The Chris Moeller Archives

The 5 most overrated moments in baseball history

You know how sometimes a little something will burrow its way under your skin and stay there for 13 years? Such it is with Ken Burns' 1994 PBS documentary "Baseball." What a terrific subject he had, and what a skilled filmmaker Burns is. His use of images, his pacing, and his alternating sense of drama and humor are so affecting, and yet the whole project was hideously imperfect-- so provincial in favor of New York City and Boston, and so handcuffed in its sensibilities towards those of the Baby Boomers.

I've been re-watching the mini-series for, I think, the fourth time this weekend, drawn to it again by the anniversary of Jackie Robinson's major league debut, and the recent championships of the Cardinals and the long-suffering Red Sox and White Sox. In "Baseball," author Roger Angell champions the old adage-- "Baseball is not life and death, but the Red Sox are"-- and no truer words have ever been spoken. One cannot live and breathe the sport in the abstract, only through the day-to-day struggles of a favorite ballclub, and Burns, unfortunately, picked his three or four favorite teams-- or the three or four favorites of his collaborators-- to the exclusion of all the rest. I've always thought it was a good thing Burns named his next project "The West," because "Baseball" could have easily been called "The East."

You won't hear about the Waner Brothers or Harmon Killebrew or Harry Caray or "The Field of Dreams" in the 1,500 minute marathon documentary. Equal time against the almighty Yankees amounts to hilariously over-congratulatory attention for Ted Williams and the Red Sox. We get constant updates on their franchise after 1918 despite playing in only three more World Series and losing them all. Meanwhile, Burns glosses over great clubs like the 1929-1931 Philadelphia Athletics and the Cardinals franchise that produced nine National League pennants and six World Championships between 1926 and 1946. We meet the man who supposedly introduced hot dogs to baseball ballparks in Brooklyn, but we get nothing of St. Louis club owner Chris von der Ahe, who many others claim actually introduced the ballpark staple, and who most certainly introduced beer to the ballpark, as well as the concept of a World Series.

The focus on African-American baseball is Burns' greatest achievement, but after the game is integrated in his narrative, he dusts past recognition even of black stars who played outside the Northeast like Ernie Banks, Larry Doby, and Frank Robinson. He vilifies nearly every National League team and city outside of the Big Apple for their early treatment of Jackie Robinson, but completely ignores the fact that the Yankees and Red Sox were two of the last three big-league teams to integrate. The pennant-winning "Bums" of Brooklyn in 1941 are judged worthy of a 20-minute featurette, but the Philadelphia "Whiz Kids" of 1950 and the "Go-Go (White) Sox" of 1959 never existed. The towering playing careers of Stan Musial and Pete Rose receive less attention than that of Mario Cuomo.

The decade of the 1950s, in which the New York Yankees, Giants, or Dodgers were in the World Series every year, is presented as baseball's most exciting. Burns' cast of mostly 50-something talking heads, like Angell, Billy Crystal, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, and author Doris Kearns Goodwin wax nostalgic for their idealized childhoods on the street-ball avenues of the five boroughs, but meanwhile we get background footage of half-empty ballparks in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Descriptions of a three-team city "turned on" by baseball don't match the later reports of the clubs' dwindling attendance, and the Giants' and Dodgers' subsequent decisions in 1957 to bail for California. Their departures from the northeastern seaboard are handled with the solemnity of the deaths of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, but the departures of the Braves from Boston, the Athletics from Philadelphia, and the Browns from St. Louis are mere footnotes.

After Bill Mazeroski wins the 1960 Fall Classic for Pittsburgh with baseball's first-ever Game 7 walk-off home run against the Yankees, there's not a single Pirates fan on film to recount that magnificent afternoon, perhaps the greatest in baseball history. Instead, we get sob stories from Crystal and Gould, and sour grapes from Mickey Mantle, who calls that Series the only one in his career in which he thought the best team lost.

My favorite spin might be the description of the 1946 World Series between the Cardinals and the Red Sox, in the only Fall Classic that the BoSox' Ted Williams would ever appear. Articles in "The Sporting News" from that season reveal common comparisons by the public between Ted Williams and All-World slugger Stan Musial, but as Burns would have it-- Williams was arguably the greatest hitter of all-time, second to only Ruth, and the Cardinals would win in seven due only to an infield defensive shift employed against Williams and "an uncharacteristic (my italics) burst of hitting" for their part. It was only (my sarcasm) the third World Championship in five years for Musial and the Cards, but here, they're reduced to Williams' lucky foils, and Musial's name doesn't even get mentioned in the narrative until the early 1960s when the three-time MVP, seven-time batting champion, and 24-time All-Star is wrapping up his career as the all-time National League leader in games, at-bats, runs, hits, doubles, and total bases.

Watching Ken Burns and his cronies try to convince us of the supremacy of their east coast heroes got me to thinking about the most overrated moments in baseball history. They're rather easy to pick out-- they're the moments that have more to do with how they made a certain Brahmin segment of the population feel about themselves than with their actual impact on greater America, and they all took place east of the Hudson River. At the outset, I will say that this is not a parochial assault on that region of the country, however. Many great individual baseball achievements have taken place in New York and Boston that cannot be overstated, the biggest of which are Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Christy Matthewson's three complete game shutouts for the Giants in the 1905 Series, and most of the others having to do with Babe Ruth.

