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-♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪ ♪ Cryin' all the time ♪ ♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪ ♪ Cryin' all the time ♪ ♪ Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit ♪ ♪ And you ain't no friend of mine ♪ -First game I went to -- May 30, 1956, Yankee Stadium.

We drove from Long Beach, Long Island, to the Bronx.

Almost took two hours.

That was the kind of car we had.

And as we came into the Bronx, on Jerome Avenue, my dad said, "There it is."

And, you know, I'd seen games before, but on TV, on a DuMont.

And there it was, and it, like, ate up the Bronx.

It was the biggest thing I'd ever seen in my life.

And it had that great roof, that green, copper roof.

And the breeze was just blowing all those pennants, on the roof, you know, just going like that, telling you which way the wind was blowing, and I had my glove and everything.

And we had Louis Armstrong's seats that day.

My dad was in the music business, and we'd gotten his seats.

And I sat, like, in between third base and home plate, like real close.

And my older brother had a bad back -- my older brother Joel, He was 14.

So somebody from the Yankees, they had arranged us to take us down into the clubhouse so this Gus Mauch, the Yankee trainer, could work on Joel's back.

So there I am.

I'm in the little alleyway, right in front of what became known as Pete Sheehy's clubhouse, and Casey Stengel comes out.

You know, "Doesn't this happen to everybody?

", I'm thinking.

And I looked at him and went, "Hi, Casey."

'Cause I had a big mouth even then.

And he goes, "Hey, kid, want to play today?"

I said, "Yeah!"

I thought you could.

You know, 'cause it was suit up.

"I'll take Mantle and Bauer and the kid."

I thought, "That's how you do it," you know?

-Popcorn here!

Who wants a popcorn?

-And then we go out to the ballpark.

You can't imagine what it's like.

And it was the green -- this grass -- that just went on forever.

And the clay, the infield, the dirt of the infield was so brown, and the bases were so white.

And the scoreboard with all of that news -- you know, Ballantine Beer and what was happening in Detroit and all the news.

It was the news center.

It was this big, gigantic place.

And it was 461 feet to the center-field fence.

They had monuments.

And I thought Babe Ruth was buried out there.

They were like these big tombstones.

[ Crowd cheering ] There was a great deal of respect in that building for the past and for the game.

[ "The Star-Spangled Banner" plays ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [ "Take Me Out to the ballgame" plays ] ♪♪♪ -Between 1950 and 1960, Joseph Stalin died, Ho Chi Minh drove the French from Vietnam, and in Cuba, Fidel Castro seized power.

He had once been rejected by the Washington Senators because he did not have a big-league arm.

♪♪♪ In America, Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and a former street hustler, Malcolm Little, changed his name to Malcolm X.

During the anti-Communist hysteria of the Cold War, the Cincinnati Reds, the oldest professional team in America, officially changed its name to the Red Legs.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Honus Wagner and Joe Jackson died.

George Brett and Wade Boggs and Rickey Henderson were born.

In the 1950s, a new way of watching the game would destroy forever the network of small-town teams all across the country.

Fewer and fewer fans now followed the fortunes of the Aberdeen Pheasants and Rockford Peaches, Missoula Timberjacks and Catahoula Dirtmovers.

Americans were on the move, and Major League Baseball, for the first time in half a century, would finally move, too.

The now-dying Negro leagues sent their greatest players to the majors in ever-increasing numbers, changing the game, giving baseball one of the greatest decades anyone could ever remember.

There were many good teams and stars, but the city of New York came to dominate the game as never before.

In New York, fans witnessed the most talked-about home run in the history of baseball.

In New York, an improbable hero pitched a perfect game in the World Series.

And in New York, a young man whose legs were so badly injured that he played in constant pain won the Triple Crown.

In Boston, the last man to hit .400 almost did it again 16 years later, and then left the game in spectacular fashion.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, the absolutely unthinkable happened.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Eighth inning.

Giant pitcher Larry Jansen throws.

Pinch hitter Cal Abrams hits a grounder to third.

Thomson's throw to Irvin is wild.

Cal streaks for second while Irvin races after the ball.

Slings to second sacker Eddie Stanky.

The throw's in time.

He's out.

♪♪♪ -Robinson, injured most of the year, is not expected to be much of a factor.

♪♪♪ But suddenly, he is perched on third base.

Whitey Ford, the Yankee pitcher,ignores him.

Robinson's speed is but a memory, but his desire burns as fiercely as ever.

Suddenly, Robinson is roaring down the line.

♪♪♪ Yankee catcher Yogi Berra roars in protest, but Jackie Robinson has stolen home.

-I love the game because I grew up in New York City in the late 1940s and '50s, which was the greatest intersection of baseball and place in history.

We had three Major League teams.

All of them were good or great.

Between 1947 and 1956, a New York team was in the World Series every year and won.

-Roy Campanella comes to bat in the fourth inning against Tommy Byrne in this scoreless struggle.

And the Dodger catcher lines a hit into the left-field corner.

[ Cheers and applause ] Campanella is going for two bases and makes it easily.

-Baseball was almost a private possession of New York City.

-...lines a single to left to score Campanella.

-Brooklyn leads 1-0.

-And you'd walk around through the city in October, and the sounds of baseball were everywhere, from cab radios, taverns.

People would come out of taverns.

During the season, you'd see a man come out of a tavern and say, "Campy just hit one."

You were aware of the ribbon of baseball going on around you.

I remember a cabdriver would pull up, and there'd be another guy sitting behind the wheel of his cab, or a parked car, a guy asleep with a radio on.

And the cab driver would call over and say, "They score yet?"

And they'd say, "Nah."

-Now it's the 10th inning.

Pitcher Bob Lemon works hard on Willie Mays.

This time, though, he walks you.

You want to steal second and you ask for the sign from Leo.

It's on.

You're safe!

And that does it.

-Game 4, and more heroics to fan Dodger hopes for a World Series victory at long last.

Duke Snider, Dodger center fielder, is the hero of this game.

Snider's double to right in the first inning drove in two runs, and the Brooks were off and running.

Boom.

Another double for Snider.

Hail the Duke of Flatbush.

-Watching it on TV in New York, with Willie, Mickey, and the Duke and the arguments on the corner, you know -- "Willie's unbelievable.

Willie's the greatest.

He can do anything."

"You're nuts.

The Duke -- The Duke is a classic.

You see how he runs with his elbows up like that?"

"You guys are nuts.

It's Mickey, and that's it.

He's strong.

He's blond.

He's blue-eyed.

He hits from both sides with power.

I think you should reconsider."

And that was it.

-All tied up in the 8th.

Mickey Mantle facing Preacher Roe.

"The Oklahoma Kid" parked it in the left-field seats.

Now the score was tied at 3-3, but you know the rest.

Yanks had Bauer on second.

Martin up in the bottom half of the ninth.

And Martin laced one right up the middle, his 12th hit of the series, making him the hero of heroes.

[ Cheers and applause ] Bauer scored, and the Yanks won the game and the series.

Yes, sir, the Bombers did it again.

Five World Series in a row for Casey Stengel's and his American League whiz-bangs.

They made baseball history.

What a team.

♪♪♪ -The 1950s belonged to the New York Yankees.

Between 1949 and 1959, they won nine pennants and seven World Series.

They won with old stars, and they won with rookies.

They won with the superb pitching of "The Junkman," Eddie Lopat, "Superchief" Allie Reynolds, and Whitey Ford, "The Chairman of the Board."

They won with the clutch hitting, steady fielding, and fiery temperament of Billy Martin and the speedy shortstop Phil Rizzuto, who was called "The Scooter."

And they won with "The Ol' Perfesser," Casey Stengel.

♪♪♪ -I think Stengel is the most interesting man, except for Ruth, who ever appeared in baseball.

Unfortunately, his methods become that of the clown, the man who talked Stengelese double-talk.

He knew more about the game than anyone I ever talked to.

He was the smartest man.

I think he had tremendous basic intelligence.

Not much education -- He barely got through high school, and he went to dental school for a couple years, studying the mechanical skills of a dentist.

And he would have been a dentist if he hadn't played baseball.

But he had this intuitive intelligence.

He would look at things, and he would see things, and he would sense things.

And when he talked, if he didn't want you to understand him, he would say, "Well, this and that and the other thing," talk this way and that way.

He also sometimes panicked.

He couldn't stand dead air.

And if somebody asked him something, he just wouldn't stand there and say, "Hmm."

He would start to talk and say, "Well, yeah.

This fella -- you're talking about that fella there, he's pretty good.

Now, you take the other one out in left field, and I could bring him in and use this fella back there."

And he just jumbled it that way.

But he knew what he was saying.

And sometimes the things came out -- He's a man who said that, "There's a time in every man's life, and I've had plenty of them."

And that's a Marvelous expression that says it.

♪♪♪ -He had been in baseball since 1910 and seemed to recall every play of every game that had taken place since.

As a player, he was best-remembered for a game-winning inside-the-park home run in the 1923 series... [ Cheers and applause ] ...and for his inveterate clowning.

Once, playing before a raucous, booing crowd, he put a live sparrow under his cap, walked to the plate, lifted his cap, and gave his audience the bird.

♪♪♪ Later, as a manager, he developed what he thought was a foolproof way of protesting an umpire's decision.

He fainted.

He met his match in the veteran umpire Beans Reardon.

"When I peeked out of one eye and saw Reardon on the ground, too," Casey remembered, "I knew I was licked."

And his distinctive way with language gave rise to a new word -- Stengelese.

"Alright," he once said, "everybody line up alphabetically according to your height."

"I made up my mind, but I made it up both ways."

"Most people my age are dead at the present time."

-Lopez, managing the Indians in the '50s, was going to come out in the home stretch using just three pitchers.

And someone told Stengel about this, and he said, "Well, well, well.

He said, "I heard it couldn't be done, but it don't always work."

He came on the bench one day.

There was a fellow named Bob Cerv -- big, powerful hitter.

And Stengel came out in the clubhouse and sat down, and Cerv was sitting about 10 feet away from him, just looking out at the field.

And Stengel looked over at him and said, "There's not many people that know this, but one of us has been traded to Kansas City."

[ Laughs ] There went Cerv.

-Casey Stengel had had only one winning season as a big-league manager, and when he took over the Yankees in 1949, few gave him much of a chance.

If Stengel was worried, he kept it to himself.

"I've been hired to win," he told the press, "and I think I will.

There is less wrong with the Yankees than with any club I've ever had."

To make good on his promise to win, Stengel used a system he had learned long before while playing for John McGraw -- platooning.

left-handed hitters would often be benched against left-handed pitchers.

Right-handed hitters went for weeks without facing a right-handed starter.

He also relied heavily on relief pitching.

-I tell you what Casey had that a lot of people don't tell you about.

He had the knack of taking that ball out of a pitcher's hand -- and that means a Whitey Ford.

That means anybody and giving that ball to another.

Because I tell you about pitchers -- pitchers will talk you out of it.

You know, you go out to take that ball, "Oh, Skip, let me pitch to this guy."

When Casey walked to the mound, you gone.

