Anniversary of Baseball Marathon: Giants, Mets, 32 innings: With Poignant New Comment from Craig Anderson.

5/30/2014

Casey and Bill Wakefield -- The Youth of America, Casey said. Couple of Giants -- Duke and Willie.

The message popped up in my queue. Fifty years. Bill Wakefield lives near his alma mater, Stanford, and is well aware that Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the epic 23-inning nightcap he started for the Mets.

Some of us are lucky enough to remember the game.

I woke up that morning in Kansas City, covered the Yankees’ game, 46-minute rain delay and all, flew back to LaGuardia on the Yankees’ charter, saw the game still going on in Shea, was met by my wife, and we watched the last 9-10 innings at my family’s home in Queens. You couldn’t not watch.

The box score (below) says Wakefield started the second game (he was quite a good reliever most of that season, his only in the majors) and lasted two innings.

Craig Anderson then came in and gave up four runs. I’m going to send him an e-mail and ask his memories of the day.

Wakefield has told me that as the game went on (and on, and on) Casey Stengel tried to send him into the game. Since Wake had already pitched, that would not have been a good idea. So he dressed and went into the stands.

Some players had even shorter games. Ken McKenzie, an original Met, faced one batter in the seventh, gave up a hit, and was yanked by Alvin Dark. Duke Snider, ex-Dodger, ex-Met, pinch-hit and had to sit around for hours. Willie McCovey pinch-hit, and sat.

Galen Cisco pitched a complete game, 9 innings, for the Mets and lost, finally.

Gaylord Perry pitched 10 innings and was the winning pitcher.

The box score is wonderful. Back in the day, pitchers were pitchers, men were men, nobody had heard of Tommy John and his elbow.

I love the names – Jesse Gonder, Joe Christopher (he’s around somewhere), oldies like Tom Sturdivant and Frank Lary, and Wakefield’s good pal, the late Hot Rod Kanehl.

Oh, and check out who played shortstop for the Giants for a while during that game.

ADDENDUM ON SATURDAY:

Just to warm up for the anniversary, the Mets played 14 on Friday night (and lost, but you already know that, after a muffed fly ball.)

THIS JUST IN FROM CRAIG ANDERSON, ORIGINAL MET:

"Yes , how well I remember that memorable day although not the type of memories i will cherish. I am glad to be in a record-making doubleheader and I even saw my name in Cooperstown when this box score was displayed up there. I had pitched pretty well since being called up on May 1st but after this outing I was sent to Buffalo, thus my last day in the big leagues. Never to be called up again or invited to spring training.

"My only out was a ground ball fielder's choice hit by Willie Mays. I sat in the stands for about 8 hours and can't say it was enjoyable to me."

* * *

Your memories and reactions are welcome in the Comments (below)

Meanwhile, the great Ed Lucas tells his memories:

http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index.ssf/2014/05/lucas_50_years_later_mets-gian.html

Nice web site with other people’s memories:

http://www.ultimatemets.com/gamedetail.php?gameno=369&tabno=B

Yankee game.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05310KC11964.htm

First game. Normal 9 innings. Normal Met loss.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05311NYN1964.htm

Second game. Not normal. 23 innings. Normal Met loss.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05312NYN1964.htm

Mendel

5/30/2014 04:42:18 am

My father was there with my uncle all day. From batting practice throughout. I grew up hearing of Willie Mays playing shortstop (for 10 innings?) and the Brothers Aleu patrolling the grass. After the final out, my grandfather, who had gone to the World’s Fair, was waiting for them on the IRT platform. He had come to fetch them when they failed to return home.

In 1985, my father was again present at Shea when Rusty Staub made his epic running grab against the Pirates in another marathon afternoon.

Bill Wakefield

6/1/2014 09:58:55 am

George –
You asked my thoughts on MLB’s longest doubleheader.
I stayed at the Times Square Hotel Manhattan with Jesse Gonder, Joe Christopher, Frank Thomas and Rod Kanehl. That morning we had breakfast and took the #7 Flushing Local out to Shea around 9 AM.
Johnny Murphy was miffed that in previous doubleheaders – the players had overdone it at the spreads between games, were lethargic for the start of 2nd game, and instructed Herb Norman to only serve crackers and small cups of soup between games. To face Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, Alou, etc. I needed a little more nourishment – at a max 175 pounds - but followed the rules.
Threw my couple of innings.
For the next 21 innings – I sat on the bench and then Larry Bearnarth and I toured the Stadium and sat in a dozen different locations.
I see Gaylord Perry frequently at a Missouri baseball camp – he always starts off by asking, “Hey, Bill, why only 2 innings?” He said when he warmed up in the Giants bullpen – the only Giant catchers were in the game and the only available catcher was an NYPD security guard to get ready. He did not throw his entire repertoire to the nervous catcher.
I watched a few innings with Ralph Kiner in the television broadcast room under the first base stands at the end of the game. He had gone down to the room in the 8th to get ready for his post game show.
That was a long day on two cups of soup.
Great memories, Bill Wakefield

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6/1/2014 10:46:03 am

Evidently my father’s memory is faulty. The Alou brothers all took the field for the first time on 9-15-63 and not 5-31-64.

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6/2/2014 12:05:19 am

Even for a traumatized 10-year-old (in 1969) Yankees' fan from Whitestone, this is very heartwarming. I do not remember these games, but it all resonates with the folksy feel of Shea and the Mets. We used to get in to weekday day games for free with Borden milk carton coupons. This article and site are great connections to many sentiments. But what's an "IRT"? Not as many know these days.

George Vecsey

6/2/2014 01:05:26 am

Thank you all for the comments. The Mets surely worked overtime this past weekend to commemorate the great event.

Bill Wakefield had a very nice season for the Mets in 1964:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wakefbi01.shtml

He was among the college-educated pitchers who often had a different slant on things -- Craig Anderson, Jay Hook, Alvin Jackson, Larry Bearnarth, Galen Cisco, Ken McKenzie, in the first few years. Casey was as pragmatic as they come, but I know he got a kick out of their background.

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QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Anniversary of Baseball Marathon: Giants, Mets, 32 innings: With Poignant New Comment from Craig Anderson.

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