Baseball Memories

The fact that the Dodgers and the Giants will meet starting on Friday, Oct 8, 2021, in a National League playoff series, and that this is the first time that they have met in a league championship playoff series, has triggered my memory back over 70 years. 

This year, the Yankees lost to the RedSox (6-2) in their wild card game, so their season is over.  But the Dodgers beat the Cardinals in a thriller (3-1) on a ninth-inning, two-outs, two-run walk-off homer by Chris Taylor.  One rabbi called this win "epic...biblical".

In the late 1940s, we lived in Havertown, a suburb of Philadelphia.  My dad was a Phillies fan, and therefore I was a Phillies fan.  One ritual for us, weather allowing, was to wash the car (we only had one in those days) on Sunday afternoons in the driveway, while listening to the Phillies game on a radio perched on the dining room window sill. If the game was played in Philadelphia's Shibe Park, the broadcast was live.  If the game was out of town,  a local at the game would teletype the basics to Philadelphia, and the Phillies announcer would "recreate" the action for the listeners.  You could hear the clack-clack-clack of the teletypewriter in the background.  He would add the color to the otherwise prosaic teletype text.

My dad did take me to a few Phillies games in Shibe Park.  The stadium was in a Black neighborhood.  He would be directed to a curb parking space by some local boys, and then he would pay them to "watch" the car for us during the game.  I don't remember how much, but I am guessing 25-cents.  That seems small today, but in those days 25-cents bought a pack of cigarettes or a gallon of gas.

You might have thought that the Phillies big rival would be the Pittsburgh Pirates, they being the other Pennsylvania MLB team.  But it was the Dodgers.  But for the Dodgers, their big rival by far was the cross-town Giants, and likewise for the Giants.

In 1950, the Phillies won the National League pennant, with a young team called the "Whiz Kids".  The average age of their roster was 26.1 years old.  They won the pennant on the last day of the regular season, beating out the Dodgers by two games (Giants came in 3rd).  The Phillies were light on heavy hitters, but strong on pitching: Robin Roberts, Curt Simmons, Jim Konstanty.

In the World Series that followed, the Yankees swept the Phillies in four games in four straight days, no "travel days".  (It's a short train trip from Philadelphia to New York).

In those days, both leagues had just eight teams each.  National League: Boston Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Cubs and St Louis Cardinals.  American League: Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Athletics, Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox, and the St Louis Browns.  All of MLB was contained in the northeast quadrant of the United States, approximately 1,100 miles on the diagonal from Boston and St Louis.  

During the regular season, there were no inter-league games at all.  There was only one post-season playoff series: the World Series: National champs vs American champs.  Players often played for just one team for their entire MLB career.

On to 1951.  At the end of the regular season, the Dodgers and the Giants had identical records.  The Giants won their last seven regular season games, and 37 of their last 44. The Dodgers needed to defeat the Phillies in the final game of the season to force a playoff; they did so by winning 9–8 in 14 innings, leaving both the Dodgers and the Giants with identical records of 96–58. 

Which brings us to the 3-game playoff to determine the 1951 National League title.  This series is famous, especially the last game; just Google "The Shot Heard 'Round the World baseball".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_Heard_%27Round_the_World_(baseball)

Fast forward 70 years to 2021.  The Dodgers record this year was 106-56, but the Giants were one game better at 107-55.  Game 1 of this year's Dodgers/Giants playoffs starts at 6:30 PDT tonight in San Francisco.  May the best team win.