the Last Great American Pastime

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#10- The Sixties- The Ball Got Dead and Nobody Was Grateful

 

Substantially due to the previously mentioned adjustments

made by the bossing baseball buffs and the ageing or departure

of the best big bashers, the average amount of runs scored per

game nosedived to pre-Ruth, pre-1920 levels. It was actually a

bit below 1910-19 production and fans were not grateful to

return to the productivity of the “Dead Ball” era. How excited

can one get while watching a mid-level team which has third and

fourth place hitters who bat around .220 and battle each other

for team leadership in home runs at the teen level. If you

weren’t there, take my word on this one. Watching the drawn out

futility is worse than words or numbers could indicate.

I think it was not pure chance that 1968 was the time some

investors pushed in an attempt to establish professional soccer

as a major sport in the US. A winning New York team was

established and in 1975 a triple-teamed, 34 year old Pele played

for them, but soccer was not to take hold in the US until much,

much later.

For the first few years of the sixties, baseball seemed to

be repeating the fifties. The Yankees won pennants; and the M&M

boys of New York had the whole nation watching their pursuit of

Babe’s single season home run record; Roger Maris breaking it on

the last day of the season. Ted Williams and Stan Musial were

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beyond the typical baseball prime years of 28-32, but were still

producing well.

But, conservative baseball like conservative America, took

a few years to get into the changing spirit of the sixties; and

most fans didn’t like it much when it did. The anemic averages,

culminated in Carl Yastrzemski’s 1968 American League leading

.301. His effort alone saved the institution the embarrassment

of for the first time having a leader in the two’s. If I

remember correctly, it took a three hit day in the last game of

the regular season to do it. In MLB the counterculture was big

on the mound and 1968 was called; “The Year of the Pitcher.”

Forced to answer to great pressure, each league reluctantly

expanded from eight teams to ten early in the decade. The

reluctance was no doubt one indicated by presumed business

interests, as expansion usually produces wider skewing of

statistics, as the players, in this case, were one-quarter of

the time batting against and pitching to players who would

otherwise have been in the minor leagues. More amenably,

baseball added two more in 1969 to bring the total to twelve in

each league. By the end of the decade, the Northeast had to

relinquish its stronghold grip on pro baseball. As previously

mentioned, some old teams left and the new ones sprouted up in

places like San Diego, Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Oakland,

Houston and even Montreal.

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Just at what hindsight shows to have been precisely the

wrong time, Commissioner Ford Frick, decided to cut down the

offense by enlarging the strike zone in 1963. Some said it was

due to his displeasure at seeing the record of his old friend,

Babe Ruth, exceeded. Much too successfully it immediately drove

down hitting. The majority of the fans like offense, and the

results produced groans and complaints.

After the AL batted .230 in 1968, for 1969 the strike zone

was put back where it was in 1963. However, something had

fundamentally changed as there was little immediate effect.

Marked improvement didn’t set in until 1973. Below is a chart

which tells the story better than words.

 

AL NL AL+NL Year

.271 .261 .266 1950

.262 .260 .261 1951

.253 .253 .253 1952

.262 .266 .264 1953

.257 .265 .261 1954

.258 .259 .259 1955

.260 .256 .258 1956

.255 .260 .258 1957

.254 .262 .258 1958

.253 .260 .257 1959

.255 .255 .255 1960

.256 .262 .258 1961

.255 .261 .258 1962

.247 .245 .246 1963

.247 .254 .250 1964

.242 .249 .246 1965

.240 .256 .249 1966

.236 .249 .242 1967

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.230 .243 .237 1968

.246 .250 .248 1969

.250 .258 .254 1970

.247 .252 .249 1971

.239 .248 .244 1972

.259 .254 .257 1973

.258 .255 .257 1974

.258 .257 .258 1975

.256 .255 .255 1976

.266 .262 .264 1977

.261 .254 .258 1978

.270 .261 .265 1979

 

But for that minority who liked their baseball low in

scoring, there was a plethora of pitching brilliance throughout

the decade to please them. Most memorable ranged from the superb

dominance of the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax, to the fiery fastball of

the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, to the spitball theatrics of Giants’

Gaylord Perry, and to—at-the-decade’s-end arrival of the Mets’

Tom Seaver, who led his upstart youngsters to a stunning World

Series triumph that captivated America’s interest and gave the

“Great American Pastime” a much needed shot in the arm as is

colloquially said; but might more accurately be described as a

spacey buzz.

