Thanks for the memory, Maz

Jim Withers

It was 65 years ago on Oct. 13, 1960,

that Pittsburgh Pirates’ Bill Mazeroski clouted the only Game 7 walk-off home run in World Series history. Along with Paul Henderson’s Summit Series-winning goal for Team Canada a dozen years later, it lives on among my most unforgettable sports moments.

I was 12 years old – already a fervent sports fan – and recall how I raced home after school in hopes of catching the last inning on our family’s little black-and-white TV. I was among the last generation of rural Ontario kids to attend a one-room school and our teacher, Mrs. Sitter – who somehow simultaneously taught 36 kids from Grade 1 to 8 – used to let us listen to the first half hour of World Series games on the radio.

For my money, there never will be a more compelling World Series than that of 1960, nor a more improbable outcome. It was the ultimate David-versus-Goliath clash. Then, as now, I found myself siding with the underdog – in this case the lovable-loser Pittsburgh outfit, which had gone 35 years without winning the World Series. Their fearsome opponents – the star-studded New York Yankees – were like hockey’s Montréal Canadiens, notching championships with sickening (for some) regularity.

This was back when World Series games were played during the day, so I wasn’t able to see or hear every play of every game, but I was, nevertheless, so invested that, all these years later, I can still remember the 1960 World Series scores. (Most days, however, I can’t recall where I've put my glasses.) In the first six games, the Yankees demonstrated their awesome talent superiority by racking up 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0 blowouts, while the quixotic Pirates somehow scraped together wins of 6-4, 3-2 and 5-2.

On a sunny Thursday, Oct. 13, 1960, it all came down to the bottom of the ninth inning of a wild, back-and-forth Game 7, with the score tied 9-9. That’s when second-baseman Mazeroski whacked a Ralph Terry pitch over the head of Yankee left-fielder Yogi Berra and the ivy-covered wall of Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field.

It was an implausible triumph for the little guys over the big guys. Yankees' star Mickey Mantle would recall years later that it was the only time he ever wept after a loss. A kid found the historic ball outside the ballpark shortly after it landed there, got Mazeroski to autograph it and, later, lost it while using it in pickup games.

It was believed that TV broadcast of the game had been lost forever. (That’s how things were done then.) But half a century later – surprise! – a recording of it was discovered in, of all places, a five-reel set in canisters in Bing Crosby’s wine cellar near San Francisco. Crosby, who had been a part owner of the Pirates, was supposedly too nervous to watch the Series, so he went to Paris and listened to Game 7 on short-wave radio after hiring a company back home to record it off a television monitor.

I don’t know if the contents of that wine-cellar discovery have aged well, but I can say that the dramatic conclusion to Game 7 remains vividly alive in my memory.