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[ "Auld Lang Syne" playing] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -On February 23, 1960, a brass band played "Auld Lang Syne," and 200 die-hard fans watched as a 2-ton wrecking ball, painted to resemble a baseball, began to demolish Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the home of the Dodgers from 1913 to 1957.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Roy Campanella was given an urn filled with dirt from behind home plate, his home for 10 years before a car accident ended his career.

♪♪♪ For 44 years, since Charles Hercules Ebbets had built his park on a garbage dump called Pigtown, Ebbets Field had united the hopes of the borough of Brooklyn and had been home to Wilbert Robinson and Dazzy Vance, Red Barber and Hilda Chester and the Dodgers Sym-phony, Leo Durocher and Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider, Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson.

♪♪♪ -It was baseball, and that the Brooklyn Dodgers would up and leave -- to Los Angeles, yet.

Which seemed like why don't you go to Borneo?

You know, the only time I'd seen L.A. was the "Mickey Mouse Club" would show, "And Disneyland is under construction."

And it looked like the Amazon.

Where'd they go?

And it was, why here, so far away?

And it was a mountaintop.

They're preparing for a ballpark on a mountaintop?

No.

In the city, next to the dry cleaners so you could talk about it when you pick up your suit that had a mustard stain from the game before.

Where's the corner bar?

Where's the arguments?

You know, where's the trolley -- Where's the subway?

How do you get there?

Where -- They got palm trees?

What's Cary Grant and Doris Day doing at a game?

You know, where's Al Schmenklewitz who should sit there?

Where's the band?

What's gonna happen to that band that was in right field?

That crazy band.

You know, what's gonna happen?

[ Electric guitar playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" ] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -During the 1960s, the Cold War almost became nuclear war over missiles in Cuba.

Israel defeated its Arab neighbors in a six-day war, and the Beatles invaded the United States.

Americans made it to Woodstock and to the moon.

Americans lost a president and a prophet.

Americans fought in Vietnam and then went into the streets to stop that fighting.

New civil rights were won, but the country seemed to be coming apart.

American cities were set ablaze.

Campuses erupted.

Generations clashed.

Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemingway and Rogers Hornsby died.

Cal Ripken, Jr. and Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens were born.

In the 1960s, the New York Yankees' dominance would finally end, but not before cherished old records fell to new and complicated heroes.

The Los Angeles Dodgers would break all attendance records in their new home and would win two world championships, while four weeks of inspired hitting by a determined outfielder would drive the Boston Red Sox to within a game of realizing their 48-year-old dream.

Two pitchers would dominate the decade -- an imposing right-hander so aggressive that batters were terrified to stand in against him and a shy, soft-spoken left-hander who began his career with precious little control and then turned himself into perhaps the finest pitcher of all time.

The players would begin to challenge the authority of the owners, and one of the worst teams in baseball history would be transformed for a moment into the best.

For the first time, baseball would move inside, and almost all of the old ball parks would be demolished.

For the first time, football would seriously challenge baseball as the national pastime, and some began to wonder if the game mattered at all.

-In the '60s, I was in college and in graduate school, and baseball didn't have the vitality for me that the civil rights movement did.

I got very active in going south, and somehow, the events of the world became so important that I didn't feel I had the time to indulge in the luxury of my childhood.

It was also because I hadn't yet found the Red Sox, and I had lost the Dodgers.

So that gap in my love of baseball fit a certain time in history when I was so busy in marches that there wasn't time to sit in baseball games.

♪♪♪ -♪ Let me tell you about a girl I know ♪ ♪ I met her walkin' down an uptown street ♪ ♪ She's so fine, you know, I wish she was mine ♪ ♪ I get shook up every time we meet ♪ ♪ I'm talkin' about you ♪ ♪ Yeah, I do mean you ♪ ♪ I'm just tryin' to get next to you ♪ ♪♪♪ -In 1960, the New York Yankees were in the World Series again, their 10th appearance in 12 years.

They were heavily favored to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, playing in their first series since 1927.

-♪ So I can get a message to you ♪ ♪♪♪ -When the Yankees won in the series, they won big.

In the first six games, New York outscored Pittsburgh by 29 runs.

♪♪♪ But the Pirates hung on... -♪ I'm talkin' about you ♪ -Led by pitcher Elroy Face... -♪ I do mean you ♪ -Outfielder Roberto Clemente, and second baseman Bill Mazeroski.

-♪ Come on, let me get a message through ♪ -In the seventh and final game, with the score tied 9-9 in the bottom of the 9th and Ralph Terry on the mound for New York, Bill Mazeroski came to bat.

-Here's a ball one -- too high, now, to Mazeroski.

Well, a little while ago, when we mentioned that this one, in typical fashion, was going right to the wire, little did we know.

Here's the swing and a high fly ball going deep to left.

This may do it!

Back to the wall goes Berra.

It is... over the fence!

Home run!

The Pirates win!

[ Cheers and applause ] -It was the first time the World Series had ever ended with a home run.

-We have seen and shared in one of baseball's great moments.

-Bill Mazeroski's home run in 1960.

Seven games, Pirates in Pittsburgh.

We beat them 12-0, 10-0, 16-3.

We're into the last inning.

We tie it up.

Mickey made an amazing base-running play.

A little head fake, and Gil McDougald scoring.

I'm sorry that I'm like this, but it's baseball.

And Bill Mazeroski steps up, and Ralph Terry hangs a slider, and Bill Mazeroski hits it 420 feet, and the Pirates win the World Series.

I still hurt about it.

I still feel bad about it.

-Ladies and gentlemen, Mazeroski has hit a 1-0 pitch over the left field fence at Forbes Field to win the 1960 World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates by a score of 10-9.

-It was terrible.

I'd been with the Yankees 10 years at that time.

And I cried all the way home on the airplane.

I just couldn't quit, you know?

It's the worst I've ever felt in my life.

It was the only time that we ever played in the World Series where I felt like the best team got beat.

-The Pittsburgh Pirates, the 1960 world champions, defeat the New York Yankees.

The Pirates 10, and the Yankees 9.

-There is one thing that all my friends know must never be discussed in my presence, and that's Bill Mazeroski's home run that won the 1960 World Series for a grossly overmatched Pittsburgh Pirates team against my beloved Yankees.

There's a wonderful resolution that many people don't realize.

It's one of the great ironies of baseball history.

but these things happen.

Two years later, in the seventh game of the World Series in 1962, with the Yankees ahead by one run in the bottom of the last inning with two men on base, Ralph Terry was on the mound again, facing Willie McCovey.

Willie McCovey hits a line drive that seemed sure to go for a hit -- and Terry would have lost yet another World Series -- Richardson jumps up, stabs the line drive, and they win that one.

So there is resolution.

There is rejuvenation.

There is reward and victory after tragedy.

-Casey Stengel, the disappointed Yankee manager, was 70 years old that October of 1960.

He was one of the winningest managers in baseball history, but five days after his series defeat to the Pirates, the Yankee front office fired him.

He was too old to manage, they said.

Casey Stengel said he'd never make the mistake of being 70 again.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ By the 1960s, Americans were deserting the big cities for the Sun Belt and West Coast in record numbers.

Impressed with the profits the Dodgers and Giants were making in California, Major League Baseball decided to expand, adding four new teams.

With the birth of the Los Angeles Angels in 1961, the American League, too, finally stretched all the way to the Pacific.

The new team would soon move to Anaheim and become the California Angels.

Meanwhile, Cal Griffith moved his battered Senators out of Washington, west to Bloomington, Minnesota, where they became the Twins.

A new version of the Senators moved into D.C. Stadium but fared little better than their predecessors.

11 years later, they would move to Arlington, Texas, and become the Texas Rangers.

The national game would no longer be played in the nation's capital.

The National League added two new teams -- the New York Metropolitans and the Colt .45s, who began a three-year stint in a temporary park in Houston, Texas, braving heat, humidity, and ravenous mosquitoes until their all-weather stadium could be built.

For baseball and the country, times were changing fast.

♪♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -Curt Flood of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Here's the pitch.

A swing and a miss.

-The glare is that I don't particularly like you, and I am going to beat you any way I can.

It is concentration of trying to block out 50,000 people, either for you or against you.

It is trying to remember all of the things that make you a good hitter and trying to make them go into action immediately, right now.

"I need it right now in order to do this against this great pitcher."

