Good morning, all! I hope your Friday is off to a great start!
The New York Yankees are going home. The Toronto Blue Jays are going to the ALCS. Apparently the American public doesn’t care, tuning out this series even before it was over. The Nielsen numbers are in for the first two games of the ALDS, won by the Blue Jays in four, and they are mediocre at best. That is not to say the American public isn’t watching the postseason. I break it all down in the above video.
Here are some other thoughts, as I contemplate how to survive with constant social media reminders a freeze warning is in effect:
Can it be 61 years ago to the day that Mickey Mantle hit his walk-off HR (They didn’t call them walk-offs back then.) to give the Yankees a 2-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals and 2-1 lead in the 1964 World Series?
It’s funny how you remember these things. I was nine-years-old and I recall listening to that game on the radio in our kitchen. My mother was painting some trim, as I sat tuned to every pitch, game crackling across our enamel-coated table radio, perched atop the refrigerator. The legendary Curt Gowdy had the call of Mantle’s home run. You can listen to the entire game by clicking here. By the way, the recording of the game is crystal clear, sans the crackle that accompanied many a broadcast heard over AM radio.
That 1964 World Series was a watershed moment in so many ways and listening to the participants involved in Game 3 enables one to look into their crystal ball. Here, for example, you have the Cardinals first baseman Bill White. In the television booth broadcasting the game over NBC was former Yankees shortstop and broadcaster Phil Rizzuto, calling the game with Joe Garagiola. Could anyone have predicted that Rizzuto and White would go on to form the most popular broadcasting crew in Yankees history? Or that Garagiola would sit side-by-side with Rizzuto in the Yankees booth the next three years, hired to replace the fired “Voice of the Yankees” Mel Allen?
You have Tim McCarver, catching for the Cardinals. He would also go on to broadcasting fame, including broadcasting games for both the Mets and Yankees. There were, of course, the managers. Outside of the three people involved in the decision, not one person could have predicted after the series, the Yankees would fire manager Yogi Berra and hire the manager from the team who just beat them, Johnny Keane. Or that the Yankees dominance of the sport would end after this series.
The starting pitcher for the Yankees in Game 3 of that series was Jim Bouton and the first base coach for the Cardinals was Joe Schultz. Could anyone have predicted that in 1969, Bouton would be pitching for the dysfunctional Seattle Pilots, managed by the same Joe Schultz, and that Bouton would write about the experience in one of the all-time best selling baseball books Ball Four?
I could go on and on about this World Series and why it was a seminal moment in baseball history, but I will stop here. If you chose to listen to the broadcast, you will not be disappointed.
Why does every broadcaster deem it important in these playoff games to shout at the top of his lungs, when someone gets a two-out single with nobody on base?
Teoscar Hernández is clutch. There is no other way to put it.
Mike Greenwell, the former Red Sox outfielder died Thursday from cancer at the much-too-young age of 62. I got to interview Greenwell several times, when he played in the minors for Red Sox farm teams at Winston-Salem and Pawtucket. He was always a great interview. I also thought he had one of the smoothest swings of any left hand hitter I had seen. R.I.P. Mike.
In Thursday’s newsletter, I wrote about the report the North Carolina football program is in disarray under first-year coach Bill Belichick. Looking to stem the controversy, Belichick and the university issued a joint, written statement late Wednesday night. “I am fully committed to the UNC program and what we’re building here,” Belichick said. UNC, 2-3, plays at California tonight.
Finally, the ratings for the NFL are going through the roof through the season’s first five weeks. NFL ratings are always a winner, anyway, but the numbers for 2025 are soaring. In fact, with a new television viewing season underway, the top 25 rated TV programs this fall have been NFL games. Can you understand why the commissioner wants to renegotiate those TV contracts and extract more money out of the networks?
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. As always, thank you for subscribing and have a terrific day.
DAN