-In 1949, the Yankees' chief rivals for the American League pennant were Joe McCarthy's Red Sox, whose stars included Ted Williams, second baseman Bobby Doerr, and Joe DiMaggio's younger brother, center fielder Dominic, known as "The Little Professor."

Stengel's Yankees started strong that season, but fell back as an endless string of injuries kept several stars, including Joe DiMaggio and Phil Rizzuto, out of action for weeks at a time.

The Yankees' 12-game lead dwindled away, and in September, Boston surged past New York with a three-game sweep.

♪♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] Now, with just two games left in the season, the Red Sox came to the Bronx.

The Yankees had to win both games to win the pennant.

"Well, that puts it up to us," Stengel said, "to show if we're a good ball club."

[ Cheers and applause ] They were.

In the first game, an injured Joe DiMaggio sparked two rallies, and the Yankees came from behind to win 5-4.

Everything depended on the final game.

The Yankees took a five-run lead into the ninth inning, but then Boston came back with three runs.

Two of them scored when DiMaggio's aching legs kept him from stopping a triple.

He limped from the game.

With a man on first, Boston catcher Birdie Tebbetts came to the plate representing the tying run.

[ Cheers and applause ] Tommy Henrich called for it.

[ Cheers and applause ] Casey Stengel had his pennant.

"I won one," he told an old friend.

"I won one."

He would win a lot more.

♪♪♪ -If you grew up in an American League city in the 1950s, you basically hated the Yankees.

This was Casey's Juggernaut, which won 9 pennants in 11 years, five World Series in a row.

There's never been dominance like it at any other time in the history of baseball.

Some people criticized Stengel and said he was just a push-button manager, but he knew which buttons to push.

It's a wonderful thing that he had.

In addition to the great stars, like Mantle and Ford and Berra, he had an ability to pick up players who were seemingly at the ends of their careers, spare parts -- Johnny Hopp, Enos Slaughter -- players who he knew could perform one particular role, who could fit into this grand scheme that he had.

And God knows it worked.

[ Kids shouting indistinctly ] [ Dog barking ] ♪♪♪ -Baseball and basketball were the sports of the streets and the lots in the old neighborhoods.

We played in South Jamaica, Queens, on a field that was literally hacked out of an old parking lot that had mounds in it.

We had to build the backstop.

We had to build the mound.

We had to put down the lime.

Actually, we had a saint of a man by the name of Joe Austin, a night manager in a brewery, who was single, who had played semipro ball, and who was the godfather of baseball for this Black, ethnic community.

And he built the field, the players helping him.

And we played there on weekends, had a very, very good team -- even got uniforms after a while -- and passed the hat at the doubleheaders on Sunday.

And all the poor people put in their nickels and pennies, and, if you were lucky, dimes and quarters.

And that's where I learned the game, and it was wonderful.

[ Kids shouting indistinctly ] -Beautiful!

Fair ball.

Stay there!

Stay there!

-I grew up in a leftist family, and my father had always loved both the Yankees and the Dodgers and traded the two off against each other.

So for us, Robinson's coming into baseball had this immediate political and social significance, as well as the fact that he was such a great ballplayer and showed such animation.

So for me, I always saw it as a combination of social justice and damn good baseball.

-♪ Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?

♪ ♪ Did he hit it?

♪ [ Bat cracks ] -Yes!

♪ And that ain't all ♪ ♪ He stole home ♪ -♪ Yes, yes, Jackie's real gone ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -♪ Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?

♪ -♪ Yes, yes, Jackie hit that ball ♪ -In 1949, Dodger President Branch Rickey had released Jackie Robinson from his three-year pledge to turn the other cheek in the face of racist abuse from other players and fans.

"They'd better be prepared to be rough this year," Robinson said as that season began, "because I'm going to be rough with them."

He was, lashing out against any perceived slight, arguing with umpires, getting involved in a series of disputes with the baseball establishment and the press.

And when white writers turned on him for his new-found fierceness, he had a ready answer -- "As long as I appeared to ignore insult and injury, I was a martyred hero to a lot of people, but the minute I began to sound off, I became a swell-head wiseguy, an uppity nigger.

I had too much stored up inside," he later said.

♪♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -Robinson had a lot of anger in him, and I don't think he ever was able to release this anger, because it would never make up for what he had gone through.

It didn't matter how much he may rant and rave at a white player or an umpire or something.

The anger at what he went through never dissipated.

I think it stayed with him his whole life.

And it's part of both his profundity and humanity as a man, but is also part of his tragedy, which in many ways symbolized the anger that most Black people feel.

-Jackie Robinson was probably the only player, and perhaps the only human being I know of, who was better when he was angry.

Most of us lose something when we're angry.

Not Jackie.

Jackie excelled when he was angry.

And there was a lot of anger in his earlier days, which was one reason why he did so well.

-He won the MVP in 1949.

-Here comes the pitch.

And there goes a line drive.

-But the years to come would be his greatest.

-Against the wall.

Here comes Gilliam scoring.

Brooklyn wins!

-For the next five seasons, he averaged .323, made the all-star team every year... -Jackie Robinson is being pummeled by his teammates.

-...and propelled the Dodgers to the top of the standings.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -I met him one time in a restaurant in New York, and I said, "Casey --" And he was talking like normal, you know?

Just a normal conversation.

I said, "Casey, if there's one thing you can tell me about what you're doing, tell me."

And he said, "I never play a game without my man."

And I looked at him, "Now he's getting into Stengelese."

And I didn't want to ask him who his man was, but when he left and when I began to think, he never played a ballgame without Yogi Berra playing.

-He put him on first base.

He put him in the outfield.

"I never played a ballgame without my man."

I'll never forget that.

-Stengel's man was Lawrence Peter Berra, an immigrant bricklayer's son from the Dago Hill section of St. Louis.

He got his nickname from his friends, who said he just "walked like a Yogi."

After flunking a high-school test, Yogi was asked by his teachers, "Don't you know anything?"

He replied, "I don't even suspect anything."

He was clumsy when he joined the Yankees in 1946.

"He played like the bottom man on an unemployed acrobatic team," one critic said.

And there were those who thought him too odd-looking for New York's elite team.

One coach called him "the ape."

But Stengel saw the greatness that was in him and brought back former catcher Bill Dickey to teach him the finer points of playing behind the plate, and he quickly became one of the best catchers in baseball history.

Berra once went 148 straight games and 950 chances without a single error.

No one could call a game like Yogi Berra.

He was three times the American League's most valuable player, and he played in an incredible 75 World Series games and hit a record 71 times during the course of them.

♪♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -I asked Casey this -- who was the most natural ballplayer?

Casey said, "Well --" "Well," he said, "Williams is the most natural hitter," he said, "but that guy is the most natural ballplayer," pointing to Berra.

I was astonished, this little, stocky, awkward man?

But I began to watch him all the time, and Berra did everything well.

People thought he was slow.

He was a fast runner, great base runner.

He once made an unassisted double play at home plate.

He had great instincts.

He was an extraordinarily graceful athlete, for all that awkwardness.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Like Stengel, Berra became as well-known for what he said off the field as for what he did on it.

"If fans don't want to come out to the park, nobody's going to stop them," he once said.

"90% of hitting is mental.

The other half is physical."

When the wife of the mayor of New York said he looked very cool in his new summer suit, Yogi replied, "Thanks.

You don't look so hot yourself."

When asked what he would do if he found a million dollars, he said, "If the guy was poor, I'd give it back to him."

And he also said, "It ain't over till it's over."

Critics questioned whether he ever really said some of his most celebrated maxims, but he had an answer for them, too -- "I really didn't say half the things I've said."

-♪ Bop, bop-du-wadda-wadda ♪ ♪ Bop-du-wadda-wadda, bop ♪ -I would like to join the retired actors baseball team.

-Oh, you would?

-And I would like to know some of the guys' names on the team so if I want to play with them, I'll know them and I'd meet them on the street, I can say hello to them.

-Oh, sure.

But, you know, they give baseball players nowadays very peculiar names.

-I know.

A lot of funny names.

-You know, like Stinky Fields.

-Stinky Fields.

-Goofy Dan.

-Booby Barber.

-Booby Barber.

-I know all those names.

[ Both laughing ] -But let's see now.

We have on our team, we have Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.

-That's what I want to find out -- the guys' names.

-Huh?

-That's what I want to find out.

The guys' names.

-I'm telling you.

Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.

-Abbott, you gonna be the manager of the baseball team?

-Yes.

-You know the guys' names?

-Well, I should.

-Well, you tell me the guys' names on the baseball team.

-I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.

-You ain't sayin' nothin' to me yet.

Go ahead and tell me.

-I'm telling him.

-You ain't said nothing yet.

Go ahead and tell me.

-Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third.

-You know the guys' names on the baseball team?

-Yes.

-Well, go ahead.

Who's on first?

-Yes.

-I mean the guy's name.

-Who.

-The guy playing first.

-Who.

-The guy playing first base.

-Who.

-The guy on first base.

-Who is on first.

-What are you asking me for?!

I don't know!

-Now, wait a minute -- -I'm asking you who's on first!

-That's his name.

-Well, go ahead and tell me.

-Who.

-The guy on first.

-That's it.

[ Laughter ] That's his name.

-Well, you ain't said nothing.

I ain't asked you nothin'.

-You did.

-You know the guy's name on first base?

-Sure.

-Tell me the guy's name on first base.

-Who.

[ Laughter ] -The guy playing first base.

-Who is on first, Lou.

-What are you asking me for?!

-Now, don't get excited.

I'm saying -- -I'm asking you a simple question -- who's on first?!

-Hi, folks.

This is "The Ol' Redhead," Red Barber, saying hi, hello to you... -For nearly 70 years, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants were passionate crosstown archrivals in the National League.

Each year, they played each other 22 times -- 11 games at Ebbets Field, 11 games at the Polo Grounds.

-Man, it couldn't be a nicer afternoon.

-At New York's Polo Grounds, threatening rain holds off and up, so the Dodgers can meet the New York Giants.

Monte Irvin tags it out, out, high into the upper stands for a home run.

Mueller comes from second to score.

Second inning -- Bobby Thomson of the Giants slaps a single to left.

[ Cheers and applause ] -The Dodger-Giant rivalry in Brooklyn was a very serious rivalry.

What made it so rich and deep and harsh were that the fans worked alongside each other all year long.

You might be in the postal service, slotting mail, and all day long, all fall, winter, spring, you're slotting mail in the box.

And the fella next to you is doing the same thing, and he's a Giant fan and you're a Dodger fan.

And all winter long, you're chewing on each other, and now the season unfolds.

♪♪♪ -In 1951, the Brooklyn Dodgers seemed unbeatable.

By mid-August, they led the Giants by 13 1/2 games.

The pennant seemed safely theirs.

But they had not counted on the ferocity of Leo Durocher, once the driving force behind the Dodgers, now the Giant manager and eager for revenge on the club that had let him go.

He had a strong team -- third baseman Bobby Thomson, left fielder Monte Irvin, two 23-game winners -- Sal Maglie and Larry Jansen -- and a rookie center fielder named Willie Mays.

The Giants surged ahead in the closing weeks of the season, winning 37 of their last 44 games.

