[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

So they show the video of G. Thomas Seaver winning #300, in White Sox uniform at Yankee Stadium, and I really do need to watch the full telecast at some point. Because when they show that shot of Nancy Seaver being embraced by her daughter, Sara, I'm like over there <---------. one aisle out the frame, in the front row. I may be visible at some point; I've literally never checked.

I had started in the upper deck, sat through the Rizzuto Day ceremonies and the first two innings in the heat, then spotted open seats in that box, and went for it. (Steinbrenner may have revised the framework of the House that Ruth Built, but the guts were the same, and it was easy-peasy to get to the field level, which [unlike Shea and Dodger Stadia] was not gated off; all you had to do was buy some food and act as though you were returning to your seat.) I first sat in like the 5th row or so, but when it was clear there were front-row seats available, I went for it, and saw the last 4 or 5 innings from the very front.

Don Baylor's fly ball ended the game, but on Baylor's previous AB, he sent a little squib to the backstop, right in front of me. I leaned over…and fumbled the ball away, and the guy next to me got it. Haunted me for years.

(I didn't get a foul until the 2016 game when Curtis Granderson switch-hit the HRs in extra-innings; one to tie the game after Buxton's blast gave the Twins the lead, the next to win it, an inning later. Having spent the previous game up top, I splurged for the "Shea Club" or whatever it's called seats (only $100 or so) and unlike all the actually rich people, I was in my seat at the start. Brian Dozier took two balls to start the game, then fouled the third pitch over the screen [which nowadays goes all the way back to the face of the loge seats] and directly at me. Showing I had developed exactly ZERO skills in the intervening 31 years, I lost it on the way down…but it lodged right in my seat and I grabbed it before scavengers descended from the next section over.

So I did, finally, get a foul ball, and a fairly significant one at that. But nothing like the Seaver 300th would have been.)

Well, well, well, well, well. Time for a few revisions to my misty, misbegotten memories. Lookie what I found:

WPIX-11 Yankees telecast.

I had only previously had the ChiSox version, which is somewhat edited, as the Rizzuto ceremony and the game combine to run for almost 4 hours. But this is complete, so I went hunting for my 40-years-younger self.

And it turns out that I was wrong about Baylor being the batter, as Don was pinch-hitting (for Bobby Meacham) when he made the final out, and he swung at the first pitch. He never hit a foul ball all game.

So apparently I conflated Baylor's making the last out with whoever did hit that little squib, which was always more likely to be a LHB, such as Dan Pasqua or Mike Pagliarulo than the RH Baylor, since I was at the 3B side of the home-plate netting. (I like to think I would have properly remembered Ken Griffey Sr or Don Mattingly, so it's more likely to be one of the Future Sox buried lower in the lineup.). And I scoured the Yanks' last few innings, and I can't find that play.

BUT…turn your eyes to 2:49:40 and you'll see in the top of the 8th, Ozzie Guillen attempting a bunt, only to pop it foul. Yanks catcher Ron Hassey hurries after it, but can't catch it, and it one-hops into the seats. A man in a white shirt tries to snag it with his right hand, but fails, while the fat kid in the blue tee to the right of him swipes futilely with his left paw but misses.

And that blue whale…was me. You can see that the tee has a #14 on the back, because that's my intramural softball tee from high school, where I asked for #41 (for Tom, of course) but they screwed up the order and gave me #14 instead, and I was like "wth, Gil Hodges, good enough". So the reason that the tee seems a bit worn and hugs my blubber so nicely is because it was several years old and I hadn't stopped eating while I was at college. But it was Tom's 300th win, so of course I was going to dig that baby out.

(Wow, I had forgotten all about that.)

You'll also notice that when the camera cuts to the CF shot (to see Hassey trudging back behind the plate), you can see me turning back and I have a pair of black binoculars in my right hand. Now the binocs wouldn't make much sense from the front row (although I doubtless watched some close-ups of the action with them), but as noted in the quote, I spent the first two innings in the top deck, scouring for open seats down below. (Presumably that's part of the reason I brought the binoculars in the first place.)

So what must have happened is that I had my shot at the foul grounder somewhere in the earlier game (3rd-5th innings, back before the front row got so crowded) and I misremembered it as being in the 8th because I mixed it up with Ozzie's bouncer, which I completely forgot was a separate near miss because I never got a hand on this one. (And besides, it was a Bob Shirley-pitched ball, not one that Seaver threw.)

Geez, I wonder if I muffed the grounder the Yanks hit to me because I had to move my binoculars to my left hand? (I'm a righty.)

So, although I haven't found my main screw-up, at least I do have proof I was at the game. Woo!

(Also in attendance, former President Nixon, who was in Steinbrenner's box. Which is generous of George, seeing as it was his illegal campaign contribution to Nixon's 1972 campaign that got George suspended for the 1975 season.)

And I also forgot (since this was before we had a VCR and I never saw the telecast before today) that the Yanks had Lindsey Nelson there to call the final out, which was quite classy, I admit.

(I also had no idea that Lindsey finished his MLB career doing cable telecasts for the Reds in 1982. [Wikipedia has this wrong, thinks Nelson was helping Marty and Nuxie on the radio.]. Huh. So he called Seaver's games for three different teams…the Mets, the Reds [Tom sucked in '82, alas] and this last out here. Cool.)