Below is a listing of 1960’s Series opponents.

 

Year Series Winner Series Loser

1960 Pittsburgh Pirates New York Yankees

1961 New York Yankees Cincinnati Reds

1962 New York Yankees San Francisco Giants

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1963 Los Angeles Dodgers New York Yankees

1964 St. Louis Cardinals New York Yankees

1965 Los Angeles Dodgers Minnesota Twins

1966 Baltimore Orioles Los Angeles Dodgers

1967 St. Louis Cardinals Boston Red Sox

1968 Detroit Tigers St. Louis Cardinals

1969 New York Mets Baltimore Orioles

 

A glance at the above chart makes things obvious. Strong

hitting teams went to the Fall Classic through 1963. 1964 was

the pivotal year, in that the LA, pitching Dodgers took over

from the remnants of a Yankee batting powerhouse. For the rest

of the decade every team to get to post season play was known

most for their pitching. The only exceptions were the 1965 Twins

and to a lesser extent the 1967 Red Sox; and both lost.

 

The story which most encapsulates what was going on came at

the very end, and was that of the 1969 New York Mets. Despite

miserable on field performance since their 1962 inception, the

team was taken to by New York fans. They were seen as a bunch of

cute failures, which was apparently quite a refreshing change

from those capable, much too successful, domineering Yankees

from the other borough. The Mets located in Queens, as opposed

to the long lasting Yankee dormitory in the gritty Bronx. Then

in 1969 the Mets surprised the hell out of everybody including

themselves, and won the whole enchilada after a shaky start. The

simple reason was that they could pitch like a sunuvabitch and

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field almost as well as a pro. Their pitching prevailed despite

1969’s return to the old, smaller strike zone, a decrease in

mound height from 15 to 10 inches, and the first year of the

playoff system.

 

Previously, the franchise’s peak performance was a few

ninth place finishes in their ten team league. As a

new expansion team, they put up a 40–120 won-loss record in

1962. That is still the most losses by any Major League baseball

team in one season. The good news is that their .250 winning

percentage is only third on the list of worst post-1900 teams,

and almost doubled the “winning” percentage of one of the six

nineteenth century teams to do worse.

To add some perspective to the Mets’ short history, their

winning percentage had never previously been over .500 after the

ninth game of any season. Yet, here was the Revolution of 1969.

Only seven years after their disastrous debut, "The Amazin'

Mets," as nicknamed by previous manager Casey Stengel, were to

be re-named “The Miracle Mets” by their fans as they proceeded

to win the World Series, the first expansion team to do so.

With great pitching and decent defense, but not much

offense, the Mets started at 18–23. At that point very few

baseball men could predict what was to come, though early signs

were there. That .439 winning percentage was better than the

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Mets had done in all seasons but one. Starting with their forty-

second game, they beat all the odds, by winning their next

eleven games and went 82–39, a phenomenal .678 winning

percentage for the rest of the season.

Despite their record performance they were behind the Cubs

most of the season. As late as August thirteenth the Mets were

9.5 games back. Their 38-11 finish propelled them into first

place and they won by a comfortable margin of 8 games.

All of a sudden they found their bats while defeating the

Atlanta Braves 3-0 in the first NLCS ever played. The World

Series was much what one would expect. Scores were low as the

Baltimore Orioles pitted their four starters of Jim Palmer, Mike

Cuellar, Dave McNally and generally reliever Dick Hall against

the unbelievable Met staff consisting of Tom Seaver, Jerry

Koosman, Gary Gentry, and Nolan Ryan. The Mets won in five and

their New York fans were delirious for about two weeks.