Sportswriters called it the "Miracle at Coogan's Bluff."

[ Indistinct play-by-play announcing ] [ Fanfare plays ] -Boston, September 30, 1951.

The Giants have done the impossible.

They've defeated Boston in the last game of the season and have come from 13 1/2 games back to take a half-game lead over Brooklyn for the pennant.

The heroes -- Larry Jansen, the winning pitcher, Monte Irvin, and Durocher himself.

The Giants are celebrating because over in Philadelphia, the Phillies are leading Brooklyn.

And if Brooklyn loses, the Giants are in.

But the Dodgers have fought back to an 8-8 tie, mostly on the back, shoulders, and heart of one man -- Jackie Robinson.

It was Jackie Robinson's greatest day.

His hitting had kept Brooklyn in the game, and then, in the 11th, he had held off the Phillies with a desperate diving catch.

Now in the 14th inning, two outs, nobody on.

Again, Brooklyn looked to Robinson.

And there it was, a home run in the gathering twilight to give Brooklyn a 9-8 victory and a tie for the National League pennant.

-The two teams would settle the issue in a best-of-three-game play-off.

[ Cheers and applause ] Durocher's Giants took the first game at Ebbets Field, thanks to a two-run homer by Bobby Thomson off Ralph Branca.

But rookie Clem Labine shut out the Giants in the second game at the Polo Grounds 10-0.

Four different Dodgers hit home runs that afternoon, including Jackie Robinson.

Everything now depended on game three.

-Final game in this fabulous National League race.

-It was October 3, 1951.

Work came to a halt in New York as fans crowded around radios and stood in the streets to watch television sets in store windows.

-You have to talk baseball in New York today, from Flatbush Avenue to Sheepshead Bay.

-Cabbies turned down fares.

The Dow Jones averages were interrupted for the play-by-play.

Even prisoners at Riker's Island were allowed to listen in.

-8 million New Yorkers are really moving today.

♪♪♪ -Out of the subway into the Polo Grounds pour fans by the thousands for the sudden-death game in the play-off between the faltering Dodgers and the stretch-running Giants.

-The sky over the Polo Grounds that afternoon was overcast, and there had been talk of rain.

-New York is baseball wild over a climactic, pulse-tingling National League pennant.

Leo Durocher's miracle team spotted the Dodgers a 13-game advantage in mid-August and overtook them at the finish line.

Laraine Day, Mrs. Durocher, has her fingers crossed because this is it.

-Sal Maglie pitched for the Giants, and in the first, Jackie Robinson hit a single off him that drove in Pee Wee Reese to put Brooklyn ahead 1-0.

-The single from Dodgers slugging second baseman, and it brings Pee Wee Reese in for the first run of the game.

1-0, Brooklyn.

-With strong pitching by Don Newcombe, the Dodgers held their lead for seven innings before Bobby Thomson hit a sacrifice fly that tied it up at 1-1.

In the eighth inning, the Dodgers surged ahead.

A wild pitch by Maglie and a pair of singles drove in Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Jackie Robinson.

With a 4-1 lead going into the 9th, Brooklyn seemed so sure of having won the pennant they should have had weeks earlier that the park announcer urged sportswriters to pick up their World Series passes in the Dodger clubhouse as soon as the game was over.

Typesetters at The Brooklyn Eagle made up the next day's front page to announce the Dodger victory.

-Brooklyn 4, New York 1.

-But Don Newcombe had pitched 272 innings over the course of the long season, and he was tired.

In the dugout during the seventh inning, Newcombe had confessed to Jackie Robinson that he was through, spent.

Robinson replied, "You keep pitching out there until your arm falls off."

It worked for two innings.

-Now the Giants are behind as they haven't been behind.

Newcombe deals, and Dark swings, grounds it.

-But in the bottom of the ninth, Alvin Dark got a single.

-Don Mueller stepping in.

-Don Mueller got another, and Dark made it to third.

-Second, on his way to third.

And Mueller holds up at first.

-Ralph Branca and Carl Erskine began warming up in the Dodger bullpen.

-Newcombe calling on the last of his reserve.

-Monte Irvin popped up.

-And he has it for out number one.

-But Whitey Lockman hit a double.

-A ball hit into left field for a base hit.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Dark scored.

Mueller reached third.

Giant fans erupted.

The score was 4-2 Dodgers, but 2 were on for New York.

Dodger manager Charley Dressen pulled Newcombe and sent in Ralph Branca to pitch with only one day's rest.

-That's all for Newcombe.

The end of the road for him.

And here is "Big Branca," who was beaten by the Giants in the first of this three-game series, now given his chance... -It was Branca's job to save the day and the pennant for Brooklyn.

-...a very desperate, delicate position.

And Thomson is to hit next.

-Bobby Thomson was up next.

He had already hit four home runs off Branca during the season, plus the one that had won the first play-off game.

He had later botched two plays in the field and was eager to redeem himself.

"You son of a bitch," he told himself as he strode to the plate, "get up here and give yourself a chance to hit.

Wait and watch.

Give yourself a chance.

Do a good job."

-Lockman at second base.

Big Branca called on for his most important job in his baseball career.

One out, last of the ninth.

-Branca got one fastball past him.

-Bobby Thomson takes a strike called on the inside corner.

-His next pitch was a fastball, too.

-Branca throws.

There's a long fly!

[ Cheers and applause ] It's gonna be, I believe, the Giants won the pennant!

The Giants won the pennant!

The Giants won the pennant!

The Giants won the pennant!

Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands!

The Giants won the pennant, and they're going crazy!

They're going crazy!

Hello!

[ Cheers and applause ] I don't believe it.

I don't believe it.

I do not believe it.

[ Cheers and applause ] Bobby Thomson hit a line drive into the lower deck of the left-field stands, and the place is going crazy!

The Giants are the pennant winners!

The Giants won it by a score of 5-4, and they're picking Bobby Thomson up and carrying him off the field!

-"October 3, 1951.

Hollywood's most imaginative writers on an opium jag could not have scripted a more improbable windup of the season that started in April and had its finish today in the triumph of Bobby Thomson and the Giants.

Into the last blur of white that came plateward out of the pitching fist of Brooklyn's Ralph Branca "was compressed the destiny of the two clubs that had battled for six months to get to today's decision.

Before Thomson swung, it was the Dodgers winning the pennant.

A split second later, the Dodgers were dead, and the Giants had it."

Shirley Povich, Washington Post.

-Everybody remembers where he was when Bobby hit the home run.

I was in Boston watching on television at my mother-in-law's house, and my wife walked through the room.

I was watching this.

It was all set up.

And Bobby Thomson came up to bat, and Branca come in.

And my wife walked through the room, and I said, "Wait a minute.

You might see something you wouldn't want to miss."

And she walked out of the room, and she missed it!

But it was -- I was a flat-out Giants fan in those days, and an extraordinary, wonderful moment.

Wonderful moment.

Everybody who was a Giants fan was doing the same kind of leaping in their living rooms wherever they were that was going on.

-Newcombe deals, and Dark swinging, grounds it.

-I was 10 years old.

We had just bought our first television set.

I came home from school.

There was no one else home.

I was a rabid Giant fan.

I hated the Dodgers with that love that only hatred can understand.

And I put on the television set in despair.

I knew what was happening.

The Giants had been 13 1/2 games out.

It had all been over.

I turn on the game.

It's all effectively over.

Thomson gets up.

He hits the home run.

Russ Hodges goes absolutely bananas.

He was on the radio, but I had that on.

I didn't know what to do.

I was jumping up and down.

There was no one at home.

I wanted to tell someone.

We lived in this apartment building in Queens.

I leaned my head out the window.

There were two guys of the buildings and grounds crew out there, and they didn't have a radio.

And I told them what happened, and they were both Giants fans, and they were so happy, and it was probably the greatest moment of pure joy in my life.

-I think when I remember back to 1951 and Bobby Thomson's home run, it is the starkest memory in some ways of my childhood.

In Long Island, where I grew up, there were Giant fans and Yankee fans and Dodger fans all within various blocks of one another, and there was a grocery store that was owned by a bunch of Giant fans, and they used to call me rag-mop 'cause my hair was very messy, and they were terrific.

And that whole summer, when the Giants had made their remarkable surge and the Dodgers kept falling behind, they had kept the scores posted on their butcher shop.

So every day I'd go by there, I'd have to see this horrible thing.

Then comes the final day of the final play-off.

And my sister, who was 10 years older than I was, predicted when Bobby Thomson stood up and Ralph Branca was gonna give that pitch to him, "He's gonna hit a home run."

I was 8 years old.

I was sure she'd made it happen.

She was tall and glamorous, and I was probably jealous of her anyway.

And I was furious at her.

That was my first response.

And then I was so sad that I wouldn't even go out of my house for several days, and I certainly wouldn't go back to that butcher shop... until finally they sent me flowers in the mail, and they said, "Come back, rag-mop.

We love you."

[ Laughs ] So I had to go back to the butcher shop.

But it was just that closing of all hopes, that feeling that we almost had it and that it died once again.

-It was called "the shot heard 'round the world."

I mean, it was an unbelievably emotional moment.

I remember hearing it in Cambridge, England, on an armed-forces broadcast system.

And I can remember I was playing bridge at the time, and I can remember being a Giant fan.

I can remember going absolutely backwards in my chair, foot coming up and hitting the bridge table.

These English friends of mine startled by the emotion, tremendous.

Well, think what it did to Branca.

There's a very famous photograph of him.

In fact, it won a Pulitzer Prize.

♪♪♪ He is lying absolutely as stiff as cordwood on the steps that go up to the locker rooms at the Polo Grounds, where this thing took place, just stiff in grief.

♪♪♪ And he went out to the parking lot hours after the game was over to talk to a priest about what had happened.

I mean, it really was a traumatic blow.

And from that point on, actually, his career really went to pieces.

♪♪♪ -The Giants won the pennant!

The Giants won the pennant!

The Giants won the pennant!

-"Now it is done.

The story ends, and there is no way to tell it.

The art of fiction is dead.

Reality has strangled invention.

Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic can ever be plausible again."

Red Smith, New York Herald Tribune.

-...into the lower deck of the left-field stands!

And the place is going crazy!

-Disbelieving Brooklyn fans again had to content themselves with the brave slogan, "Wait till next year."

-And they're picking Bobby Thomson up and carrying him off the field!

[ Cheers and applause ] [ Bat cracks ] -In 1951, scouts for the Pittsburgh Pirates approached a promising young center fielder from St. John's University in New York.

They offered him a $2,000 bonus if he would sign with them.

-My mother and father were from the other side.

They were people who got caught up in the mist of the Depression.

They couldn't read.

They couldn't write.

My father was a ditch-digger, lucky to be given a grocery store in South Jamaica, Queens, that had been abandoned.

And he was just so busy trying to survive.

The idea that his son would do anything but study and prepare for the hard life -- he didn't like baseball.

Uh, truth is, a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates saw me playing against Whitey Ford, believe it or not.

Whitey Ford was at Fort Monmouth in those years.

And on a weekend pitched in Bridgeport, Connecticut, against the Bridgeport B's, and I was playing for the Bridgeport B's.

