Editor,
The New Year’s day passing of Don Larsen, age 90, brought a reminder of one of baseball’s – indeed, sports’ – greatest achievements. Let’s pause to look back at the man, and at a bygone era.
Except for his World Series perfect game performance on October 8, 1956, there was almost nothing professionally remarkable about Larsen. In a 15-year career with seven teams, he lost ten more games than he won. Two seasons before joining the New York Yankees, he recorded 21 losses with Baltimore. The Brooklyn Dodgers chased him in the second inning of a sloppy performance in game 2 of the Series before he claimed baseball immortality in game 5; he was lucky, perhaps, to get that chance.
Bouncing among seven “job sites” in an often hard-luck career, Larsen was an easy model for the average fan. Nicknamed “Gooneybird”, he loved the nightlife and hitting the bars after games; he drove his car into a telephone pole during spring training in ‘56. When 60-year old umpire Babe Pinelli (working his final game behind home plate) called ‘strike three’ on Dale Mitchell for the final out, that fan could more easily aspire to Larsen’s “one-moment-in-time” than had it been the elite likes of a Whitey Ford or (Dodger) Sal Maglie.
Larsen’s accomplishment that day seemed to stamp an exclamation upon baseball’s status as “national pastime”. It virtually muscled aside news coverage of the presidential election barely a month away: aside from Larsen, Democrat Adlai Stevenson’s daily shaving habits were contrasted against President Eisenhower’s “well-oiled” campaign and shiny aircraft.
In an interesting irony, on this day of sterling baseball achievement, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear pro football’s appeal for exemption from the nation’s anti-trust laws – a treasure that baseball’s major leagues had, almost inexplicably, enjoyed since 1922. Football would lose.
Identification with their baseball heroes was a serious matter in the “Big Apple”, sometimes to tragic ends. Shortly after midnight, hours before Larsen’s heroics, off-duty NYC detective William Christman walked into a Queens bar, and soon, got into a fight with a younger patron/Yankees fan, Robert Thomson. Christman was rooting for the Yanks, too, but noted placing a bet on the Dodgers to win game 5. Incensed, following more argument, Thomson stalked out, later to return with a rifle to kill Christman on the street outside.
Fans still bicker and bet, and baseball clings to its anti-trust exemption, but times have changed, too. Football eventually dethroned baseball among sports enthusiasts. Gone, too, are those golden World Series fall afternoons – though not lamented by everyone. In a letter to NY’s “Daily News” the day after Larsen’s feat, fan Jack Glansman opined it would be good to televise some evening Series games ” … so some of us hard-working slobs could get a chance to see one.”
Hang on, Jack. And RIP, Don Larsen.
Douglas Smith