He's a major leaguer too, you know, so you have to give him credit.

Incredible things go on inside your head.

-By 1961, Curt Flood had become one of the most valuable players on August Busch's St. Louis Cardinals.

Although baseball had led the way in integration 14 years before, Flood and his Black teammates had to endure the segregated facilities and persistent racism that still plagued Black ballplayers and Black Americans alike.

-May I tell you how subtle the prejudice was?

I saw Mr. Busch on the field in St. Petersburg, and he asked me -- by this time, we had a relationship where I could converse with the owner -- and he asked me how things were going, and I told him, I said, "Mr. Busch, it's really unfortunate that we have to stay over in" -- I didn't say "colored town," but that's what I meant, and, honestly, a look of surprise went across Mr. Busch's face that amazed me, and he said, "Do you mean to tell me that you're not staying here at the hotel with the rest of the fellas?"

And I said, "Mr. Busch, don't you know that we're staying about 5 miles outside of town in a Negro section?"

And he didn't know, but it shows how -- how you can segregate yourself into the back seat of a limousine and not really know what's going on.

-Flood and two other teammates, Bill White and Bob Gibson, now insisted that the Cardinals desegregate their spring training facilities in Florida.

The Cardinals agreed and then bought a hotel to house all of their players.

Curt Flood went on to become a solid .300 hitter and the best defensive center fielder in the game, winning seven consecutive Gold Glove Awards.

-I was told by a general manager that a white player had received a higher raise than me because white people require more money to live than Black people.

That is why I wasn't going to get a raise.

♪♪♪ -"The greatness of Ty Cobb was something that had to be seen, and to see him was to remember him forever."

George Sisler.

♪♪♪ -On April 27, 1961, a week before Freedom Riders demonstrated against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, Tyrus Raymond Cobb threw out the first ball at the opening home game of the brand-new Los Angeles Angels.

He took a dim view of expansion and the other changes in the game, but the Angels' general manager was an old teammate.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ It was his last visit to a ball park, and he stayed only two innings.

He was 74 years old and dying of cancer.

He had traveled more or less ceaselessly since leaving the game, drinking, gambling, quarreling with waiters and taxi drivers and sales clerks, deploring the integration of the game, charging fans for his autograph, driving off first one wife and then another.

He stayed on the road as long as he could, carrying with him everywhere a Luger and a paper bag filled with $1 million in securities, and each day, swallowing a quart of bourbon mixed with milk to dull the pain.

"Where's anybody who cares about me?"

he asked one visitor.

"The world's lousy, no good."

He died on July 17, 1961.

His lifetime batting average was .367, the highest in history.

400 people attended his funeral at Royston, Georgia, the little town where he had learned his baseball as a boy, most of them little leaguers to whom he was only a name from baseball legend.

♪♪♪ But of all the men who had actually played with him, only three showed up.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ "If I'd had my life to live over again," he had told a caller toward the end, "I'd have done things a little different.

I would have had more friends."

♪♪♪ -Strike!

-Strike?

Hey, ump, shake your head!

Your eyeballs are stuck!

It was a ball.

It was that far from the plate.

-Little lady, will you let me umpire this game?

You been on my back all night.

-Mickey, you saw that pitch.

It was a ball, wasn't it?

-It looked like it.

-You're out of the game, Mantle.

-What?

Roger, how'd that pitch look to you?

-It could have missed the corner.

-You're out, Maris.

-Yogi... -It's a perfect strike.

The ump was right.

-I don't like sarcasm, Berra.

You're out of the game too.

-You can't do that!

-Lady... -Where's the manager?

-I think he's hiding.

-Oh!

♪♪♪ -♪ Come on, baby ♪ ♪ Let's do the twist ♪ -In the summer of 1961, the record of 60 home runs in a single season, set by Babe Ruth in 1927 and once thought unbreakable, was under siege.

-♪ Twist ♪ -With the quality of pitching thinned by expansion and the season lengthened to 162 games, Ruth's mark suddenly seemed within the grasp of not one, but two Yankee outfielders -- Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

Mickey Mantle was now in his 11th year with the Yankees, but still the best switch-hitter in the game, despite the pain from injuries that never left him.

Roger Maris was his roommate, a reticent, moody newcomer from North Dakota, uneasy with the press.

But he could hit.

In 1960, he was voted the American League's Most Valuable Player.

In 1961, Mantle started strongest.

By the time Maris had hit four home runs, Mantle had 10.

-♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Twist ♪ ♪ Yeah, baby, twist ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Just like this ♪ -But in midsummer, Maris surged ahead, slamming 24 home runs in 38 games.

♪♪♪ -But now the pressure on Maris intensified.

Would he break Ruth's record, reporters asked again and again.

"How the hell do I know?"

he answered.

"I don't want to be Babe Ruth."

He wasn't Babe Ruth, and Yankee fans never let him forget it.

Even the front office tried to change the line-up to favor the more popular Mantle.

Under the relentless strain, Maris' hair began to fall out in clumps.

Always taciturn, he now kept silent, refusing most interviews, keeping to himself.

Through it all, Maris kept hitting, and in mid-September, Mantle's injuries finally forced him out of the race with 54 home runs.

♪♪♪ In the locker room before the 154th game of the season, with the Yankees only one win away from the pennant and Maris two home runs short of Babe Ruth's record, he broke down.

His manager, Ralph Houk, consoled him in his office.

"If I can help win the game with a bunt," he asked, "Would you mind if I bunted?

It wouldn't make me look bad, would it?"

Houk replied, "No, it would make you a bigger man than ever."

[ Bat cracks, cheers and applause ] Maris pulled himself together and slammed number 59 in the 3rd inning.

The Yankees clinched the pennant.

On September 26, Maris hit his 60th, tying Babe Ruth.

Then, for three games, nothing.

-At Yankee Stadium, in the regular season's final game against Boston, fans desert the left field to occupy most of the right-field seats, hoping to catch Roger Maris' home run ball number 61.

In the 4th inning, Maris, seeking to break Babe Ruth's original mark of 60 homers in a season, concentrates on a Tracy Stallard pitch.

-Here's the windup.

Fast ball.

Hit deep to right.

This could be it!

Way back there!

Holy cow!

He did it!

Number 61 for Maris!

Look at them fighting for that ball out there.

[ Cheers and applause ] Holy cow!

What a shot!

Another standing ovation for Roger Maris.

-His teammates would not let him back into the dugout until he acknowledged the applause.

-One of the greatest sights I've ever seen here at Yankee Stadium.

♪♪♪ -But even this triumph soured.

Because the new longer season had provided Maris eight more games in which to hit than Ruth had been given, baseball commissioner Ford Frick suggested that an asterisk appear next to Maris' name in the record books.

-The institution of the asterisk, the most important typographical symbol in American sport -- terribly unfair.

To take away Ruth's record, his single-season record, was to take away something that was held so close to the hearts of the baseball establishment, they couldn't see doing it.

Nonetheless, Roger Maris did it.

He did hit 61 home runs.

And the fact that it took 162 games -- well, he also did it having to play at night, having to bat against the screwball, having to travel to the West Coast for games, and to do it all with a parade, a mob of reporters following him around.

I think it's unfair.

♪♪♪ -Roger Maris played for seven more seasons, never hit as well again, suffered his own debilitating injuries, and was never forgiven for outhitting the game's greatest hero.

"It would have been a hell of a lot more fun if I had never hit those 61 home runs," he told a friend toward the end of his life.

"All it brought me was headaches."

Maris' record has now lasted nearly as long as Ruth's.

Another of Babe Ruth's records was broken that year.

Yankee Whitey Ford pitched his 32nd consecutive scoreless World Series inning, surpassing a mark set by Ruth in 1916 when he was a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox.

"It was," Whitey Ford said, "a tough year for the Babe."

But Commissioner Ford Frick was alarmed by all the big hitting that year.

The Yankees had slugged an all-time record 240 home runs, and now, he overreacted.

He convinced the club owners to widen the strike zone to ensure that home runs did not come too cheaply.

The result would be a golden age for pitchers.

-Oh, a genius.

Perhaps the only pitcher I have ever seen, and certainly broadcast, where after one batter, I would think, "He might pitch a no-hitter tonight."

The only one.

He was the only one who would go out to warm up and he would get applause similar to a symphony conductor who had just walked onstage.

I mean, it was such respect as well as admiration.