And a scout saw me there and said he wanted to sign me and give me this immense amount of money, $2,000.

And when I explained it to my father, he said, "When do they play baseball?"

And I said, "In the spring and the summer."

He said, "Before school is over?"

And I said, "Well, yeah.

It begins --" He said, "Well, then, you can't go."

[ Laughs ] We had to talk him into it.

He finally signed the contract in the back of the grocery store amidst the hanging provolone and capocollo.

He signed it.

I got the $2,000 but never could hit a curveball.

♪♪♪ -"Mario Cuomo, center fielder.

A below-average hitter with plus power.

He uppercuts and needs instruction.

Potentially the best prospect on the club and in my opinion could go all the way if he improves his hitting to the point of a respectable batting average.

He is aggressive and plays hard.

He's intelligent.

Not an easy chap to get close to, but is very well-liked by those who succeed in penetrating the exterior shell.

He is another who will run over you if you get in his way."

-The Pirates sent the new $2,000 prospect to their Brunswick, Georgia, farm team.

♪♪♪ -The house that Ruth built houses 65,000 fans for the World Series opener between Casey Stengel's Bronx Bombers and Lippy's Miracle Men.

In the Yank's second, Koslo faces Jerry Coleman... -After Bobby Thomson's home run, the New York Giants lost the 1951 World Series to the Yankees 4 games to 2.

-McDougald comes in to score.

So the Bronx Bombers, winners of 13 World Series, answer back in inning number 2... -In the fifth inning of the second game, Willie Mays hit a fly ball deep into the Yankee outfield.

A rookie playing right field raced for it and strayed into Joe DiMaggio's territory.

DiMaggio waved him off.

In his haste to get out of the way of the great man, the younger player tripped over an exposed drainpipe, tearing his knee -- the first of many injuries that would plague his career.

The rookie's name was Mickey Mantle.

Two months later, the Yankees held a press conference.

Joe DiMaggio had decided to leave the game.

Age and injuries had caught up with him.

"I no longer have it," he said.

A friend agreed.

"DiMaggio was quitting," he said, "because he couldn't be Joe DiMaggio anymore."

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ -I remember Joe DiMaggio's last at-bat in the World Series of 1951.

We knew it was gonna be his last at-bat.

He hit a ball -- a double -- to right-center field and pulled up into second base in that elegant way he did.

And I think there were tears in my eyes.

I was there that day.

And I thought, "That's the last time I'll see him."

But he was complete to the end.

♪♪♪ -DiMaggio played his last game in October of 1951.

I was born in March of 1952.

My father and every friend my father ever brought to the house or every guy I ever met from my father's generation at a candy store in Queens or in Brooklyn would all say the same thing -- "Willie Mays -- terrific.

Mickey Mantle -- hit the ball out of sight.

You never saw DiMaggio, kid.

You never saw the real thing."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -My baseball dream would have been to play center field for the Yankees.

I had great plans to do so after DiMaggio retired, but then there's this fella named Mantle who took over, and I never had a chance.

[ Bat cracks ] [ Cheers and applause ] -Mickey hit a home run that day off the facade in right field, 18 inches from going out.

No one's ever hit one out of Yankee Stadium.

This thing was up longer than Alan Shepard was up.

It just kept going and going and going, and it hit the facade.

We have home movies of it, Mickey coming up, and a guy actually stands in front of us.

It was a priest, and just the screen gets wiped with this big, black suit.

Nobody could really figure out what they were seeing.

It was high and majestic.

It actually went through clouds.

It didn't, but as the years have gone by, it went through clouds and -- It just hit -- boom -- and people were stunned that this unbelievably strong, young man with that run of his and those aching knees, had hit the ball this far.

-Mickey Mantle took Joe DiMaggio's spot in center field and his position as the centerpiece of the Yankee attack.

Born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, and brought up in the little town of Commerce, he was in some ways a throwback to an earlier era, the son of a tenant farmer and sometime lead miner who was such a baseball fan that he named his firstborn for the great Philadelphia catcher Mickey Cochrane.

♪♪♪ In high school, Mickey Mantle was a devastating power hitter, but he suffered from osteomyelitis, a bone disease, nearly had his leg amputated.

Few scouts were interested.

Eventually, the Yankees took a chance, signed him for only $1,100, and sent him to the minors, where he led the league in batting.

He arrived in New York, a teammate remembered, with a straw suitcase, two pairs of slacks, and one blue sport jacket that probably cost about $8.

In the middle of his rookie season, Mantle was sent back to the minors.

He wasn't hitting.

But his slump only deepened.

-I was in Kansas City.

My dad was working in the mines down in Oklahoma.

And I called him, and I said, "Dad, I don't think I can play ball, you know?

I ain't doin' it, you know?"

He said, "Well, where are you at?"

And I told him what hotel I was in in Kansas City.

He said, "Well, I'll be right there."

And he got in his car and drove straight up there right then.

And I thought he was coming up to pat me on the back and say, "Hang in there, kid, or something like that."

He knocked on the door.

I opened the door.

He just walks in.

He grabs my suitcase, and start putting my clothes in it.

I said, "What are you doing, dad?"

And he goes, "Taking you home."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "I thought I raised a man."

He says, "You ain't nothing but a coward."

And that really, really hit home.

[ Bat cracks ] After he left, I started hitting again, and then Casey brought me back to the Yankees.

-He was far clumsier in the field than DiMaggio had been, but he quickly became a superb switch hitter, capable of hitting as far left-handed as Babe Ruth had, as far right-handed as Jimmie Foxx.

♪♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] And he could run faster at the start of his career than any man in baseball.

♪♪♪ On April 17, 1953, he drove a home run out of Griffith Park in Washington that measured 565 feet.

♪♪♪ -I had a guy ask me one time, "Mickey, do you ever go up to the plate just trying to hit a home run?"

And I said, "Every time."

[ Chuckles ] I did.

I wanted to hit the ball out of the park.

And used to make Casey mad, you know, especially if there was somebody on second or something like that, you know, and a hit would win the game, and I'm up there striking out, you know, because I'm trying to hit it too hard.

But that's the way I felt.

I wanted to hit the ball as far as I could every time I swung at it.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Over the years, he hit 536 home runs, played on 16 all-star teams, led his league in home runs and hitting three times, batted .300 10 times, and set a record of 18 World Series home runs.

-Mickey was my favorite player, yeah.

Mickey is the most exciting person ever to step up to the plate, in my mind, because of the unpredictableness of what the savageness of his stroke could do from either side of the plate.

They would get close-ups of Mantle's arms on WPIX.

They would talk about it.

And Red Barber and Mel Allen, who were the great announcers of our day, would talk about it, and Red was very much the dignitary of the two.

"Well, here's Mr. Mantle.

Here's Mickey.

Take a look at those arms, Mel.

Whoa!"

And then Mel -- "How about that?

How about that?!

Look at that!

Yeah, he don't lift any weights."

You know, just -- He was just a big American hero.

-Mickey Mantle -- here come a kid that could hit the ball a mile.

The only thing that saddens me, that you didn't get to see Mickey on two good legs.

See, had you seen Mickey on two good legs, Mickey probably could have been stealing 100 bases a year.

Mm-hmm.

♪♪♪ -Season after season, everything seemed to betray him -- knees, groin muscles, fingers, hips, feet, shoulders, elbows.

"Every time he misses, he grunts with pain," an opposing catcher said.

"If he had been physically sound for even one full season," his teammate Elston Howard remembered, "he would have hit 70 homers."

-Mantle might have been the greatest ballplayer that ever lived had he remained physically sound.

It was amazing that he was able to do the things he did in the physical shape that he was in.

Ballplayers that had not seen Mantle dress, such as at an all-star game, were just aghast at the amount of bandaging that he had on his legs.

-In 1952, Mantle's father died at the age of 39 of Hodgkin's Disease, an inherited illness.

It was too much for the country boy turned hero who had been asked to fill DiMaggio's shoes.

Now he began to drink and carouse with his friends Billy Martin and Whitey Ford.

He lived his life as if each day would be his last, staying out all night, spending money as fast as he got it.

"My father died young," he once said.

"I'm not going to be cheated."

-Mantle was, you know, Casey Stengel's pride and joy and great disappointment.

Stengel thought that Mantle was his boy, the way Mel Ott was John McGraw's boy, and that this man, who could run as fast as Ty Cobb and hit with Babe Ruth's power, would be the greatest ballplayer of all time.

And Mickey disappointed him because Mickey didn't apply himself as much as he should have.

He still was a great ballplayer -- Triple Crown winner, Hall of Famer.

But Stengel always felt he should have been more.

When Casey picked his all-time team, he picked Berra, and he picked Ford.

He didn't pick Mantle.

Mickey disappointed him.

And Mickey was his son, and Stengel was his father.

That's corny, but it's true.

And Mickey was sort of the willful adolescent, and he wouldn't do what Casey said.

He bowed his head and said, "Yes, sir," but he didn't do it.

-Casey bragged on me so much, saying that I was gonna be the next Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio all rolled into one, and it just didn't happen.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -"The livelihoods, the careers, the families of 400 Negro ballplayers are in jeopardy because four players were successful in getting in the majors."

Effa Manley, Newark Eagles.

-For 30 years, Black baseball had been one of the largest Black businesses in America.

But after 1947, when Jackie Robinson and a handful of other Blacks arrived in the majors, it was clear that the Negro leagues were doomed.

The few teams still operating survived not by gate receipts, but by selling their best talent to the majors.

By 1953, there were fewer African-Americans making their living in professional baseball than at any time in the century.

One Black sportswriter said, "Nothing was killing Negro baseball but democracy."

-I don't think it's so much bitter as there is sweet, because time changes, okay?

We were making a few bucks, but recognition is a big part of life.

You want to be recognized that I can do something as well as anybody else.

And that's what integration meant, okay?

The good guys got a job.

Some of the guys was old.

They went to Canada.

They'd go to the Caribbean in the winter.

But time -- it was worth it.

It was worth it for integration.

-Why would you feel sorry for me?

I think we are the cause of the changes.

Some of the changes that's been made was because of us.

We did our duty.

We did the groundwork for the Jackie Robinsons, the Willie Mays, and the guys that's playing now.

We did the groundwork for these guys, so why feel sorry for me?

-As the push for integration spread to other areas of American life -- to schools, buses, lunch counters, public restrooms -- other Black players followed in Jackie Robinson's turbulent wake.

Larry Doby integrated the American League and helped lead Cleveland to two pennants.

Jackie Robinson's teammate Roy Campanella was once a third-string catcher for the Baltimore Elite Giants, but in one five-year period with the Dodgers, he was named the league's most valuable player three times.

Ernie Banks -- "Mr. Cub" -- hit more home runs between 1955 and 1960 than anyone in the majors and was so fond of playing that he liked to say, "Let's play two."

Frank Robinson, Cincinnati's star outfielder, hit a record 38 home runs his rookie year, and like Mantle, came to dominate the game.

By the end of the decade, Blacks in the National League would win the most valuable player award 9 of 11 years.

But all of them had to face, all over again, many of the same battles Jackie Robinson had already fought, especially in the minor leagues as they struggled to make the majors.

