The 1964 New York Yankees, even with Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford on the team, couldn’t defeat the likes of pitcher Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals in the end.
Middlebury — I am not an overly engaged sports fan, but the sport I have always liked best is Major League Baseball (and its Minor League farm-team system).
Sorry, but football is a tad too rough for my civilized sensibilities; it looks too much like combat.
On the other hand, baseball is refined, with its roots in the olde English sport of cricket and the even more ancient game of rounders. To me, baseball supremely embodies the better angels of America’s nature.
This year’s MLB World Series—between the mighty St. Louis Cardinals and the juggernaut Texas Rangers (the remnants of the former Washington Senators)—doesn’t seem to be attracting the media attention or audiences on the Eastern Seaboard. Turn on the radio and the sports news is about—football. How outrageous; there’s a World Series going on.
St. Louis, Mo., and Arlington, Texas, may not be giant metro areas to your average New Yorker or Bostonian sports fan. No matter, 2011 post-season baseball hasn’t been better in years. Personally, I was sorry to see the Yankees lose in the post-season. I know my rival Red Sox fans were heartbroken, too.
The big series, underway as this is being written, promises the same excitement. But who’s watching when New York, Boston, Baltimore or Chicago teams aren’t involved? The numbers aren’t there when it comes to watching this midwestern series. Just try finding a local radio station that’s broadcasting the 2011 World Series.
My earliest memories of World Series games go back to the early 1960s—
I still remember watching a monochrome television set showcasing the amazing L.A. Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax knock out the Minnesota Twins back in 1965. But it was the previous Series that first captured my young imagination—the 1964 World Series with the then in-decline New York Yankees against the rising powerhouse St. Louis Cardinals.
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