I don't think we'll see his likes for a long time.

-His name was Sandy Koufax.

Born and raised in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, he hadn't planned on being a ballplayer.

In fact, he didn't really like the game that much.

He liked basketball instead and wanted to be an architect.

But the speed with which he threw a baseball attracted the attention of scouts for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

They signed him at the age of 19 and sent him directly to the majors.

His career did not get off to a promising start.

For six frustrating years, he threw the ball with demon speed, but little control, losing more games than he won.

Then, in 1961, Norm Sherry, a veteran catcher, quietly told him he didn't need to throw so hard to get men out.

-There were a lot of people in baseball who believed that Sandy Koufax would never be a major league pitcher.

He had no control his first few years in the major leagues.

He was getting nowhere at all.

He was walking more people than he was striking out.

And then suddenly, he found it, and when he found it, there was a period that ran from 1961 through 1966 in which he was as good as any pitcher in baseball history.

-Now nothing seemed to stop him.

For five years, he dominated the National League, winning five E.R.A.

titles, pitching four no-hitters, winning the Cy Young Award three times, despite persistent, excruciating pain from an elbow permanently damaged before he had learned to pace himself.

Koufax had to apply massive heat to his arm before every game, then plunge it in ice water after it was over.

But he did not argue with umpires, did not throw at batters, engaged in no theatrics.

"He'll strike you out," an opposing batter said, "but he won't embarrass you."

-Here's Roger Maris.

The windup... Sandy delivers.

Swing and a miss.

He struck him out.

-He pitched a no-hitter every year from 1962 to 1965.

In 1965 alone, he struck out 382 batters, 33 more than his nearest competitor, Rube Waddell, had, in 1904.

-2-2 to Harvey Kuenn.

1 strike away.

Sandy into his windup.

Here's the pitch.

Swung on and missed!

A perfect game!

-When Sandy was at his peak, batters used the word "unfair."

I heard them say that, "It's an unfair contest," after they'd been up at bat against him, and I remember more than once a batter being up there and looking at that terrific fast ball which always seemed to come up as it crossed the plate and then shooting a look out as if to say, "What was that?"

It was as if he'd thrown an Easter egg past them or something like that.

It was something different.

The game had been altered.

And then he had that devastating curve, so the combination of those two -- the batters felt absolutely helpless.

And he was beautiful to watch because he bent his back in a way that other pitchers didn't.

He had this enormous long hands and long arms.

And there was a bow-and-arrow feeling about the way that he used his body.

-He had a way of tipping off his pitches.

If he was pitching a fast ball, from the windup, he'd have his elbows out like this before the pitch.

And if he was gonna pitch a curve ball, his elbows would be tucked in against him.

So every batter knew exactly what he was going to be doing.

Of course, the pitches were so good it didn't make any difference.

They couldn't hit either one of them.

-The Dodgers lead 4-0.

Here's Mickey Mantle.

Now the windup.

Sandy delivers.

It's a strike called, the fourth straight strike-out for Sandy Koufax.

-Casey Stengel believed him the best pitcher in baseball history.

"Forget the other fellow," he said, meaning Walter Johnson.

"You can forget Waddell.

The Jewish kid is probably the best of them."

-No runs, no hits, no errors, and nobody left.

-The only time I ever was embarrassed about baseball had little to do with being a girl.

It had to do with the fact that when I went to Harvard, for a while, I had a boyfriend who was somewhat snobby.

And he came from a family that was a real intellectual family.

And I'd gone to dinner at his house and all night, I was mesmerized by their talking about literature and history and how learned they all were.

The next night, this young man came to my house, and my father talked the whole night about baseball.

My boyfriend didn't care at all about baseball.

I remember for the first time looking at my father and thinking, "This is narrow, what we do here.

This isn't as broad as my boyfriend's life," and the next morning waking up feeling so guilty.

And in the end, I got rid of the boyfriend.

♪♪♪ -When you started your baseball career, did you ever dream you'd be wearing the uniform of four different New York teams?

-I realized after I was 10 years of age that they had major league clubs.

And I certainly wanted to get to New York, but I never thought I'd be so successful that I'd go through three major league clubs and have a fair career -- or the clubs did -- then get to the fourth.

I hope this one goes faster than the other three.

-The brand-new National League New Yorkers, named the Metropolitans after a long-forgotten 19th-century club, had the oldest manager in baseball, Casey Stengel.

"It's a great honor for me," Stengel said at his first press conference, "to be joining the Knickerbockers."

The Mets' stadium was old, too -- the Polo Grounds, deserted by the Giants and just a year away from the wrecker's ball.

Casey Stengel held court in John McGraw's old office.

"Come and see my amazin' Mets," he told one reporter.

"I been in this game a hundred years, but I see new ways to lose I never knew existed."

-Every pitcher here that's down here has an opportunity to be one of the 10 pitchers.

And in other words, we have to find the first five or six starting pitchers that are gonna be on the New York Mets.

So look at that opportunity!

-His players were a motley mix of veterans cast off by established teams and raw newcomers without much potential.

Stengel got a catcher from the Cleveland Indians named Harry Chiti in exchange for a player to be named later.

Chiti proved so incompetent that he was returned to Cleveland 30 days later, the first man in baseball history ever to be traded for himself.

Stengel eventually settled upon Choo-Choo Coleman, who was not much better.

A broadcaster once asked him, "Tell us about your wife.

What's her name, and what's she like?"

"Her name is Mrs. Coleman," the catcher said, "and she likes me."

-If you join the Mets, you'll get rapid advancement because we had a farm system last year and very little produced.

-The Mets fans found in first baseman Marvin Throneberry the best-loved symbol of their team's spectacular ineptitude.

Marvelous Marv was marvelous at nothing.

He dropped the ball, bungled on the bases.

Once, he managed to hit a triple, but was called out for failing to touch first.

When Stengel stormed out to argue, the umpire said, "I hate to tell you this, Casey, but he missed second base, too."

"Having Marv Throneberry play for your team," wrote the sportswriter Jimmy Breslin, "is like having Willie Sutton work for your bank."

-My favorite Mets story is about their shortstop Elio Chacon, who was eager but not very talented.

And he kept running into the outfield and knocking down Richie Ashburn as he was about to catch a fly ball.

And he didn't speak any English, and so somebody -- Joe Christopher -- went to him and tried to explain this.

And then he went to Richie Ashburn, and he said, "If you're going to catch a fly ball and you see Chacon coming out, what you want to say is yo la tengo.

Yo la tengo.

'I've got it.'

And then I've told him and he'll pull up."

So Richie practiced.

He said, "Yo la tengo."

And a game came along.

A situation -- It was a fly ball.

He looked up for the fly ball.

Chacon rushed out for him.

Richie said, "Yo la tengo, yo la tengo," and put his hands up, and he was knocked flat by Frank Thomas, his left fielder.

That was the Mets.

♪♪♪ -The worse the Mets played, the better the New York fans -- deprived of their Giants and Dodgers -- seemed to like them.

Purists objected to the banners they began to bring to the game.

Stengel didn't mind.

"If a banner got in your way," he said, "you didn't mind missing a play because it was something bad happening anyway."

-Why, they're the most amazing fans that I've seen in baseball.

I've been in World Series games.

I've played before 96,000.

But the Mets, I'll have to say, they stick by you.

They stick by you in the hotels, they're on the streets, they're carrying placards.

They're going through the place.

If you find them over here in right field, four innings later, if you get a base hit, they'll be over on the left field line.

They make up wonderful placards.

The placards are terrific.

I even have to stop and look at them.

I think I made 15 mistakes this year reading the placards instead of watching the pitcher or watching the hitter to take my men out.

[ Cheers and applause ] -The Mets ended their first season with a record of 40 wins and 120 losses, the worst record in the 20th century.

They would stay in the cellar for five more seasons, but they consistently drew more fans than the New York Yankees.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -An amazing thing happened, which was that New York took this losing team to its bosom.

Everybody thinks New York only cares about champions, but we cared about the Mets.

I remember going to some games in June that year, and, uh, they were getting walloped.

They were getting horribly beaten, but the crowds came out to the Polo Grounds in great numbers, and people brought horns and blew these horns.

And after a while, I realized that this was probably antimatter to the Yankees, who were across the river and had won so long.

Winning is not a whole lot of fun if it goes on, but the Mets were human.