♪♪♪ In 1952, a young shortstop with the Indianapolis Clowns was sold to the Boston Braves for $7,500 and sent to their minor league club in the South Atlantic league.

His name was Henry Aaron, and when his club traveled throughout the South, he watched as his white teammates stayed in air-conditioned hotels while he struggled each night to find a place to sleep in the Black section of town.

On April 23, 1954, he hit his very first major league home run.

Two years later, Curtis Charles Flood, an 18-year-old outfielder from Oakland, California, was signed by the Cincinnati Reds and sent to the Carolina League, where he batted .340 and drove in 128 runs.

-By 1957, my second year in the South, I thought I was beyond crying.

But one day, we were playing a doubleheader, and after the end of the first game, you take your uniform off, and you throw it into a big pile.

The clubhouse manager, he comes, and he gets your uniform, and he dries them, and he cleans them, and then you play the second game with the same uniform.

I -- like everybody else, I threw my uniform right into the big pile with everybody else's.

And the clubhouse guy came by with one of these long sticks with a nail on it, and he very carefully picked my uniform out from the white guys' uniforms -- my little sweat shirt, my little jock strap, with everything, sent my uniform to the colored cleaners, which was probably 20 minutes away.

And there I sat while all the other guys were on the field.

These people have really been giving me hell all day long.

And now I'm sitting there, stark naked, waiting for my uniform to come back from the cleaners, and the other guys were out on the field.

So, finally, they get my uniform back, and I walk out on the field, boy, and you'd think that I had just burned the American flag.

They called me every name but a child of God.

♪♪♪ -"I am pleased God made my skin black," Curt Flood later said.

"I wish he had made it thicker."

[ Cheers and applause ] [ Cheers and applause ] [ Bat cracks ] [ Cheers and applause ] -I sat by him at an all-star game one time, and he started talking to me about hitting.

And he was wanting to know if I used my bottom hand when I'm hitting left-handed.

Do I pull the bat with this hand and guide it with this one?

And when I'm hitting left-handed, did I pull it with this one and guide it?

"Which is your strong hand?"

And he was telling me all this stuff about hitting, and I went with one of those -- after I left the all-star game, I went like 0-30 or something like that, because I was trying to think of the things that he told me to do.

♪♪♪ -In the spring of 1952, with the Korean War raging, Captain Ted Williams left baseball and returned to active duty with the Marines.

He flew 37 combat missions, survived a crash landing, permanently damaged his hearing, and won three medals for valor.

Captain Williams, I want to give you these orders.

They relieve you from active duty in the Marine Corps reserve and assign you to your home.

Ted, I understand that your future address is Fenway Park.

Is that correct?

Well, as of now, that's where I'm scheduled to go, Colonel.

I plan on being up there tomorrow.

And needless to say, I'm anxious to see if I can still hit.

And with the young club that the Red Sox have, if I can swing a bat at all, why, maybe I can help them.

I certainly hope so.

[ Cheers and applause ] -The day he returned to baseball in 1953, he hit a home run at Fenway Park.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ -Ted Williams was a classic player.

I met Ted Williams last year.

It was like seeing John Wayne.

He's a gigantic man.

He has a very large, imposing head, but he's very handsome, he's very distinguished.

You know, if you said, "Well, that's Mr.

Baseball --" that was his name -- you'd buy it, you know?

And I walked up to him, and I said, "You know, can I have a picture?"

And he signed it to me and all that stuff.

And I said, "Ted, I have home movies of you striking out against Bobby Chance, 1957, Yankee Stadium, second game of a doubleheader."

He says to me, "Curveball, low and away."

[ Laughter ] -I'm asking you, what's the guy's name on first base?

-No, no.

What's on second.

-I'm not asking you who's on second.

-Who's on first.

-One base at a time now.

-Don't mix up my -- -I'm not mixing up anybody.

Now, what's the guy's name on first base?

-No, What is on second.

-I'm not asking you who's on second.

-Who is on first.

-I don't know.

-He's on third.

We're not talking about him.

-Wait a minute.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

-Now, let's not get -- -Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

How did -- How did I get on third base?

-You mentioned his name.

-I mentioned his name?

-Yes.

-I don't know anybody's name on the team.

How could I mention the guy's name?

-You did.

You just mentioned it.

-Alright, what's the guy's name on third base?

-No.

What's on second.

-Who's on second.

-Who's on first.

-I don't know.

-He's on third.

[ Laughter ] -I didn't even mention the guy's name on third base!

-Yes, you did.

-Alright, then.

Who's playing third base?

-No.

Who's on first.

-I'm not asking you what's on first!

-What's on second.

-Who's on second?

-He's on first.

-I don't know -- He's third base, third base, third base.

[ Laughter ] -There's no continuity in American life.

We seem to reinvent ourselves every 20 years or so.

And what baseball does is it gives us the illusion that something lasts.

All of America, where everything is so rapidly spinning all around our heads, there is one constant.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ -In the 1950s, baseball may have been the best it ever was.

♪♪♪ But the country was changing, and baseball seemed unable to keep up.

Americans were on the move.

An interstate highway system was started, passenger jets shortened distances, and for the first time, television began broadcasting baseball games coast to coast.

White fans were leaving the cities and their decaying ballparks for the suburbs, the Sun Belt, and the West Coast, where there were as yet no Major League teams.

Attendance declined drastically for every club.

Even in the capital of baseball, the mighty Yankees struggled, and the Giants and Dodgers each lost nearly half of their fans.

All across the country, a new generation of owners scrambled to find new ways to fill the seats.

♪♪♪ The most imaginative owner was Bill Veeck, baseball's greatest showman.

He is best remembered for his years at the helm of the hapless St. Louis Browns, where he staged grandstand managers' day, in which fans voted on what the Browns should do next on the field.

But his most memorable stunt took place during a game between the Browns and the Tigers.

-Ball one!

-In the first inning, Veeck sent in a pinch hitter -- Eddie Gaedel -- a midget who stood just 3'7" tall.

-Swing, Eddie!

-Ball two!

-His strike zone was said to measure 1 1/2".

Veeck told Gaedel that a man in the stands with a high-powered rifle would shoot him if he swung at a pitch.

Gaedel obeyed.

-Ball three!

-The Tiger pitcher walked him on four straight pitches... -Take a base.

-...all of them high.

-I once ran into Eddie Gaedel.

He batted once, and he got a walk, because the pitcher of the Tigers -- Cain -- fell off the mound watching him, laughed.

And so did the catcher Bob Swift.

Eddie got a walk on four pitches.

Eddie said, "I'm disappointed in Mr. Veeck," in his little, piping voice.

"He promised me I'd keep on playing baseball.

I batted only once, but I got on base."

-Veeck got the press he'd wanted.

"All I have ever said," Veeck told his critics, "is that you can draw more people with a losing team plus bread and circuses than with a losing team and a long, still silence."

♪♪♪ But few cities could now support two major league teams.

In 1953, the Braves left Boston to the Red Sox and moved to Milwaukee, where they drew the biggest crowds in baseball.

Two years later, the Athletics left Philadelphia for Kansas City.

Even Bill Veeck conceded defeat.

The Browns abandoned St. Louis and moved to Baltimore, where they became the Orioles.

[ Cheers and applause ] -What can you say?

He's as great as there was.

He could run.

He could throw.

He could hit with power.

If there was a guy born to play baseball, it was Willie Mays.

-He was born in Westfield, Alabama, on May 6, 1931.

His father had been a legendary semipro player, and he had trained his boy for baseball since before he could walk.

Willie Mays first made his mark as a member of the Chattanooga Black Lookouts, later played with the Birmingham Black Barons, and was only 19 when he signed with the New York Giants in 1951.

-When Willie Mays first came up to the major leagues, he was about 0-12, 0-13.

Hadn't got a major league hit yet.

And he was facing Warren Spahn on his way to becoming the winningest left-handed pitcher in the history of baseball.

Mays comes to the plate in the Polo Grounds.

Spahn's on the mound, 60'6" away from him.

Fires the ball to Mays, and Mays crushes it -- hits it over the left-field roof.

First hit, first home run.

After the game, sportswriters went up to Spahn in the locker room and say, "Spahny, what happened?"

Spahn said, "Gentlemen, for the first 60 feet, that was a hell of a pitch."

-The home run cleared the roof of the Polo Grounds.

"If it's the only home run he ever hits," Giant announcer Russ Hodges said, "they'll still talk about it."

"The ball came down in Utica," Lefty Gomez added.

"I know.

I was managing there at the time."

[ Cheers and applause ] He seemed able to do everything -- hit, run, field.

"If he could cook," Durocher said, "I'd marry him."

♪♪♪ -Say, hey, Willie, go get it.

-What do you mean go get it, man?

That ball is way in left field.

-I don't care what field it's in.

Willie plays all fields.

-Every time we come to the game you talk about Willie plays all the fields.

-That's right!

-Let's call Willie and ask him.

Call him.

-Okay.

Hey, Willie!

-Yes?

-Are you Willie Mays?

-Yes.

-Say who?

-♪ Say, Willie, say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Swinging at the plate, say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Say, Willie, that Giants kid is great ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -♪ He runs the bases like a choo-choo train ♪ ♪ Swings around second like an aeroplane ♪ ♪ His cap flies off when he passes third ♪ ♪ And he heads home like an eagle bird ♪ -♪ Say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Say, Willie, say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Swinging at the plate ♪ ♪ Say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Say, Willie, that Giants kid is great ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -In 1952, Mays went into the Army, and the next year, the Giants sank to fifth place.

-♪ When Willie served his Uncle Sam ♪ ♪ He left the Giants in an awful jam ♪ ♪ But now he's back, and he's Leo's joy ♪ ♪ And Willie's still a growing boy ♪ -♪ Say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Say, Willie ♪ ♪ Say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Swinging at the plate, say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Say, Willie, that Giants kid is great ♪ ♪ That Giants kid is great ♪ ♪ Say, Willie, what you gonna say?

♪ ♪♪♪ -Say, hey!

[ Cheers and applause ] -When he returned the next season, the Giants won the pennant and the world championship.

♪♪♪ He would go on to play 22 seasons, bat .302 lifetime, drive in more than 100 runs 8 years in a row, and slam 660 home runs -- third on the all-time list.

In the outfield, he recorded 7,095 put-outs -- the most in major league history.

According to Joe DiMaggio, Mays had the greatest throwing arm he had ever seen.

"He should play in handcuffs to even things up," a sportswriter said.

♪♪♪ To many, he was the greatest player who ever lived.

♪♪♪ -Willie Mays is the most exciting ballplayer.

Everybody who ever saw him play when he was young always had that same reaction.

He played so well, and he got more pleasure out of playing than almost anybody.

Anything that happened, like, his eyes were round like this, looking at the game, taking it all in.

He seemed to be more in the game than any other player.

My image of him is always rounding second base after he's hit the ball to the outfield, and the runners are coming around to the plate.

And to watch him running the way he did, with his feet sort of just brushing the ground and then skidding around second base like a skier.

But as he ran, he always looked around, and you had the sense that he had the whole ballgame in mind.

