Everyone has danced around it, but I was there.
1951 is repeating itself but with different players.
On August 11th, 1951, the Brooklyn Dodgers had a 13.5 game lead over the second place Giants. and they appeared certain to face the Yankees in the World Series. " Unless the Dodgers completely fold in their last 50 games," wrote anAP writer , " they're in."
By September 20th, the Dodgers lead had diminished to 4.5 games. Editors note ( we now have a 5.0 game lead over Tampa, after 15.0 lead in August ). And it is only September 3.
In the end, the collapse continued and the Dodgers and Giants had a playoff game at the Polo Grounds ( yes, they once played Polo there ), on October 3, 1951.
We all know what happened.
Bobby Thompson hit the " shot heard round the world." and Ralph Branch lived in infamy ( though with grace and professionalism ). The giants won the pennant. ( or, the Dodgers lost the pennant ). Soon after, the dodgers owner bolted for LA.
So here we are. I feel the bells tolling again.
The yankees are losing well-pitched games. Key bats have gone silent. Injuries hare arrived from tattoo parlors to normal major league swings. Balls are fouled off and fracture a toe. The Yankees are losing one run games and 9-0 games. They can't get a lead, or hold a lead. A two run deficit can be seen as a death mask on the faces of every Yankee. No one plays baseball. Everyone thinks they are Babe Ruth.
Giancarlo Stanton has 3 hits in his last 56 at bats, since his extended ankle holiday. Donaldson can neither hit nor catch nor throw. You can see Aaron Hicks dreaming of a five iron into the cup.
It seems as though theYankee train is loose on the tracks, rushing toward an inevitable crash, just like the locomotive in " Silver Streak."
And Boone is in the drivers' seat, unable to tell the throttle from the break, wetting himself for lack of ideas. So he just keeps doing the same things he has always done, and saying the same things he has always said.
Meanwhile, the true villains, Brian and Hal, hide behind the rhetoric, " it a'int over yet ."
Yes it is.
This Yankee team is headed for a place in history no one thought would ever be repeated. The greatest collapse ever. A record year, indeed.
Someone had to say it.
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7 comments:
I was wondering when you’d chime in, alpho
You DON'T mean you were actually at the Polo Grounds that day, right? You CANNOT be THAT fucking old, Alphonso...
Hey, good piece.
A couple things on the history:
—The Dodgers didn't play all that bad down the stretch. They went 19-13 in August, 14-13 in Sept. The Giants just played crazy good (And no, it wasn't the stolen signs. Their pitching became unhittable.)
—No, they didn't play polo at THAT Polo Grounds. The former Polo Grounds, the one just off the northeast corner of Central Park, used to be James Gordon Bennett's polo field. Bennett, an upper-class twerp and son of a newspaper magnate, disgraced himself in New York society when he stumbled into a soiree given by his fiancee, so drunk that he went and pissed in the fireplace.
End of engagement, end of James' time in NYC. He fled to Europe—and had to give up the field. When the Giants moved uptown, they kept the name.
Alphonso,
Good job of conveying the inevitable. Yes it had to be said.
As to what Hoss said, were you really there? That's impressive. Did you see Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra? They were there too.
Spike Lee? OK maybe not him but it WAS the place to be.
Very cool.
I was interested and looked Bennett Jr. up. The incident where he left NYC was in 1877. Besides polo, he was also instrumental in yachting, auto racing, airplanes. While in Europe he established the forerunner of the International Herald Tribune, called the Paris Tribune.
Yep. Interesting jet-setter. Or rather, yacht-setter!
When the Giants had to leave his real, original Polo Grounds, the land they went to had been...underwater, just reclaimed from the river a few years before, I think.
I was not at the ballgame. I was watching on TV. I was 10.
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