And that horn, I began to realize, was blowing for me.

Because there's more Met than Yankee in all of us.

What we experience day to day in our lives, there's much more losing than winning, which is why we love the Mets.

♪♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -After 22 years of major league ballplaying, in which he set 17 overall records and 30 National League marks, Stan "The Man" Musial is retiring, the end of a legendary career that began in 1941 and during which Stan played in more all-star games than any other player.

♪♪♪ -Far from the spotlight of New York, Stan Musial, soft-spoken and utterly dependable, had powered the St. Louis Cardinals for 22 years.

♪♪♪ -He appears to be that ballplayer out of a Norman Rockwell painting that has those virtues that we like to believe the game can summon up.

-Stanislaus Musial was born in Donora, Pennsylvania, the son of a Polish wire worker who spoke no English.

One of Branch Rickey's scouts spotted him playing for the semipro Donora Zincs and signed him at the age of 19.

His reputation for reliability began in his very first major league appearance at the end of the 1941 season, when he got six hits in a double header against the Boston Braves.

Casey Stengel, then the Boston manager, warned his players, "You'll be looking at him for a long, long while -- 10, 15, maybe 20 years."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ He led the league in hitting seven times, once batting .376.

♪♪♪ Beginning in 1948, he turned himself into a great home run hitter, hitting 475 of them over the course of his long career.

Fans now called him "Stan the Man."

A veteran pitcher once explained how he pitched to Musial.

"I throw him my best stuff," he said, "then run over to back up third base."

-Here's a guy who gets three for four, four for four, five for five, day after day after day after day.

And I said, "Stan, how do you do that?"

And he says, "Well, Curt, you get a strike, and you knock the heck out of it."

And baseball was as simple as that to Stan Musial.

It was no more difficult, no more intricate than that.

-Baseball's rich in wonderful statistics, but it's hard to find one more beautiful than Stan Musial's hitting record.

Stan Musial got 3,630 hits -- 1,815 at home, 1,815 on the road.

He didn't care where he was.

He just hit.

-He left the field for the last time on September 29, 1963.

♪♪♪ -When Stan Musial took his first big league at bat, America was not yet in World War II.

They were six years removed from Jackie Robinson.

There were no baseball games to speak of on television.

You traveled to games in trains.

When Stan Musial took his last at bat as the National League's all-time leader in hits -- second on that list only to Ty Cobb -- his last base hit went past the lunge of a rookie second baseman named Pete Rose, who would eventually pass him and would eventually pass Cobb.

It was 1963.

It was a month before President Kennedy would be killed.

It was into an entirely new era.

♪♪♪ -In the spring of 1963, a skinny, eager young second baseman broke in with the Cincinnati Reds.

He had wanted to be a professional ballplayer since early boyhood.

"I was just so damn happy to be with the team," he remembered, "I figured anybody who doesn't like life in the major leagues has got to be crazy."

That spring, the Reds played the New York Yankees in an exhibition game in Florida.

-I hit a home run in spring training in Tampa.

There was no doubt that it was gone.

I hit it about 450 or 460 feet.

Pete ran and jumped up on the fence, you know how they do, and tried to catch it.

It was 100 feet over his head and still rising.

And when I come back into the dugout, I sat down by Whitey, and Whitey said, "Hey, Mick, did you see old Charlie hustle out there trying to catch that ball?"

And they called him Charlie Hustle from then on.

-Pete Rose said he liked the name.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Strike!

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -His manager, Sparky Anderson, once said, "He's the best thing to happen to the game since... well, the game."

♪♪♪ -The thing that slowly dawns on us after we watch a number of games is the absence of a clock.

It's one of several things that are quite unique about this game.

There's nothing ticking away out there.

We don't look at the clock and say, "This game is soon gonna be over."

The game might be over soon or not for hours, or not ever in effect.

If you keep hitting, you'll live forever because the last out will never come.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -I'm 70 years old now.

And soon I'll remember what Casey said when he was 75.

He said, "Most people my age are dead.

And you could look it up."

-Casey Stengel was starting to show his age.

He sometimes dozed off during games, began to mutter about his younger players.

"The youth of America," he said, "you tell them, 'Here is the opportunity.'

And the youth of America says, 'Where is the money?'"

In July of 1965, the Mets organized an old-timer's day to coincide with Stengel's 75th birthday.

There were no Met old-timers.

The National League veterans who turned out had all been Dodgers or Giants.

During the celebrations, Stengel fell off a barstool and broke his hip.

It took a long time to heal, and he and management finally agreed that it was time for him to quit.

-In recognition of these services, this number will be retired, never worn by another Mets player, and placed in a glass case here at Shea Stadium in appreciation of your services.

-Thank you very much.

I hope they don't make a mummy under that glass case, make a mummy out of me and keep me there that long.

-"I'd like to see them give that number 37 to some young player," he said, "so it can go on and do some good for the Mets."

But the Mets finished 10th again, and the biggest crowd at Shea Stadium that year came to see the Beatles.

-♪ I ain't gonna let nobody ♪ -♪ Turn me 'round ♪ -♪ Turn me 'round ♪ -♪ Turn me 'round ♪ -♪ Oh, no ♪ -♪ Turn me 'round ♪ -♪ Ain't gonna let nobody ♪ -♪ Turn me 'round ♪ -♪ I'm gonna keep on walking ♪ ♪ Keep on talking ♪ ♪ Marching up to freedom land ♪ -I'm not as brave as some of these little 9- and 10-year-old kids in the South.

I don't like these big teeth that I see on these dogs.

I don't like to see the fierce expressions of the policemen in Birmingham, Alabama.

And I don't like to read about pregnant women being poked in the stomach by policemen with their nightsticks.

I don't like seeing young Negro kids of 7, 8, 9 years old being thrown across the street by the force of a fire hose.

But I believe that I must go down and say to the people down there "Thank you for what you're doing, not only for me and my children, but I believe for America."

So I'm going down to do whatever I possibly can.

-Jackie Robinson had retired after the 1956 season, before the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles.

But he had never stopped being a race man, never stopped pushing for equality.

-♪ Turn me 'round ♪ -Like Rube Foster before him, he urged Blacks to become producers, manufacturers, creators of businesses, providers of jobs, and he helped found Black-run enterprises.

He campaigned for Republican candidates because they preached self-help, resigned from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People because he thought it insufficiently militant, and later refused to attend an old-timers game because there were still no African-Americans in big-league management.

-I think if you are as proud as I am about our skin color and you're proud as I am about our race, we're not going to worry about anything except that we're going ahead.

We're going ahead, and we're going to win.

[ Applause ] -In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the most sweeping civil rights legislation in history, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. won the Nobel Prize for peace.

♪♪♪ But civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, beaten in Birmingham and Selma and scores of other Southern towns.

The Watts district of Los Angeles exploded into flames, and some young Blacks now began to talk of abandoning integration in favor of Black power and separatism.

The greatest boxer of the age, named for the white abolitionist Cassius Clay, changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

-Humankind, that all men anthropological come from the same source with the same potentials must have a potential equality in chance and opportunity, and that is so right, I think, that posterity will look back upon what we are doing today in our domestic issue here -- they'll look back upon it, I think, with incredulity, and they'll wonder what the issue was all about.

I really think so.

It's solved in baseball.

It'll be solved educationally.

It'll be solved everywhere in the course of time.

-Branch Rickey, the man who had brought Jackie Robinson to the major leagues, was 83 years old in the autumn of 1965, weakened but not slowed by a series of heart attacks.

On November 13th, he insisted on checking out of his St. Louis hospital room and driving 125 miles to Columbia, Missouri, to deliver a speech.

He had to lean on a cane simply to stand.

"Now," he told his audience, "I'm going to tell you a story from the Bible about spiritual courage."

A moment later, he stopped, murmured, "I don't believe I can continue," and collapsed.

He never spoke again.

Branch Rickey died on December 9, 1965.

♪♪♪ Jackie Robinson came to his funeral.

So did Bobby Bragan, the Dodger catcher who had once tried to stop Branch Rickey from integrating the team in 1947.

He came, he said, because Branch Rickey "made me a better man."

♪♪♪ [ Insects chirping ] -When I was a boy, I played baseball, and I would go to baseball games as much as I could.

One of the most important moments of the game was when the national anthem was played and everyone stood up.

I would go with my friends.