People who played with him said He had a deeper understanding of what was going on than anybody else on the field.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Safe!

-Willie Mays was not the first Black ballplayer, but he had his own barrier to break through -- a kind of gentle, good-natured racism, but racism nonetheless.

Remember when he came up, people would say, "What an instinctive ballplayer he is.

What a natural ballplayer he is.

What childlike enthusiasm."

Well, 30 years on, we can hear with our better-trained ears the racism in that.

He was wonderfully gifted, yes.

Great natural gifts, yes.

But no one ever got to the major leagues -- no one got to the major leagues on natural gifts without an awful lot of refining work.

Sure, he was a great instinctive ballplayer, but he was also a tremendously smart ballplayer.

As a rookie, he'd get to second base, watch two batters come to the plate, and he would go back to the dugout having stolen the signs and decoded the sequence.

He'd know the indicator sign from the other signs.

Willie Mays, natural ballplayer, sure.

Hardest-working ballplayer you ever saw.

♪♪♪ [ Applause ] -Nearly 53,000 watched the opener of the World Series at the Polo Grounds in New York, with g-man J. Edgar Hoover joining the fun, along with Laraine Day Durocher, Spencer Tracy, and young Chris Durocher, Managers Al Lopez of Cleveland and Giant manager Leo Duroche.

Jimmy Barbarie, captain of the little league champs, opens the series.

-On September 29, 1954, Willie Mays and the New York Giants met the Cleveland Indians, who had won a record 111 games that season, in the World Series at the Polo Grounds.

No one there would ever forget the remarkable play they saw that afternoon.

The score is tied 2-2 in the 8th, and Cleveland is up.

Don Liddle winds up.

Vic Wertz leans in.

Willie Mays waits in center field.

-There's a long drive way back in center field, way back, back.

And it's... [ Cheers and applause ] Willie Mays just brought this crowd to its feet with a catch which must have been an optical illusion to a lot of people.

-It was more than just a great catch.

It was a catch no one had ever seen before.

When that ball left Wertz's bat -- and this is one of the great things about baseball, where you calculate so many things simultaneously.

A ball's hit into the gap.

How good is the outfielder's arm?

Where is the cutoff man?

The quick look and a glance.

The runner's between first and second.

How fast is that runner?

How many outs?

Should he try for third?

Is his history that he's daring?

Will he try for third?

What's the third-base coach doing?

And you take in all these things, and with depth perception, you try and calculate in those fleeting seconds what are the possibilities?

Well, when the ball left Vic Wertz's bat in the massive Polo Grounds, where it was headed, where Mays was standing, there was only one possibility -- could he get to it before it was an inside-the-park home run?

Could he hold it to a triple?

Catching it was out of the question.

And he turned and ran to a place where no one can go to get that ball, starting where he started, with the ball hit as it was hit.

So it was more than just a great acrobatic play.

It was a play that until that point was outside the realm of possibility in baseball.

[ Cheers and applause ] -There's a long drive way back in center field, way back, back.

And it's... [ Cheers and applause ] -[ Chuckles ] It was far from the best catch I've ever seen.

It happened to be on television.

It happened to save the ballgame.

It was a very good catch.

We knew Willie had the ball all the way.

And Willie had always let his hat fall off.

He always wore a hat too big or too small.

Willie's a great actor, a great ballplayer.

[ Cheers and applause ] -You know, I didn't think that he'd ever get to the ball, but he did.

And then he had the presence of mind to wheel and throw the ball to second base to keep Larry Doby from scoring.

Actually, if he would have tagged up, he could have scored from second base.

That's how far the ball was hit.

Now, on the way in, after we got the third out, I ran in with him, you know?

So I said to him -- I said, "I didn't think you're gonna get to that one."

He said, "Are you kidding?"

He said, "I had that one all the way."

[ Laughs ] -And we later found the more we watched him play, that he had one little habit -- that when he went for a ball, if he hit his glove, you knew he was gonna catch it.

If he didn't hit his glove, he wasn't sure.

But once he did that, you knew you were out.

-Way back, back.

It is... [ Cheers and applause ] -Wertz hit it off a left-hander named Don Liddle.

Liddle had been brought in to the game to relieve Sal Maglie, with trouble brewing in the eighth.

Liddle was to pitch to one batter -- Wertz.

Mays makes the catch.

In comes a right-hander, Marv Grissom, waved in by Leo Durocher.

Liddle hands the ball to Grissom and says in a moment of great humor, looks at him straight-faced, and says, "Well, I got my man."

[ Cheers and applause ] -Later, when Mays tripled to the same spot where he had caught Wertz's drive, a teammate said, "The only man who could have caught it hit it."

-♪ Say, hey ♪ -♪ Say who?

♪ -♪ Say, hey, Willie, that Giants kid is great ♪ ♪ That Giants kid is great ♪ -"I don't make history," Willie Mays once said.

"I catch fly balls."

-♪ Say, hey!

♪ -Alright, everybody, let's warm up.

7th inning stretch.

-♪ Take me out to the ball... ♪ No.

Start again.

Start again.

♪ Take me out to the ball... ♪ Why can't I get... [ Humming ] No... ♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out with the crowd ♪ ♪ Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks ♪ ♪ I don't care if I never get back ♪ ♪ I will root, root, root for the home team ♪ ♪ If they don't win, it's a shame ♪ ♪ For it's one, two, three strikes you're out ♪ ♪ At the old ballgame ♪ -As Mickey?

[ As Mickey Mantle ] ♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out... ♪ Hell, I ain't doin' this.

[ Laughs ] -♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ -♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out to the game ♪ -♪ We'll have some... ♪ -♪ Crackerjacks ♪ -♪ ...and crackerjacks ♪ ♪ We won't come to the-- ♪ [ Laughter ] -♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out to the crowd ♪ -♪ Buy me some peanuts and crackerjack ♪ -♪ I don't care if I never come back ♪ -♪ Root, root, root for the home team ♪ -♪ I can't carry a tune ♪ ♪ For it's one... ♪ -♪ Two... ♪ -♪ Three strikes, you're out at the old ballgame ♪ [ Laughs ] That's pretty embarrassing.

-I'm not too much of a singer.

♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out to the crowd ♪ ♪ Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks ♪ ♪ I don't care if I ever get back ♪ ♪ Well, we'll root, root, root for the home team ♪ ♪ If they don't win, it's a shame ♪ ♪ One, two, three strikes, you out ♪ ♪ At the old ballgame ♪ Got it.

[ Claps ] -Come on, everybody, sing.

Let's all sing.

[ Cheers and applause ] -World Series meant you had to wear a sweater.

It was always cool out and great, and the leaves were already changing, and it felt -- We used to call it World Series weather.

And before the play-offs and they added all of these other divisions and everything, there were eight teams in both leagues.

So it was less time, so it came earlier.

So it meant it was a Jewish holiday, so there'd be no school, or they were taking the census.

Now, the census was somebody would come to your house and go, "How many you got here?

Four?

Okay."

But you stayed home.

You had to stay home.

They were counting heads.

It was absolutely hysterical.

But you got to see a couple of games.

The Yankees and the Dodgers -- there was nothing like it.

It was like watching Ali fight every day.

You know, it was that excitement that you could just remember and sitting there like this.

You took the phone off the hook.

You didn't do any errands.

You just sat there, and you screamed at people you loved, and you ate things you never would eat before, but you made your whole day around it.

It was the World Series.

You'd either go to the deli and get something, and it sat there, and you had it all organized for the game.

[ "Take Me Out to the ballgame" plays ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -In 1955, the Dodgers won the National League pennant for the eighth time.

Seven times Brooklyn had played in the World Series, and seven times they had been defeated, forced to wait till next year.

♪♪♪ But the Dodgers were a great team in 1955.

Center fielder Duke Snider, the Sporting News Player of the Year, led the league in RBIs.

Gil Hodges, the veteran first baseman, had 27 home runs and hit .289.

Carl Furillo, "The Reading Rifle," batted .314.

But Jackie Robinson's age was beginning to show, and his average had fallen to .256.

And pitcher Johnny Podres had had a bad year, although two of his most important games were ahead of him.

[ Cheers and applause ] Once again, they faced the New York Yankees, who had already beaten them in the series five times in a row.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] Brooklyn fans braced themselves for more disappointment as New York took the first two games despite the sparkling base-running of Jackie Robinson.

♪♪♪ No team in history had ever come back from so far behind to win a seven-game series.

-When 1955's World Series came around, there was that awesome fear that it was gonna happen all over again.

And in fact, when the Dodgers lost the first two games, it seemed like, "God.

Once again, the Yankees are gonna do it to us."

-Ebbets Field for game number three.

Them bums sniffed the good air of Flatbush and came to life.

Eighth inning, score tied, Roy Campanella stepped in against Vic Raschi.

Campy atoned for previous failures at the plate with that one.

His round tripper put the Dodgers out front in game three, and they stayed there.

-But the bat of Roy Campanella and the pitching of Johnny Podres won the 3rd game for Brooklyn 8-3.

[ Cheers and applause ] The Dodgers took the fourth game with home runs by Campanella, Gil Hodges, and Duke Snider.

In game five, two more home runs by Duke Snider and another by outfielder Sandy Amoros gave Brooklyn the win.

The Dodgers were now ahead three games to two.

They had come from behind.

[ Cheers and applause ] But five Yankee runs in the first inning of the sixth game built New York an insurmountable lead, and the Dodgers lost.

The series stood at 3-3.

The seventh and deciding game would be played in Yankee Stadium -- enemy turf for Brooklyn fans.

It would be Johnny Podres' second series start.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Bob Grim delivers to Gil Hodges, who sends a fly ball into right center.

-In the top of the sixth inning, Gil Hodges drove in his second run of the game for the Dodgers.

-Brooklyn leads 2-nothing.

-Johnny Podres had held New York scoreless through five innings, but in the bottom of the sixth, the Yankees threatened.

He walked Billy Martin.

Gil McDougald reached first base on a bunt.

[ Cheers and applause ] The next batter was Yogi Berra.

-Everybody is sitting there, trying to figure out how fate will turn on the Dodgers this time.

Sure, they're ahead 2-0.

Sure, the game is more than half-over.

But these are the Yankees, and something is going to happen.

-Gil McDougald off first.

Yogi Berra the batter.

The outfield swung way around toward right.

Here's the pitch.

Berra swings.

And it does... [ Cheers and applause ] -Playing left field was Sandy Amoros.

-He makes a sensational running one-hand catch.

He turns... -McDougald was thrown out trying to get back to first, and the next batter, Hank Bauer, grounded out.

-The Yankees' rally is stymied.

-It was the play of the series.

-And I think the very fact that that play stuffed the cheers back down 60,000 Yankee fans' throats, it was the emotion of that moment, the surprise of that moment that elevates the play.

-Berra is basically a bull hitter.

-Berra never hit the ball that way.

Amoros was playing way off the line.

-Way in to left center.

-So you're thinking, "Will it bounce high enough to be a ground-rule double, or will it stay along that low wall and maybe both runners can score?"

-Races over toward the foul line.

-And then, out of nowhere, here comes Amoros, and he's got the glove on the right hand instead of on the left, which makes the play possible.

