The most calamitous play in baseball history
This New York Times story instantly carried me back 42 years, to my senior year in college, when my buddies and I, trapped in the nothingness of a Minnesota winter, played an entire 162-game schedule of APBA baseball.
I managed the ‘65 Dodgers, against whom it was almost impossible to get a hit, let alone score a run. My roommate Bagger had the Giants. How well I remember the day that the Giants’ first baseman, my all-time favorite and future Hall of Famer, Willie McCovey, hit one of his vicious line drives between first and second. Well, this particular line drive conked the baserunner, who just happened to be Willie Mays, and in a weird conjunction of numbers on the ABPA cards, Mays was relegated to the Disabled List for the rest of the season. Bagger, who had a volcanic temperament, picked up the Willie McCovey card and started screaming at it: “You just put Willie F—-ing Mays out for the season! How could you do that?” And then he did something that haunts me still: Eerily calm, he meticulously tore the Willie McCovey card into shreds and threw them into the wastebasket. We were all stunned, in total awe of the violence we had just beheld — the conking of Willie Mays and the dismemberment of Willie McCovey. In a single toss of the dice, Bagger had contrived to lose not one but two superstars — a development that did certainly not stand his high-fllying Giants in good stead for the remainder of the season and made me even leerier than I had been before about rooming with Bagger. It might have been the most calamitous play in baseball history.
Comments
I still hold Wayne Gretzky in contempt for letting me down in a high-stakes Blades of Steel match during college. Even so, thanks for making my night, Professor. This is among my favorite posts of all time, on any subject.
Posted by: Matthew Beckmann | August 9, 2009 01:08 AM
The tone of your post reminds of The Universal Baseball Association. . ., an early Robert Coover novel about a guy for whom an APBA-like game becomes more real than “real life.” You might like it. Or have you already read it?
Posted by: Jay Livingston | August 9, 2009 06:18 PM
Jay: Yes, I read the Coover book so long ago that I can’t remember it, so, prompted by your comment, I’ll pull it off the shelf and add it to my summer reading program. Thanks for the prompt.
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | August 10, 2009 08:13 AM
I loved APBA baseball as a child, and this really takes me back. Thank you.
Posted by: Jim | August 10, 2009 08:31 AM
I was always more of a Strat-O-Matic kid myself.
Posted by: Dion Farganis | August 10, 2009 02:29 PM
This happened at Carleton, didn’t it? The winters spawn many pathologies up here, but don’t get me started . . .
Steve Schier, Carleton College
Posted by: Steve Schier | August 10, 2009 10:04 PM
It probably goes without saying that “APBA Pro Wrestling” never really took off for similar reasons.
Posted by: Dan Tarrant | August 10, 2009 10:14 PM