We'd have on our baseball caps.

We'd take them off and put them over our heart.

It was at this moment that there was a certain sense that we were all American, and when I would play the game with my friends and we would be in the ball park, we would follow the ritual that was at the stadium.

So we would have the national anthem and we would sing the national anthem when we would play.

There would be 12 ragamuffin Black boys out here playing in some playground somewhere or some little grass field, and we would do the national anthem.

And we'd put our hats over our hearts and everything.

And I don't think there was anything in America that made me feel, uh... American except baseball.

I felt connected with this country because of that.

♪♪♪ -The same crew that demolished Ebbets Field now took down the Polo Grounds.

Other old stadiums would fall fast, victims of decaying inner-city neighborhoods and urban renewal -- Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, with its formal gardens, and Philadelphia's palatial Shibe Park, where Connie Mack had worked for 42 years.

♪♪♪ The era of John McGraw and Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner now seemed very far away.

♪♪♪ It was a whole new ballgame.

[ Rock music plays ] ♪♪♪ On April 9, 1965, the Colt .45s changed their name to the Houston Astros and began playing in the new Harris County domed stadium.

Because real grass would not grow indoors, a synthetic material called Astroturf was invented.

Asked if he liked artificial grass, the pitcher Tug McGraw said, "I don't know.

I never smoked the stuff."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Most people don't examine the meaning of the word "exploitation."

I think if you asked most people, they would say to be exploited is to have a low wage, whereas the real meaning of it is to have a tremendous discrepancy between what your services are worth and what you are paid.

-In 1946, the major league owners had established a minimum salary of $5,000 a year.

In 1966, in the midst of a decade dedicated to change, it had risen only $2,000.

Two months before the 1966 season began, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale demanded a raise from their owner, Walter O'Malley, insisting that he negotiate with them as a pair.

Without their combined talents, they felt, the Dodgers were sure to end up in the cellar.

They also insisted that the Dodgers deal with their agent -- something new in baseball -- not with them.

An infuriated O'Malley refused.

"Baseball is an old-fashioned game with old-fashioned traditions," he said, and since the reserve clause barred their trying to play for anyone else, he resolved to wait them out.

-Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale had film roles lined up to keep themselves busy, just in case the Dodger brass decided against what they considered their just demands.

-Finally, the pitchers were forced to negotiate for themselves, separately, and settled for considerably less than they had wanted.

-Without a union, even two of the game's greatest stars were forced to give in to management.

-You think of people who've changed the game of baseball.

Well, aside from Babe Ruth, of course, the Bambino and his home runs, and Jackie Robinson entering -- the third name has to be Marvin Miller, who led in organizing the baseball players' union and thus changed the game.

-On March 5, 1966, the largely ceremonial and ineffective Major League Baseball Players Association created the full-time post of executive director and appointed to it a veteran labor organizer, Marvin Miller.

-I grew up in Brooklyn, not very far from Ebbets Field, and I was a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers from the earliest days I can remember.

That ended, first when I left Brooklyn and second when, shortly thereafter, the Dodgers left Brooklyn.

-Marvin Miller had spent most of his life in the labor movement -- the International Association of Machinists, the United Automobile Workers, and for 16 years, the United Steel Workers.

-Marvin Miller was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to baseball, as far as the players are concerned.

The moment that we found out that the owners didn't want Marvin Miller, he was our guy.

-Tough, seasoned, and relentless, Miller rallied the players to the organization, then demanded that the club owners bargain collectively, provide improved pensions, raise minimum salaries.

-When Marvin started, the owners obviously weren't prepared to fall in love with him.

And as a matter of fact, the more they saw of Marvin, the less prepared to fall in love with him they were.

He obviously did a great job for the players as far as getting them salaries.

I'm not sure on balance that he was good for baseball.

-"Ballplayers are no match for him.

He has a steel-trap mind wrapped in a butter-melting voice.

He runs the players through a high-pressure spray the way an auto goes through a car wash, and that's how they come out -- brainwashed.

With few exceptions, they follow him blindly, like zombies."

Dick Young, New York Daily News.

-Sportswriters following the developing conflict were, for the most part, uninterested in the complicated labor issues, making them active agents against Miller and the union.

For years, the public and even some players distrusted him.

But the battle over who would control the game had begun.

The showdown ahead would be over the century-old reserve clause which bound each player to his club for life and which, to many, smacked of slavery.

-Baseball cannot be termed slavery anymore.

That description would certainly fit the baseball of earlier in this century.

How far you want to extend it into this century is debatable, but it once was a plantation.

It is not anymore.

-The outfield around to the left, to Frank Robinson, a right-hand batter.

Long drive to left field!

Way back!

Way back!

Kiss it goodbye!

-On December 9, 1965, the day Branch Rickey died, the Cincinnati Reds let outfielder Frank Robinson go.

He had played magnificently for them since 1956, when he hit 38 home runs to tie the rookie record.

He charged into outfield walls to make spectacular catches, hurled himself into opposing infielders to break up double plays, and in 1961, won the National League's Most Valuable Player Award.

In casting him off, the Cincinnati owner explained that Robinson was too old at 30.

♪♪♪ He wasn't.

Robinson moved to Baltimore, where, in his first season, he won the American League's Triple Crown and became that league's Most Valuable Player.

No other player has ever won the award in both leagues.

-♪ What you want ♪ ♪ Honey, you've got it ♪ ♪ And what you need ♪ ♪ Baby, you've got it ♪ ♪ All I'm askin' ♪ ♪ Is give me a little respect when I come home ♪ ♪ Ooh, yeah ♪ ♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Ooh, yeah ♪ ♪ You can do me wrong ♪ ♪ Honey, if you wanna ♪ ♪ But only do me wrong ♪ ♪ Honey, while I'm gone ♪ ♪ All I'm asking ♪ ♪ Is give it, give it when I come home ♪ ♪ Ooh, yeah ♪ ♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪ ♪ Yeah, now ♪ -Once, early in Robinson's career, when Branch Rickey had desperately wanted him for the Pirates, the Reds' general manager said, "I wouldn't give you Frank Robinson for your whole team."

♪♪♪ -I think there's comfort in continuity.

So many things in our country have changed drastically, as they must, over the years and over the decades -- violent disruptions -- and although baseball has changed, its essence remains the same.

It's one of the enduring institutions in our country, and I think we take some comfort from that.

-With Koufax, I looked at him -- when I was a kid, I saw him as a kind of... Picasso on the mound, or something like that.

He was this extraordinary artist.

With Koufax, there was this cerebral, sort of artistic flair about him.

-By the end of the 1966 season, Sandy Koufax was at the peak of his career.

He had won 27 games that year, pitched 11 shutouts, and led the league in strike-outs.

But just a month after the World Series ended, he called a press conference to announce that he was quitting the game at the age of 31, while he could still lift his arm.

-The question is why, Sandy.

-The question is why.

I don't know if cortisone is good for you or not, but to take a shot every other ballgame is more than I wanted to do, and to walk around with a constant upset stomach because of the pills and to be high half the time during a ballgame because you're taking painkillers -- I don't want to have to do that.

-What is your thought about the loss of income?

-Well, the loss of income.

Alright.

Let's put it this way.

If there were a man who did not have use of one of his arms and you told him it would cost a lot of money and he could buy back that use, he'd give him every dime he had, I believe.

That's my feeling.

And in a sense, maybe, this is what I'm doing.

I don't know.

I've got a lot of years to live after baseball, and I would like to live them with complete use of my body.

I don't regret one minute of the last 12 years, but I think I would regret one year that was too many.

-He would become the youngest man ever elected to the Hall of Fame.

♪♪♪ -On July 25, 1966, at Cooperstown, New York, Ted Williams was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

"Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel," he said.

"I hope someday Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson can be added here in some way as a symbol of great Negro League players.

They are not here only because they did not get a chance."

♪♪♪ Five years later, Leroy "Satchel" Paige was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Almost against my will, I got back to Fenway Park.

Somehow it felt disloyal to the Brooklyn Dodgers, but it seemed crazy to let this love affair go on the rest of my life and never enjoy another team.

So reluctantly, in about '67 -- a perfect time -- I started going back to Fenway Park.

And then that whole season took place, and it was such a miracle at first that they had been in ninth place the year before and they had this impossible dream of a year.

At first, I didn't see the similarities between the Red Sox and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I thought, "I've found a winner finally!"

