Baseball playoffs not what they used to be
The excitement was about as much as it got for fourth-grade sports fans.
“Willie Mays is coming up!” I heard some of my classmates say as the black-and-white screen in front of us showed the baseball legend take a few swings as he strode toward home plate.
His San Francisco Giants were battling the Pittsburgh Pirates in the newfangled National League Championship Series, then in its third year of determining which team would play on the biggest sports stage of them all, the World Series.
Mays was 40 at the time and had been a star since the Truman administration, but he was just one of several future Hall of Famers we had the pleasure of watching during those 1971 playoffs, along with Roberto Clemente, Juan Marichal, Bill Mazeroski, Willie McCovey, Gaylord Perry and Willie Stargell.
Fortunately, the powers that be at our elementary school would wheel a television into the all-purpose room – our gym, cafeteria, assembly area and where the principal occasionally took some of us to yell at us – for us to see special sporting events, just as they did for occasions such as the launching of Apollo missions and the funeral of President Eisenhower.
We did miss seeing at least one game in school that baseball postseason: On Oct. 13, the Pirates hosted the Baltimore Orioles at Three Rivers Stadium for the first night contest in World Series history. Otherwise, each of the games was played as Abner Doubleday intended, by the natural light of the afternoon.
As I write this, 45 years later, I’m sort of listening to the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers. Neither of those teams existed in 1971, and the American League Division Series in which they’re playing was another two-plus decades in the future.
Rather than the transistor radio I’d sneak into school for games they didn’t let us watch in school, the broadcast is coming through an app on my cellphone.
I’m none too familiar with the rosters of the Jays and Rangers, except for the five ex-Pirates – Jose Bautista, Jason Grilli, Jay Happ, Francisco Liriano and Russell Martin – who are continuing to play baseball while their ex-teammates are on the proverbial golf course.
The division series precedes the championship series. Then, finally, comes the World Series, which just might end before Thanksgiving, I suppose. I do know it has been nothing but night games since before many of today’s players were born.
In the meantime, that annual football extravaganza with the copyright-protected name has become the biggest of all big sports stages, relegating the once-supreme Series to a bit player in the ratings game.
I’m about to switch off Toronto vs. Texas. The comparison with the magic of Willie, Willie and Willie is too depressing.