The Chris Moeller Archives

FOUND!! VIDEO OF EPIC BASEBALL MOMENT THOUGHT LOST FOREVER!!

Ok, first: despite the attention-grabbing and very accurate headline: Don't skip to the end! This is very important.

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1986 was a very long time ago. Your faithful blogger was only 11 years old that year. A full quarter century later, I'm lucky I can still feed myself. Ronald Reagan was President in 1986. He was lucky he could feed himself. Tom Seaver, pitching hero of the '69 Miracle Mets, was still an active ballplayer. Sade was on her first ever world tour, although she looked exactly the same as she looks today! One night in St. Louis that summer, September 15th, little-used first baseman Mike Laga, in just his 8th-ever at-bat as a Cardinal, stepped to the plate and did the unthinkable. The unimaginable.


Michael Russell Laga played in the big leagues each season from 1982 to 1990, but in only 188 total games. That's an average of less than 21 per season. The most was 41 (in '88), and the least was 9 (in both '84 and '85). He would finish as a career .199 hitter. He was in the big leagues because of his power potential but he would hit only 16 home runs in 423 career at-bats. If you mistakenly type in "Mike Lage" on a search for him online, Google will not suggest "Mike Laga."

His Cardinals teammates would often tease him about his time spent shuttling up and down between the major and minor leagues. "Sparky wants to see you," they would say. This was a cutting reference to an episode that had taken place during Laga's pre-Cardinals career with the Detroit Tigers. For the first time in his career, Laga was going to break with the Detroit club out of Spring Training due to an injury to another infielder. It was thought that the other player would need to be placed on the disabled list to start the season, but at the last minute, trainers determined that he was healthy enough to go. The very last minute. A lieutenant of Tigers manager (and "WKRP" star) Sparky Anderson was charged with finding Laga on the team's charter plane out of Florida and pulling him off. ("Sparky wants to see you.") The plane sat for several minutes on the tarmac as Laga exited, his suitcase and equipment were pulled from the baggage hold, and his teammates watched.

Fast forward to that night in 1986, however-- at bat against the Mets' Ron Darling. Laga hits a ball entirely out of Busch Stadium. An absolutely spectacular accomplishment, but a rather peculiar one in that the ball he slugged was foul. Nobody else ever did this in the history of old Busch Stadium-- not from its opener in 1966 to its final game in 2005. Not fair. Not foul. It was a cereal bowl. Nobody was thought to have even come close. I went to a lot of games in the old stadium. I sat in the upper deck most of the time-- more than 90 times. I'd say that during those games, I saw maybe ten balls even hit into the upper deck, and usually into the the first couple rows. Knowing the legend of Mike Laga, I would sometimes sit there in amazement considering how somebody could hit a ball over the upper deck and over the concrete roof far above my head. This photo is the best I can find online to sort of illustrate the extraordinary trajectory required to accomplish what Laga did. With my game mates, I would speculate where he must have hit the ball. I knew he was left-handed so it must have been pulled to the right side, but what kind of pitch location and swing could produce a ball hit so high but with so much obvious wood on the ball? I literally could not fathom it.

And here's the other thing. It's hard to remember now, but 25 years ago, many, many Cardinals regular-season games were not televised. There was no ESPN. You could see them if they played on the cable channels of the Cubs or Braves. They might be featured on the national Saturday afternoon Game of the Week, or, a few times, on something once called Monday Night Baseball. A few games were broadcast locally in St. Louis, but for a number of others, more than not, the only video recording was an overhead camera high above home plate. That camera was there to record for the league. If a brawl broke out on the field, for example, the czar of punishment for the league would need the video to see who attacked who.

The Cardinals did not have a video recording of the game, and if they did, they didn't bother to keep it for very long. Baseball is a meticulously recorded game for the consideration of history-- but it's recorded on paper. The Mets ran away with the division in 1986. By September 15th, they were probably 20 games ahead already of the second place team. There were no nightly baseball highlight shows. Today, there are highlights on a 24-hour loop. During the Cards' pennant race of 1987, as their magic number dwindled, I remember running upstairs every night to inform my Dad about whether the Cardinals had managed a win (or were winning). During the sports segment on the Cedar Rapids late local news, the Cards might be winning in the 7th inning at 10:20 at night. That score was probably an hour and half old at 10:20. Nobody in the Cardinals organization saw fit to store away a video of a foul ball hit by the #25 man on the club.

But guess who did. The New York Mets. Thank God-- again!-- for large market baseball teams. WOR-TV in New York was there. They broadcast most of the Mets games in 1986 to the tri-state area of New York, Connecticut, and Jersey, and several cable systems nationwide, and of course, they were there for a weeknight tilt between the Mets and their division rivals two weeks before the start of the playoffs. They've had video of the foul ball this whole time and didn't know that anybody was looking for it. A video company like the one that produced season highlight videos for the Cardinals' pennant-winning clubs in 1985 and 1987 (respectively, "Heck of a Year" and "That's a Winner"-- I have both of these burned to DVD if you want to borrow them) produced a video for the '86 World Champion Mets called "A Year to Remember," and I'll be damned if they didn't include this foul ball highlight just for giggles.

And now you're glad you waited. After 25 long years, Cards fans, here it is-- the foul shot heard 'round the Midwest, and the first line someday in congenial Mike Laga's obituary. The legend gets substantiated. Strike two.

posted by CM @ 9:43 PM