But then the similarities set in.

-In 1966, the Boston Red Sox wound up as they so often had before -- at the bottom of the standings.

Then, in 1967, they got a new manager, Dick Williams, and a new lease on life.

Right-hander Jim Lonborg won 22 games, all the while serving in the Army Reserves as the Vietnam War continued to escalate.

But it was the play of one man who made the difference.

Carl Yastrzemski, the son of a Polish potato farmer from Long Island and Ted Williams' replacement in left field almost single-handedly carried the Red Sox that year.

He led the league in nearly every batting category -- a .326 average, 44 home runs, 121 runs driven in -- and was named Most Valuable Player.

"We went from losers to winners," he remembered.

"Suddenly it was a joy to go to the ball park."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -It wasn't just that he was the triple champ.

It was that, in every clutch situation, when he came up, you knew he wanted to be there.

You could watch him straining to hit that ball 'cause you knew he wanted to be a hero, and I think for most of us in life who are so afraid of that kind of moment when something's going to maybe happen, that you think you'd run back to the dugout, the fact that he wanted to be there was just the most thrilling thing to see, and he came through every single time, so it seemed.

-Whenever I think of Yastrzemski, I think of his hands on the bat.

He used to clench the bat like that.

He'd just grip it and grip it, and he'd look with that intense look -- his face as if the skin was pulled over -- and his eyes were staring like that.

Just electric.

You thought he'd tear apart sometimes.

Just hold the bat like that and swing.

He was magnificent.

-♪ Hot town, summer in the city ♪ ♪ Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty ♪ ♪ Bend down, isn't it a pity?

♪ ♪ Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city ♪ ♪ All around, people looking half-dead ♪ ♪ Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head ♪ ♪ But at night, it's a different world ♪ ♪ Go out and find a girl ♪ ♪ Come on, come on, and dance all night ♪ ♪ Despite the heat, it'll be alright ♪ ♪ And, babe, don't you know it's a pity ♪ ♪ The days can't be like the nights ♪ ♪ In the summer, in the city ♪ ♪ In the summer, in the city ♪ -It was the tightest race in American League history, with Boston, Detroit, Minnesota, and Chicago all in contention.

In the Red Sox's final 12 games, Yastrzemski batted .523, with 23 hits, 5 home runs, and 16 RBIs.

-There are some people who think that Carl Yastrzemski's last two weeks of the 1967 "Impossible Dream" season were the best two weeks that any baseball player ever had.

When caught in a four-team pennant race that went down to the last weekend with four teams in a virtual tie, Yastrzemski alone carried his team, hitting home runs when home runs were necessary.

-Can you imagine a moment like this?

The last day of the season.

The Red Sox, trailing by 2, have loaded the bases with nobody out, and who's up?

There's the guy -- on the sign, "Yaz, hit this."

♪♪♪ Base hit to center!

Lonborg scores.

Adair will score.

It's tied up!

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ -Yastrzemski's hit ignited a Boston rally.

They surged ahead of the Twins, scoring three more runs.

-The pitch... is looped toward shortstop.

Petrocelli's back.

He's got it.

The Red Sox win!

Pandemonium on the field!

-In the last game of the regular season, he went four for four, as Boston clinched the pennant for the first time in 21 years.

Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey said it was the happiest day in his life and doubled Yastrzemski's salary.

[ Cheers and applause ] Boston fans dared hope they might at last win the world championship that had been denied them every season since the team sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

Plans were made for a big victory parade.

♪♪♪ But in the series, they faced the St. Louis Cardinals and Bob Gibson, an explosive right-hander and one of the fiercest competitors in the history of the game.

-Bob Gibson was terrifying.

Bob Gibson was the most formidable and scary pitcher, I think, of all time.

Everybody who batted against him felt this way, and he saw to it that they felt this way.

You looked at him out on the mound, and he was dark and forbidding.

He never smiled.

He had those long red sleeves all the way down.

He glared in at the batter.

He was never pleasant.

And the way he threw with that extraordinary last finishing flourish -- as he stepped over, his right leg crossed over his left leg and he fell off the mound to the left -- looked as if he was jumping at the batter.

It looked as if he'd shortened the distance between him and home plate.

He would hit batters, and batters knew this.

His roommate, Bill White, was traded away and Bill White told me that the first time he came up to bat against his old roommate Bob Gibson, he knew he'd be hit.

He said he hit him right up here, right up under the neck.

And that was a message, said, "We're not roommates anymore."

-He could throw a baseball through a brick wall, as a matter of fact.

If I had to choose one person to pitch one game in my one lifetime, I would choose Bob Gibson.

♪♪♪ -Gibson was one of seven children and was so sickly as an infant with asthma and a rheumatic heart that his mother feared for his life.

But he made himself into an all-around athlete so skilled that he had played basketball one season with the Harlem Globetrotters.

He left the Globetrotters to play baseball because he could not stand the clowning.

He refused to say hello to members of the opposing team, would not sign autographs, and once refused to leave the mound even after a line drive hit by Roberto Clemente broke his leg.

His glare alone was enough to frighten all but the most intrepid hitters.

"I hardly ever threw at a batter," he once explained, "but when I did, I hit them."

-If he needed to knock you down, he would move you.

And he said, "Come on.

Hit this," and he would give you something to hit.

Great competitor.

The tougher it got, the tougher he got.

-Now Gibson would face Carl Yastrzemski in the 1967 World Series.

-Bob Gibson's first pitch to Yastrzemski.

Here's the pitch.

He swung and a base hit out into right field!

-Yastrzemski continued his tear, hitting .400, smashing three home runs, and in one game, driving in four of Boston's five runs.

[ Cheers and applause ] But Bob Gibson overwhelmed nearly every other Red Sox hitter.

-Gibson sets.

Here's the pitch... Strike three!

-Despite an aching elbow, he won the first game, took three days off, then won the fourth.

-He struck him out swinging!

-Three days later, he was called in again to pitch the seventh against Boston's best, Jim Lonborg, who had also won his two games but who was starting with only two days' rest.

-World Series pennants here!

Get your pennants!

-That'll bring up Bob Gibson.

The pitch by Lonborg...

Swung on.

A long drive, deep left center.

Way back.

It might be out of here.

It is!

A home run for Bob Gibson!

-Gibson won it easily, 7-2, and added insult to injury by hitting a home run of his own.

-Bob Gibson joins the list of pitchers who've hit home runs in World Series competition.

-In three complete series games, he gave up just 14 hits, something no one else had done since Christy Mathewson in 1905.

Boston canceled its victory parade.

It was a great World Series, but that year, more people had watched professional football's first Super Bowl than any series game.

Baseball was now said to be too leisurely, too serene, too dull to be the national pastime.

It was football that was America's true game.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -♪ Time has come today ♪ ♪ Time has come today ♪ -1968 was one of the most violent, turbulent years of the century.

-♪ Oh ♪ -In Vietnam, Americans found themselves waging a war with no end in sight.

While at home, angry demonstrators fought in the streets.

♪♪♪ Flags and cities burned.

♪♪♪ Assassins' bullets had again changed the course of history.

♪♪♪ The opening day of the 1968 season was postponed after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

♪♪♪ Baseball seemed irrelevant.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Time in the course of a ballgame is critically important.

A baseball game does not rush by with the blur of action of basketball or hockey.

It doesn't exist in these sort of spasms the way it does in football, where everything is lost in the crash and clash of helmets and pads.

Instead, we spend most of our time at a ballgame pondering inaction.

We are sitting there while the third baseman is standing 7 or 8 feet off the bag.

He's mainly scratching his knee.

The batter steps out of the batter's box, and he lifts the bat behind his head.

Does that.

Pitcher steps off the mound, blows on his fingers.

That's the action of baseball.

It's the absence of action.

What it does is it pulls us to the edges of our chairs.

It pulls us to that point of anticipation.

It pulls us to wondering what's going to happen and playing the game in our mind before it plays on the field itself.

-Baseball is a 19th-century pastoral game.

Football is a 20th-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond... in a park... the baseball park.

Football is played on a gridiron in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

-I once had to think of 99 reasons why baseball was better than football -- I already had an assignment to do a magazine piece on that topic, and I thought it would take me a long time to write it, but I finished before lunch.

It really isn't difficult.

I think the first thing is that baseball has no halftime.

Then it has no bands at halftime.