Bam!

He's got it.

-And the Yankees' rally is stymied.

♪♪♪ -I knew at that moment we were gonna win.

There's always these omens in baseball, and somehow, when they strike out, and they don't do good in a certain inning, you think they're gonna lose even if they win.

I knew then they were gonna win.

-The Yankees threatened again in the eighth, but Podres snuffed them out.

-He's out!

-It was still 2-0 Brooklyn.

If Podres could stop the Yankees in the ninth, the Dodgers would win their first World Series.

[ Cheers and applause ] -It's a tense struggle into the last of the ninth.

Johnny Podres pitching brilliant ball, one out to go.

Elston Howard grounds to short.

Reese throws to Hodges.

Brooklyn wins.

And the Dodgers go wild as they mob pitcher Podres, who hurls Brooklyn to its first world championship.

[ Cheers and applause ] For the Dodgers, it had always been "Wait until next year," but this was the year.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ -Moments have a -- have a tendency, I think, to relate to your age.

I was more impressionable when I first started.

Therefore, the wins and the losses -- the euphoria was great, the depression was deeper.

I think now I take things in stride.

I put them in proper perspective.

Maybe a moment in time -- happy moment -- would be 1955, because I knew this team.

I knew their frustrations.

I had grown up with them even though I wasn't working with them.

The Brooklyn Dodgers had lost to the Yankees in '41.

They had lost to them in '47.

They had lost to them in '49.

They had lost to them in '52.

They had lost to them in '53.

And it was just, "Oh, you know, gosh."

But in '55, they did the remarkable.

They won it.

And I was the one who was able to say on television, "Ladies and gentlemen, the Brooklyn Dodgers are the champions of the world."

And that's all I said.

Not another word.

And all winter, people said to me, "How could you have been so calm at such a tremendous moment?"

Well, I wasn't.

I could not have said another word without breaking down in tears.

-Today was grand, boys!

It was just terrific!

That's all.

-I just feel wonderful.

I don't know what else to say.

I just feel great.

-You ever feel nervous out there?

-Oh, no.

I felt good all the way.

I was calm, and I was like a pro out there today, a real pro.

-♪ Go, Johnny, go ♪ ♪ Go ♪ ♪ Go, Johnny, go ♪ ♪ Go ♪ ♪ Go, Johnny, go ♪ ♪ Go ♪ ♪ Johnny B. Goode ♪ -"Please don't interrupt, because you haven't heard this one before -- the Brooklyn Dodgers, champions of the baseball world.

Honest.

At precisely 4:44 p.m. today in Yankee Stadium, off came the 52-year slur on the ability of the Dodgers to win a World Series.

For at that moment, the last straining Yankee was out at first base, and the day, the game, and the 1955 series belonged to Brooklyn."

Shirley Povich, Washington Post.

-♪ Go ♪ ♪ Johnny B. Goode ♪ -The game was at Yankee Stadium, and they were going to have a celebration in Brooklyn.

But there was a couple of hours in between, so many of us in the Dodger group went to the Lexington Hotel to wash up and relax.

And by the time we got down to the Lexington Hotel in New York, It was fall.

Football was in the air.

The streets were quiet.

They were going about their business.

And we left the Lexington Hotel, went through the Battery Tunnel, came out on the other side, and it was New Orleans chaos.

♪♪♪ [ Horns honking ] [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Telephone circuits in the borough collapsed from overload.

Western Union sent and received the greatest flood of telegrams since V-J Day.

[ Horns honking ] Caravans of honking cars blared up and down Flatbush Avenue and Ocean Parkway.

The skies over Brooklyn filled with fireworks, and Joseph Saden, owner of Joe's Delicatessen at 342 Utica Avenue, set up a sidewalk stand and handed out free hot dogs -- a gesture one reporter said that "For a Brooklyn merchant, is but one step from total numbness."

-And I can remember afterwards, my father came home from work, and we celebrated that night, and he gave me even a little drink of wine, which is the first one I'd ever had in my life.

And it was just that feeling, "We made it."

And I remember the next day in the newspapers, they had in The Daily News "We ain't bums," or something like that, or, "This is next year."

'Cause we always used to say, "Wait till next year."

My father cut it out, and we had it in our kitchen for as long as I can remember.

-You know, all of those years, the great, dyed-in-the-wool Dodger fan hadn't had a World Series, and they had some good ball clubs.

And the Giants had, the Yanks had, but they hadn't won.

So now they come up, and they win it.

♪♪♪ That was it.

That was New York City when it was New York City.

-When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money?

-Every dollar of it.

Every dollar of it.

-Who gets it?

-He does.

Sometimes his wife comes out and collects it.

-Whose wife?

-Yes.

Why not, Lou?

He's earned it.

-Who did?

-Yes.

-Look, when you pay off the first baseman every month, do you get a receipt from the guy?

-Sure.

-How does he sign his name?

-Who.

-The guy you give the money to.

-Who.

-The guy you give the money to.

-Well, that's how he signs it.

-That's how who signs it?

-Yes.

-That dummy.

-That's it.

-Who.

-Who.

Right.

-Look, you go to the first baseman, and you say to him, "Here's your money.

Sign the receipt."

How does he sign his name?

-Who.

-The guy you give the money to.

-That's how he signs it.

-That's how who signs it?

-Yes.

-Sure.

-You got to get a receipt from the guy, don't you?

-I get one, Lou.

-How does the guy on first base sign his name?

-Who.

-The guy on first.

I'm asking you, when you give the guy the money, what's the guy's name that you give the money to?

-Now wait a minute, what signs his own.

-Who signs his own?

-No.

Who signs his.

I mean, what's the guy's name on first?

-What is on second base.

-I'm not asking you who's on second!

-Who's on first.

-I don't know.

-Third base.

-Third base.

-It was before television.

It was in towns where the population, like Brunswick, Georgia, could be something under 15,000, and you could get 3,000 people to come to the ballpark every night.

Now, if you're under 15,000, and you take out those who are too young, those who were too old, those who were working at the gas stations, and the all-night diners or whatever, you got an immense percentage of the population to come to the ballgame.

It was their principal recreation, and they tied themselves emotionally to these players in the most profound and extraordinary ways, and I loved it.

I was hit by a pitch... And hospitalized.

I was hit on a 3-2 pitch-- because I was dug in, and you couldn't back away -- turned my head got hit in the back of the head and was out for awhile.

I had trouble with my eyesight.

And that was near the end of the season and that ended the season effectively for me.

I went to the doctor in the off-season, and they said, "You should take one more season off."

And by then, Matilda I had decided to get married, and that was the end of my career.

I like to say that the residual effects of the hematoma, the blood clot, eventually drove me into politics.

But I was not a good prospect, really, despite what the scouting reports said, because I didn't feel that it was right for me.

And therefore, there was a little bit of reserve.

I didn't give it everything I'm afraid because I didn't think I was good enough.

And we learn from the rest of our lives you can't make it anywhere unless you go all-out, and that's part of baseball, too, you've got to give it everything.

-The Yankees and Dodgers faced off again in 1956, and once again, the series went to seven games before New York beat Brooklyn for the 6th time in 15 years.

-Mickey Mantle achieves his third home run of the series.

-But it was the fifth game that made baseball history.

On October 8, 1956, Yankee Don Larsen, a mediocre pitcher, did something no other man had ever done before in a World Series.

-There's a superstition in baseball that when you're pitching a no hitter, you don't talk about it, and he was going up and down the bench trying to get somebody to talk to him.

He said, "Mick, I'm pitching a perfect game here.

What do you think about that?"

I'm going, "Ugh, get outta here," you know.

I'm trying to talk off and leave him by himself, and he was going around to everybody talking about that.

And it's something you don't do, you know.

-Well, alright.

Let's all take a deep breath.

Yankee Stadium's shivering in its concrete foundation right now.

Mr. Don Larsen.

-Dale Mitchell up there with two away in the top of the ninth.

Here comes the pitch.

A strike call.

Batter's 1-1, and this crowd, just straining forward at every pitch.

I'll guarantee that nobody, but nobody, has left this ballpark.

Here it comes.

A swing and a miss.

Two strikes, ball one, to Dale Mitchell.

Listen to this crowd.

Larsen is ready, gets the sign.

Two strikes, ball one.

Here comes the pitch.

Strike three!

A no hitter!

A perfect game for Don Larsen!

Yogi Berra runs out there!

He leaps on Larsen!

And he's swarmed by his teammates!

Listen to this crowd roar!

The first World Series no hitter -- a perfect performance by Don Larsen.

-It was a perfect game -- 27 batters up, 27 batters out.

-No runs, no hits... -I was in school in a tough New York public school.

Every teacher was letting us listen.

It was the seventh inning.

We got to our last class, the French class, taught by a crusty old-fashioned teacher who didn't know her baseball from a kumquat or anything else.

I was appointed to plead.

I said, "You've got to let us listen.

This has never happened in baseball."

She looked at me and said, "Young man, this class is a French class."

Luckily my friend, Bob Hacker, who was a Dodger fan, had a portable radio with an earphone, so he snuck it on and we sat in the back.

Halfway through, I feel this sepulchral tap on my shoulder.

And I look around and he's ashen, and he looks at me and he says, "He did it.

That bastard did it."

So I took my jacket and I threw it up in the air.

Mrs. Gurrin was teaching the declension of the verb écrire.

She looked at me icily, knowing perfectly well what had happened, and said, "young man, I'm sure the verb écrire can't be that exciting."

-64,517 have seen it, millions more on television.

-It would be the last World Series the Brooklyn Dodgers would ever play in.

-...Retiring 27 Dodgers in a row.

♪♪♪ -On August 19, 1957, in the capital of baseball, the New York Giants made an announcement that stunned the city -- they were moving to San Francisco.

-The loss of the Giants was absolutely heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking.

I went to the last game they played, and with my young daughter, and I just couldn't believe this was happening.

It was as if baseball itself was ending.

-Their last game in the Polo Grounds was September 29, 1957.

The Giants lost.

-The move was going to be made anyway.

At the time San Francisco was broached to us, Minneapolis was the city we were going to move to.

We had a farm team in Minneapolis.

And that move was in the works because we hadn't been drawing and people in the Polo Grounds -- 600,000 one year, then another 600,000 the next -- so the move was really a necessity at that time.

San Francisco came to us, and we were delighted that we made that switch.

-It ripped at the loyalties of people who felt that the teams were loyal to them as they were to the teams -- That it was a two-way street.

And it was probably the first time in 20, 30 years that fans were reminded that this was a business as much as it was a game.

-There was more bad news in Flatbush.

"Brooklyn -- 'a community of over three million people -- 'proud, hurt, jealous, 'seeking geographical, social, emotional status 'as a city apart, alone, and sufficient.

"One could not live for eight years in Brooklyn "and not catch its spirit of devotion "to its baseball club, "such as no other city in America equaled.

"Call it loyalty, and so it was.

"It would be a crime "against a community of three million people "to move the Dodgers.

"A baseball club in any city in America "is a quasi-public institution, "and in Brooklyn, the Dodgers were public without the quasi."