The Babe is indisputably the greatest player of all-time. When he retired from the game, his 714 career home runs was more than twice that of his nearest all-time competitor, and even if you were to give me the name of a subsequent slugger that could match Ruth's offensive output relative to his peers-- and it's highly doubtful that you could-- I must then ask that you get back to me after that batsman has pitched 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in the World Series.


Now, the most overrated moments--

#5- Reggie Jackson hitting three home runs in a World Series game (1977)
This is a fine achievement, but hardly worthy of awarding Jackson the label "Mr. October," a New York media creation. Cardinals outfielder Willie McGee hit two home runs in a WS game in 1982, took one away leaping over the fence with his glove, and made two other fantastic catches. That's a better single game for my money, but he did it in Milwaukee's County Stadium, rather than the House that Ruth Built, so I'm the only person you've ever heard talk about it. "Mr. October" could better be Cardinals Hall-of-Famer Lou Brock. He's the all-time World Series leader in batting-- a .391 average with 34 hits, 16 runs, and 14 stolen bases in 21 games, but then we don't name candy bars after our players either.

#4- Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak (1941)
This was an extraordinary achievement. Probability research tells us it will never be matched. The only thing is: Who cares? It's meaningless, a statistical oddity. Was DiMaggio any hotter from mid-May to mid-July of '41 than Sammy Sosa was when he was at his home run-pounding best during the same two month stretch of 1998? DiMaggio's batting average was only .408 during the streak. Hefty for sure, but Ted Williams batted .406 for that entire season. The Cardinals' Rogers Hornsby nearly averaged .400 during a five-year span from 1921-1925. I would put DiMaggio's feat in the same category as I would Johnny Vander Meer's back-to-back no-hitters for Cincy in 1938, a record that will also never be broken. The latter achievement, however, didn't even garner a mention in Ken Burns' film.

#3- Anything associated with Mickey Mantle (1951-present)
This goes for DiMaggio too: Be wary of any superlatives out of the Media Capital of the World that begin with the disclaimer that you have to have seen it to appreciate it. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE that DiMaggio "never had to dive for a ball" in the outfield. No fielder is so graceful that they can just glide to the ball and never have to dive. If DiMaggio never dove for a ball, then he wasn't hustling. Period. We found out later how afraid "Joltin' Joe" was to look bad on the diamond. His "old-world" marital ideas and petty jealosies wrecked his relationship with Marilyn, and in retirement, he refused to appear at Yankee Stadium unless he was introduced as "the greatest living player." In retrospect, the biggest mistake a slugger like Musial made was marrying his high school sweetheart instead of Lana Turner. Maybe if he'd wed a starlet, he'd be remembered as "elegant" and "classy," rather than simply "dependable," the phrase used by Burns to describe "The Man." Same goes for Mantle as DiMaggio. I saw Mark McGwire play. There's no way Mantle hit the ball further than he did. The Mick had fewer lifetime hits than "no-hit" Hall-of-Famer Ozzie Smith, and Mantle's physical decline, according to Burns, began when he tripped over a drainage pipe in right field. If the Cardinals had drafted the Oklahoma native, he'd probably be remembered today as a countrified clutz, not the "greatest physical specimen ever to play the sport" and perhaps its greatest idol. Vince Coleman, another athlete thought by some to be the sport's all-time fastest, got rolled by a rain tarp 22 years ago, and he's still a punch-line.

#2- Willie Mays' over-the-shoulder catch against the Indians in the 1954 World Series.
Cleveland pitcher Bob Feller said it best in "Baseball" when he recalled that the Indians knew Mays had the catch all the way. Burns should have warned Bob Costas that he would be running footage of the famous catch behind the broadcaster's contradicting words as he described Mays ' brilliance in the film. We can all see that Mays did not have to run that far or that fast to catch the ball, and even had time to pound his glove with his other hand to signal his teammates that he had a beat on it. This was a guy who used the basket catch throughout two decades and more in the big leagues, and thought nothing of making a showy catch. More power to him, but you'll see a dozen plays a year on par with that catch. I'm reminded again of Willie McGee's catch in the Suds Series in 1982, leaping back-handed on the run against an eight-foot high wall. Wow-- matching Reggie Jackson's and Willie Mays' greatest achievements all in one game. I'll bet you're surprised you've never heard of it.

#1- Carlton Fisk's 12th inning home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.
Absolutely meaningless. The Red Sox, in case in you didn't hear, lost Game 7 to Cincinnati, and wouldn't win a World Series for another 29 years. Highlights of Fisk waving the ball fair on his way to first base is equal time for Red Sox fans on baseball clip reels. It's easy to begrudge the Yankees the fawning media attention they're afforded, but at least they have 26 Championships to wave in your face. The Red Sox are just a shitty franchise that, despite some recent, well-financed success, have still won just one World Series championship in 88 years. Fisk's home run is reminiscent of the one Albert Pujols hit off Brad Lidge in the 2005 NLCS, and oh, how I wish that blast had counted for more, but all it did was delay a series defeat by one game. Also, Pujols' blow came with two on, two out, and the Cardinals trailing by two runs, not in a tie-game that would have continued regardless, and his 500-foot moon shot to left-center over the train tracks at Minute Maid Park didn't have to be waved fair.

posted by CM @ 2:13 PM