’62 revisited
A very nice pre-game ceremony honored the 1962 Giants and Yankees World Series clubs, with one memorable moment being the first pitches thrown by the two key members of the final play in Game 7 of that Fall Classic – Willie McCovey, who smashed the ninth-inning line drive, and Bobby Richardson, the second baseman who caught it.
Bengie Molina and Jorge Posada, both out of their respective lineups today, caught the pitches. Inbetween innings, the Giants have been flashing 1962 fun facts. Among the more notable items: in 1962, a first class stamp cost $0.04; a gallon of gasoline was $0.31; Johnny Carson began hosting the Tonight Show, and both Roger Clemens and Paula Abdul (yes, Paula Abdul) were born. Apparently the first video game was also released in ’62 — who knew?
ON EDIT: Speaking of Clemens …
This game featured just the second relief appearance of Roger
Clemens’ career, as the 44-year-old Rocket entered to pitch the seventh inning.
Clemens – who last appeared in relief on July 18, 1984 at Oakland – issued a five-pitch walk to Barry
Bonds and a hit before Nate Schierholtz brought home a run with a sacrifice
fly to center field.
It was great to see the Clemens vs. Bonds matchup and all, and I understand the bullpen was gassed after yesterday’s theatrics. But really, was it necessary to call on Clemens? Just my opinion, but if you’re going to pay Clemens approximately $153,846 per day to be a starting pitcher, maybe you shouldn’t be toying with him as a reliever, especially after he threw 90 pitches at Colorado. The man may be the Yankees’ John Wayne, but he’s not Superman.
Bryan Hoch
first of all, bryan i agree completely: to my eyes, you’re only making things worse by having roger throw pitches in a game other than his start…now you’re undermining our chances in a future game
i was surprised and not necessarily in favor of it, but i trust that torre knows he what he’s doing, and andy did it, too, and he was fine…so, obviously we have more to worry about than that, but it was weird
1962–the glory days, huh? the amazing thing about that series was the yanks won it despite getting almost nothing from mickey mantle and roger maris…those were the big sticks in the lineup; the young yogi berra, i believe, only received a few AB’s
another strange thing about it was don larsen, after his previous world series heroics, competing against us, although he was coming out of the pen at that point in his career
ralph terry was the story though, simply an incredible 3 starts for us to atone for the bill mazeroski catastrophe two years before, and, of course, that complete game shutout win in Game 7, an “I don’t need no **** closer” 1-0 win
i have to apologize for an egregious error in my above post
yogi berra certainly would not have been “young”…i’m sure he didn’t play a major role (think elston howard was the starter at that point), but yogi would’ve been nearing the end of his career, not the beginning…i do know my history better than that, but i guess that’s what happens when you bang these posts out in a hurry