Branch Rickey.

-Well, I can remember, in the summer of '56, when the rumors started, I never, ever believed they were going to leave.

I remember talking to my father, about it and saying, "It can't happen, can it?"

And he told me no.

He said, "Don't worry.

Something will work out."

And there was all this talka bout a new stadium in Brooklyn.

We used to get so angry when they'd talk meanly about Ebbets Field.

It was like an aspersion on us somehow.

They kept saying, "It's so dilapidated.

It's in a run-down area.

It's so small.

Nobody wants to go there."

We wanted to go there all the time.

so somehow when they talked about leaving, it was talking about leaving us behind in a certain way.

-Dodger owner Walter O'Malley had inherited a poorly run franchise, worked hard to turn it into a winner, and then watched as attendance declined steadily throughout the '50s.

Night baseball had once lifted the fortunes of the Dodgers, but now white fans were more and more reluctant to travel to the black neighborhood Flatbush had become.

O'Malley loathed Branch Rickey, whom he had maneuvered out of his job in 1950, took a dim view of the black crowds that were coming to Ebbets Field, and claimed he was losing money, even though the Dodgers were one of baseball's richest clubs in baseball.

When he saw how much the Braves were making in Milwaukee, O'Malley demanded that the City of New York build him a brand-new stadium, or he would take his team elsewhere.

-Do you feel, Mr. Stark, that a ball-club owner has the right to take his club anywhere he wants to?

-No.

I feel that way.

I feel that a franchise belongs to the city, regardless what city it is in.

It belongs to the people of this city.

-The people of Brooklyn rallied to keep their team.

-"Dear Mr. Mayor, I cannot impress upon you too much "how important it is "to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn.

"It keeps the children off the streets during the day.

"Instead of acting like tough guys, "they try to imitate Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, "Roy Campanella.

"And the Dodgers, being composed "of Negroes, Spanish, and whites, "are a good example of how good you can get "if everyone works together, regardless of race or color.

Respectfully yours, T.

Ciappina."

-"Dear Mayor Wagner, I'm a man of very few words, "so I will come straight to the point.

"I voted for you.

I pay your salary.

"I want the Dodgers in Brooklyn.

"I don't want any excuse "from you or any of your men at City Hall.

"I want the Dodgers in Brooklyn!

"And you can do it "by building the sports center.

"You had better get it built, or you'll not get a vote from me."

Signed R. Cucco.

-The city refused to bow to O'Malley's demands, and he announced he would move the Dodgers 3,013 miles away to Los Angeles, California, for the 1958 season.

-It was, uh, your Uncle died.

It was a death in the family.

I wasn't really a Dodger fan, but you loved that they were there because there was tremendous talent on that team -- Jackie and Gil and Duke and Pee Wee and Roy.

Even though I was a Yankee fan, we beat them pretty much every year with the exceptions of '55, you'd acknowledge that they were great teams.

It was really like a death in the family, and there was great mourning, and then complicated by the fact that the Giants left.

So two -- two great spirits really left New York, and I think it was a really sad time.

I felt bad about it because it was that, "If they could leave, if baseball could leave, what about -- what's next?"

-Then I remember, in October of '57, when the city council in Los Angeles finally okay'd the deal and my father came home that night, I remember just going to the door, when he came home, and putting my arms around him and crying.

And I was then 14 years old.

I wasn't a little kid anymore.

But it was as if my childhood was over.

In fact, my mother died a couple months after that.

And we moved from the house in which I'd been born to an apartment and lost the Dodgers.

My father never transferred our allegiance to Los Angeles, nor did I.

And baseball was gone out of both of our lives for many years until he finally became a Mets fan, later in the '60s, and I, of course, became a Red Sox fan.

-That was the great tragic moment in the '50s of New York.

It was the beginning of the decline we continue to observe today.

1958, both O'Malley and Stoneham decided to pull their teams out.

Both were profitable.

There were just more profits to be made in California.

It was a cynical, purely commercially oriented move, which was immensely profitable in that narrow sense and ripped out the soul of New York City.

-On September 24, 1957, a few thousand Dodger fans turned out to see the last game at Ebbets Field.

[ "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" plays slowly ] Gil Hodges drove in the last run, but Brooklyn lost.

Things went from bad to worse.

Roy Campanella, their beloved catcher, was permanently paralyzed in a car crash in January of 1958.

-A deep, deep sadness.

You know, there's a theologian, Michael Novak, who says that a community is better off losing its opera house or its symphony orchestra or its church -- here's a theologian speaking -- than its ball team.

Brooklyn has never been the same since the Dodgers were taken away.

-But Southern Californians were delighted.

To them, Walter O'Malley was a hero -- the man who had brought them Major League Baseball.

At first, they played in the Los Angeles coliseum while a brand-new stadium was being built in a ravine just North of City Hall.

♪♪♪ Jackie Robinson did not go West with the Dodgers.

He had retired at the end of the 1956 season, weary and suffering from 10 years of injuries and abuse but still determined to fully integrate the game.

-"When things look dark, void, and altogether hopeless "to the colored youth of America, "when they need an inspiring thought "that should urge them onward to the road of achievement, "despite forbidding obstacles, "they will only need to read and reflect upon the remarkable career of Jackie Robinson."

Kansas City call.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -My father and I had nothing in common, sad to say, nothing, except baseball.

My father took me to Yankee Stadium in 1959.

I was 7 years old.

The Yankees lost to the Orioles, 7-2.

Mantle didn't play.

He was hurt.

And at that time, after the game was over, you could leave by way of the field.

They would open up the bullpen gates, and you could walk around the warning track, take in the entire majestic, enormous ballpark, and then walk out the back of the bullpens into the street.

Game was over, and my father took me by the hand and walked me past the dugouts.

Looked into those dugouts and thought to myself, at age 7, "Mickey Mantle sat there.

Whitey Ford sat there."

And I was careful, careful not to disturb anything.

Looked down at the red clay of the warning track, but it wasn't my place to kick it and to move it around.

I was a visitor.

I was being allowed to see this.

And we got out to dead center field, where the monuments to Ruth and Huggins and Gehrig were, and I stood there, 7 years old, and I started to cry.

And part of it was just the surroundings -- so impressive, the facade, the enormity of the place.

A 7-year-old kid, literally, could not see over the mound from that distance.

Home plate looked like it was a mile away.

The place was so imposing, but also, I really thought that these guys were buried there.

I thought that this was a sacred Yankee burial ground, and surely when DiMaggio when Mantle passed away, they'd be buried there, too.

And my father tried to explain to me, yes, these men are dead, but they're buried somewhere else.

I would have none of it.

I was convinced that that was their tombstone.

Now, if you ask me, "what is the happiest memory of your father?"

To me, that day.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -On Wednesday, September 28, 1960, at Fenway Park in Boston, 42-year-old Ted Williams -- the last man to hit .400 -- came to bat for the last time in his career.

Injuries the season before had brought his batting average below .300 for the first time, and he had felt so bad about it that he had volunteered for a cut in pay.

Despite steady pain from a pinched nerve in his neck, he had brought his average back up again to .316 in 1960, and despite having missed four seasons in the military, had a lifetime total of 520 home runs and had compiled the highest career batting average since Rogers Hornsby -- .344.

Now he had finally had enough.

10,454 loyal fans came out to say good-bye.

-Lousy day -- damp, drizzly, heavy.

And I hit two balls that I think some days would have gone out for sure, but this day they didn't.

Caught them up against the fence.

But the last time up, I got the count 2-0 on Fisher, and I missed a ball.

I don't know yet how I missed that ball.

I know he thought he threw it by me, he thought he threw it by me, and he couldn't wait it.

Now, there is an experience, uh, thought there because I could just sense, he said, "Gee, give me that ball.

I'll throw another one by him."

And I could just see all of that developing in his own mind.

And sure enough, he come back with the same pitch, and I hit it good, and it went for a home run, which is kind of a storybook finish.

-...Like to hit one out of here right now.

-There's a drive to deep right center!

This may be gone!

Crowd sitting back there watching.

Home run -- Ted Williams!

-Williams hit it into the Red Sox bullpen, scattering his teammates.

Then he circled the bases for the last time.

His long career of feuding with the fans and the press was over.

Some hoped he might finally tip his cap, something he had not done since his rookie year.

-I just-- I just couldn't do it.

I even thought about it going around the bases, knowing this is my last time there.

It was 80/20 of not doing it.

So there was just a little thought of it but that was it.

-"I had a really warm feeling," he said later, "but it just wouldn't have been me."

-For my money, Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of all time.

I'd take him over Ruth.

I'd take him over Cobb.

I'd take him over Cobb because of the combination of power and average, take him over Ruth, because with Ruth you can only speculate about what he would have done in the modern era.

Ted Williams hit .388 at the age of 39 in 1957.

He was what few of us ever become.

He was exactly what he set out to be.

He said he wanted to be able to walk down the street someday and have people say, "there goes the greatest hitter who ever lived," and if they don't say that, it's only because they don't know what they're talking about.

-Let me explain to you how big $2,000 was.

Mickey Mantle signed the year before with the New York Yankees, I think Tom Greenway signed him for about 1,100 bucks.

I got $2,000 the next year.

We were together in Buffalo at a drug rally, and Mickey Mantle said to somebody, "The two dumbest scouts in America signed me and Cuomo.

"They signed me for only $1,100, "and I went to the hall of fame.

"They signed him for $2,000, and he still couldn't hit a barn with a paddle."

The bonus money eventually wound up on the hand of Matilda Raffa, who became Matilda Raffa Cuomo.

I bought a ring for Matilda, got married, and it's wonderful.

In addition to all the other magnificent things that I've had out of that marriage with Matilda, I have the permanent recollection of a scout's mistake.

-♪ Yeah ♪ [ Bat hits ball ] ♪ Yeah ♪ -♪ A-did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?

♪ ♪ It went zooming 'cross the left-field wall ♪ -♪ Hey, boy ♪ -♪ Yes, yes, Jackie hit that ball ♪ ♪ He swung his bat, and the crowd went wild ♪ ♪ 'Cause he hit that ball a solid mile ♪ -♪ Hey, boy ♪ -♪ Oh, yes, yes, Jackie hit that ball ♪ ♪ Well, now, Satchel Paige is mellow ♪ ♪ And so is Campanella ♪ ♪ Newcombe and Doby, too ♪ ♪ But it's a natural fact when Jackie comes to bat ♪ ♪ The other team is through ♪ ♪ A-did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?

♪ ♪ Really hit it, yes, and that ain't all ♪ ♪ He stole home ♪ ♪ Yes, yes, Jackie's real gone ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ A boo a doo, doo doo doo doo ♪ ♪ Dub a dub a doy ♪ ♪ Duh duh duh duh duh doy, oh!

♪ ♪ A-did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?

♪ ♪ Really hit it, yes, and that ain't all ♪ ♪ He stole home ♪ ♪ Yes, yes, Jackie's real gone ♪ ♪ Yes, Jackie's ♪ ♪ He's a real gone guy ♪ ♪ Doo wooo-oooh ♪ [ Bat hits ball ] -Yeah!

[ Cheers and applause ]