It has no cheerleaders at halftime with bands, and it definitely has no jet flyovers during "up with America" songs at Super Bowl at the halftime with cheerleaders and bands.

-Baseball has a 7th-inning stretch.

Football has the two-minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit.

We don't know when it's going to end.

We might have extra innings.

Football is rigidly timed, and it will end, even if we have to go to sudden death.

-Football combines the two worst features of modern American life.

It's violence punctuated by committee meetings.

In addition, football demonstrates the manic division of labor that makes life confusing and, I should think, unsatisfying.

I mean, who wants to grow up to be a third-and-long-yardage pulling guard?

-And, finally, the objectives of the two games are totally different.

In football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun.

With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack which punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

[ Cheers and applause ] In baseball, the object is to go home... and to be safe.

"I hope I'll be safe at home.

Safe at home.

I'm going home.

I'm going home."

[ Cheers and applause ] -It may be that the most American thing about baseball is that it, as we the fans take it, it is a refuge from America.

I think that when we go to baseball, we are going away from the America of our daily lives.

We go to something that we now consider pastoral, although in the past, everybody considered baseball the city game.

It now seems, to many of us, pastoral.

It seems to us historic and connected with the past.

♪♪♪ So that you could tell what America is like by looking at baseball and saying, "The daily life of America is the opposite of this."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Earl Weaver was what a manager ought to look like -- short, angry, florid, impatient, intemperate -- a character, like a great many managers.

-In the middle of the 1968 season, the Baltimore Orioles got themselves a new manager, Earl Weaver, a former minor league second baseman who never learned how to hit.

It was the beginning of one of the most successful managerial tenures in the modern age.

Weaver was a brilliant psychologist.

He loved to bait umpires to inspire his team, and he was thrown out of 91 games -- a major league record.

-Yeah!

I will!

Don't think I won't!

Don't point at me!

You do it again, and I'll knock you right in your nose!

-I didn't touch you!

-You pushed your finger in me!

-I did not!

Now you're lying!

-[Bleep] [bleep] No, you are!

-You are lying!

-You're a big liar!

-You are a liar, Earl!

A liar!

-You are!

[Bleep] [bleep] You had your hands on me.

-No, that's wrong, Earl.

Wrong.

-♪ Come on, people, now ♪ ♪ Smile on your brother ♪ ♪ Everybody get together ♪ ♪ Try to love one another right now ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Come on, people, now ♪ ♪ Smile on your brother ♪ ♪ Everybody get together ♪ ♪ Try to love one another right now ♪ -When you talked to Earl Weaver, he would put you right in the middle of the baseball situation that you wanted to talk about as a writer.

And he would tell you everything that was involved.

And usually, when he was doing this, he would be stark naked in his office, and eating a leg of chicken or something -- but a little pint-size man with no clothes on talking baseball with his eyes all alight.

Wonderful.

-I'll always remember Earl sitting in the dugout before a game with a cigarette cupped in his hand, like a little boy sneaking a smoke, and his fingers all yellowed by the smoke, telling a story, and not realizing that they were playing the national anthem.

And after the national anthem, I apologized.

"I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I'm still here."

He turned to me and said, "Relax, kid.

Don't worry.

We do this every day."

-Under Weaver's leadership for 14 full seasons, the Orioles would win or come in second 12 times, win four pennants, and one world championship.

The Orioles were good at everything.

In addition to the power hitting of Frank Robinson, they had the incomparable third baseman Brooks Robinson, who would win 16 straight Gold Glove Awards and set major league records for games, put-outs, assists, and double plays.

♪♪♪ But it was their pitchers that set them apart, and Earl Weaver was a genius at coaxing fine performances from each one.

-We should have two out.

Let's see you go to work.

-His pitching staff included Cuban-born Mike Cuellar, a master of the screwball, left-hander Dave McNally, who once won a record 24 games in a row, and a young, temperamental right-hander, Jim Palmer.

-Jim Palmer always inspired Earl Weaver to great fury.

Palmer really, essentially, never won a game for anyone else.

Palmer's complexes had complexes, and Earl, somehow, intuitively understood how to motivate Palmer.

And I honestly believe that if Jim Palmer had not pitched for Earl Weaver, he would not have won 50 games in the major leagues.

-Concentrate on getting the other stuff.

Keep yourself in here.

One run ain't gonna do it.

That's just what we need to wake us up.

-Palmer would go on to record 268 victories, win three Cy Young Awards, and have 8 20-game seasons.

♪♪♪ Earl Weaver's Orioles had all the makings of a dynasty.

♪♪♪ In 1968, pitchers dominated as never before.

One out of every five games played that year was a shutout.

Bob Gibson was again the most fearsome performer.

-Two strikes and a ball.

Got him!

-He pitched 13 shutouts, won 22 games, and registered the lowest E.R.A.

in the history of his league -- 1.12.

-A standing ovation for Bob Gibson.

He has just tied a World Series record.

-I remember the 1968 World Series.

I was 16 years old.

Game 1, when he struck out the 17 Tigers, you could feel his purpose burn through a television screen from St. Louis to your living room on Long Island.

-Got him!

A new World Series record!

-In a sport that isn't supposed to manifest that degree of outward emotion, he was actually fearsome.

-Just think.

He has accounted for 16 of the put-outs all by himself.

He got him!

Struck him out!

A new World Series record of 17 strike-outs in 1 game.

-Bob Gibson is the only pitcher to win seven consecutive World Series starts, each of them a complete game.

-When the game was over, Gibson, in the clubhouse, was like no other pitcher I've ever seen.

The reporters gathered around, and someone said, "Were you surprised by what you did today?"

And Gibson said, "I'm never surprised by anything I do."

♪♪♪ -In 1969, the summer of Woodstock, a free-thinking minor league pitcher named Bill Lee III, whose father and grandfather and aunt had all played some kind of professional baseball before him, was ordered to report to the Boston Red Sox.

-Fenway Park, when I first saw it, I drove by it.

I came down Route 90, got called up from Pittsfield.

So here I go down to the ball park in my '62 Chevrolet with 185,000 miles on it.

And I go fill it with oil, check the gas.

And I come by it and say, "Well, there it is.

Look at that beautiful Green Monster and the highway."

I said "I'll take a right and a right and I'll end up at the park."

I took a right and right, ended up in Cambridge.

Then I realized the Northwest Territories Act hadn't been in effect when Boston was built.

Couldn't find the park.

And when I found it, I said, "This is not a park.

This is a factory."

The brick facade and everything, and the little red door on Yawkey Way -- it was called Jersey Street back then.

And then you walk through the gates, and you come through that little tunnel, and then all of a sudden, you see the green -- the green of the seats, the green of the wall, the green of the field, the little dirt cutout, and the proximity of the foul line to the stands, and just the closeness of the bullpens to the crowd.

And it's like you go down all of a sudden on one knee and you bless yourself, and you go, "Thank God for making me a ballplayer," because it's heaven.

-As a game, I think it's the most interesting game.

The units of measure are easy to deal with.

The connection to history is plain.

You say to an avid basketball fan, "What's Kareem's final point total?

And what was Wilt's when Kareem passed it?

What's Payton's final yardage total?

What was Jim Brown's when Payton passed it?"

Even the avid football or basketball fan doesn't know, but the casual baseball fan knows all of these landmarks of history -- of individual achievements, of twists and turns in the game's history.

1947 means Jackie Robinson.

1961 means Roger Maris.

1969 means men walked on the moon and Mets walked with pennant in hand.

-♪ Meet the Mets ♪ ♪ Meet the Mets ♪ ♪ Step right up and greet the Mets ♪ ♪ Bring your kiddies, bring your wife ♪ ♪ Guaranteed to have the time of your life ♪ ♪ Because the Mets are really sockin' the ball ♪ ♪ Knockin' those home runs over the wall ♪ ♪ East Side, West Side ♪ ♪ Everybody's comin' down ♪ ♪ To meet the M-E-T-S, Mets ♪ ♪ Of New York town ♪ ♪ Of New York town ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] -In 1968, the New York Mets had wound up in ninth place, a record that would have been embarrassing for some teams but represented only the second time the Mets had soared so high.

When the 1969 season opened, the odds against their winning the pennant were 100-to-1, and true to form, they dropped 7 of their first 10 games.

But they now had a superb manager, ex-Brooklyn Dodger Gil Hodges, a roster of eager young players, and with pitchers Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and a fast-baller from Texas named Nolan Ryan, they were soon locked in a season-long struggle for first place.

-Well, the Mets are one out away from their impossible dream.

-They won 38 of their last 49 games to take the Eastern Division title by eight games... -The throw to first.

And the Mets are the National League champions!

-Then swept the Atlanta Braves for the pennant.

♪♪♪ -But Earl Weaver's Orioles, the best team in baseball that year, were waiting for them in Baltimore.

Few gave New York much of a chance.

As expected, the Mets lost the first game 4-1, but they came back to take the second behind the brilliant pitching of Jerry Koosman.

And then the Orioles came to Shea Stadium, where the Mets and 56,000 of their fans were waiting for them.

[ Cheers and applause ] New York won the third game 5-0, thanks to the pitching of Gary Gentry and Nolan Ryan and some spectacular help from center fielder Tommie Agee.

-Fly ball.

It will be tough to get to.

Agee is going.

And Agee makes a diving catch!

He's out!

[ Cheers and applause ] There's a drive into deep left center.

Racing hard is Agee.

What a grab!

Agee saves two runs!

-In the fourth game, Tom Seaver outpitched Mike Cuellar, this time, with some spectacular help from right fielder Ron Swoboda.

-There's a drive to right center.

Swoboda... comes up with it!

The tag at third.

Here comes Frank Robinson.

Ron Swoboda making another sensational catch for the Mets.

-To everyone's amazement, the Mets now led the series three games to one.

They needed just one more victory.

But the next day, the Orioles took an early 3-0 lead.

Then, in the bottom of the 6th inning, Cleon Jones of the Mets alleged he had been hit in the foot by pitcher Dave McNally.

The umpire hadn't seen it.

-Did he hit him?

-Yep.

-Oh, he hit him.

How wonderful.

Amazing!

It's amazing!

[ Laughs ] -Hodges called for the ball and pointed to a minute speck of shoe polish.

Jones went to first.

-Here comes Earl Weaver.

You can bet on that.

[ Crowd booing ] With nobody out, the Mets have a base runner.

Donn Clendenon is up.

The Mets fans have come alive here.

-Next up was Donn Clendenon.

-A curve.

Fly ball, deep left field.

To the warning track... -His home run into the left field stands scored Jones and brought the Mets to within one run.

-That's his third home run of the 1969 World Series.

[ Cheers and applause ] McNally ahead, 0-1.

Fast ball.

Here's a fly ball into left center field.

Buford going back.

Buford at the warning track.

It is over the fence for a home run!

-In the 7th, Al Weis, normally an easy out, somehow managed to hit a home run to tie up the game.

-...Ties this game at 3 runs apiece.

-In the bottom of the 8th, two Met doubles and two costly Baltimore errors put New York ahead for good.

[ Cheers and applause ] -2-1 pitch.

Fly ball, deep left field.

Jones is back to the fence.

The World Series is over!

Jones makes the catch.

-The miracle Mets had won the World Series, four games to one.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪♪ -♪ Look what's comin' up the street ♪ ♪ Start the revolution ♪ ♪ Hey, let's dance down the street ♪ ♪ Start the revolution ♪ ♪ Aiding me are the people I meet ♪ ♪ Start the revolution ♪ ♪ Whole generation got groove ♪ ♪ Whole generation got soul ♪ ♪ This generation got a new education to hold ♪ ♪ Dig it, yeah ♪ ♪ Well, now it's time for you and me ♪ ♪ To start the revolution ♪ ♪ Well, come on now, we're marchin', you see ♪ ♪ Start the revolution ♪ ♪ Music from the people, whoo-ee ♪ ♪ Well, we are volunteers of America ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Yeah, we're volunteers of America ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ We're volunteers of America ♪ ♪ Volunteers of America ♪ ♪ Volunteers of America ♪ ♪ Volunteers of America ♪ ♪♪♪ -After the game, after I'd left all the champagne, I went to the losing locker rooms too and I went into Earl's office.

And he was drinking a beer.

It was very quiet.

And somebody said to him, "Didn't you think, when you were ahead in the 7th inning, you could keep that lead and then take the games back to Baltimore, and probably beat the Mets there?"

And he looked at him and he said, "That's what you can't do in baseball."

He said, "You can't run a few plays into the line and kill the clock.

This is why this is the greatest game of them all.

You got to give the other man his chance at bat.

This is why this is the greatest game of them all."

-At this time, in the late '60s, I was 14, 15, 16 years old.

And I felt that baseball lost some of its resonance for me because these players did not seem to be in touch with what was going on.

Everything had become very politicized.

And this is particularly true with Black players.

They saw if you were to stand up and become political, that you were going to be made to suffer.

But as a youngster myself, becoming politicized, that was the very point.

Yes, you were gonna have to pay a price, yes, but this price needed to be paid if we were going to move ahead.

The very argument that they were going to give about the status quo, the very argument the older Blacks gave -- such as grandfather who said, "Well, they have good jobs.

Why should they go out and do this?"

And I said "Because it must be done, and we must be willing to show that we're willing to pay a price in order to be treated with dignity."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -I guess you really have to understand who that person, who that Curt Flood was.

I'm a child of the '60s, a man of the '60s.

During that period of time, this country was coming apart at the seams.

We were in Southeast Asia.

Men were -- good men -- were dying for America and for the Constitution in the southern part of the United States.

We were marching for civil rights, and Dr. King had been assassinated, and we lost the Kennedys.

And to think that merely because I was a professional baseball player I could ignore what was going on outside the walls of Busch Stadium is truly hypocrisy.

And now I find that all of those rights that these great Americans were dying for I didn't have in my own profession.

-In October of 1969, veteran center fielder Curt Flood of the St. Louis Cardinals got word that he was to be traded to Philadelphia.

The Phillies were a second-division team known for their hostility toward Black players, and Flood did not wish to move his family or to leave his business interests behind.

-I often wondered what would I do if I were ever traded, because it happened many, many times, and it was "part of the game."

And then suddenly, it happened to me.

I was leaving probably one of the greatest organizations in the world to, at that time, what was probably the least liked.

And...by God, I -- This is America, and I'm a human being.

I'm not a piece of property.

I'm not a consignment of goods.

♪♪♪ -Flood did not report to the Phillies training camp.

"I am a man," he told baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

-"Dear Mr. Kuhn, after 12 years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes.

I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States.

It is my desire to play baseball in 1970, and I am capable of playing.

I've received a contract from the Philadelphia club, but I believe I have the right to consider offers from other clubs before making any decisions.

I therefore request that you make known to all major league clubs my feelings in this matter and advise them of my availability for the 1970 season.

Sincerely, Curt Flood."

-The commissioner refused to exempt him from the reserve clause.

Flood refused to play and vowed to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

The century-old struggle between the owners and the players was approaching a climax.

-♪ Katie Casey was baseball mad ♪ ♪ She had the fever, and she had it bad ♪ ♪ Just to root for the hometown crew ♪ ♪ Every cent that Katie spent ♪ ♪ On one Saturday, her young beau ♪ ♪ Called to see if she'd like to go ♪ ♪ To see a show, but Miss Kate said, "No ♪ ♪ I'll tell you what you can do" ♪ ♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out with the crowd ♪ ♪ Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks ♪ ♪ I don't care if I ever get back ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's root, root, root for the home team ♪ ♪ If they don't win, it's a shame ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's one, two, three strikes, you're out ♪ ♪ At the old ballgame ♪ ♪ Katie Casey saw all the games ♪ ♪ Knew all the players by their first names ♪ ♪ Told the umpire he was wrong all along ♪ ♪ And she was strong ♪ ♪ When the score was 2-2 ♪ ♪ Katie Casey, she had the clue ♪ ♪ To cheer on the boys, she knew just what to do ♪ ♪ She made everyone sing the song ♪ ♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out with the crowd ♪ ♪ Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks ♪ ♪ I do not care if I ever get back ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's root, root, root for the home team ♪ ♪ If they don't win, it's a shame ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's one, two, three strikes, you're out ♪ ♪ At the old ballgame ♪ -♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out with the crowd ♪ ♪ Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks ♪ ♪ I don't care if I ever get back ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's root, root, root for the home team ♪ ♪ If they don't win, it's a shame ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's one, two, three strikes, you're out ♪ ♪ At the old ballgame ♪