MLB: My most memorable games

Five MLB games that stand out in a lifetime of watching baseball

One of the joys of being a long-time baseball fan is the accumulation of memories. Any fan can relate fondly to the consideration of an answer to this question: What were the most memorable MLB games you ever attended?

I walk through my five most memorable not because they were especially famous – there have been lots of more historic games played – but rather to lay out a framework for a sort of communal exercise. Here’s my list: now you think about your own.

The rules are simple. You must have attended the game in person…watching on TV or listening on radio is too easy. You must be able to clearly assert why the game was personally memorable. By the way, in this internet age plenty of resources exist to enable you to fill in the blanks left by memory. Finally, and perhaps toughest, you are limited to identifying only the five most memorable.

If you have attended 10 World Series Game 7s, a half dozen no-hitters and the last games of 15 Hall of Famers, narrow the list.

My own five begin with the very first MLB game I recall attending as a child. It was played Aug. 7, 1955 at Chicago’s Wrigley Field between the team I have rooted fo rmy entire life, the Cubs, and the visiting Brooklyn Dodgers.

I was barely six years old, living with my family – all die-hard White Sox fans – on the South Side. But I was a Cubs holdout, and an excess of begging finally persuaded by dad to drive all the way across town to fulfill my dream of seeing my guys in person.

These many years later I retain the essential memorable vision and first impression that has always drawn me to baseball: emerging from the tunnel to an ocean of green, brown and blue such as I had never seen before: grass, ivy, the iconic scoreboard, the perfectly manicured infield dirt and the deep blue sky overlaying it all.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a day for Hall of Famers. The Dodger lineup featured stars of the magnitude of Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson. Yes, I saw Jackie Robinson play baseball. My Cubs, of course, were led by my idol, Ernie Banks.

The official record, which supplements my recollections, tells me that my Cubs took an early 4-0 lead against Dodger starter Billy Loes and held on to beat Brooklyn 4-3. Ernie doubled one run home and second baseman Gene Baker singled in two more. Cub starter Bob Rush shut down a 3-run Dodger seventh inning rally.

The Cubs were 55-58 and in fifth place; they would finish sixth. The Dodgers were running away with the National League pennant, leading by 14 and one-half games. They would win by 13 and one-half games and take their first World Series that fall.

Aug. 13, 1959, San Francisco Giants vs. Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, Chicago

It is the waning weeks of summer, I am about to enter fifth grade, and I have once again talked some suffering family member to drive me across town to watch the team I alone root for, the Cubs. We are about to witness the biggest offensive explosion of our personal lifetimes.

The outlook Is not promising. The Giants hit town leading the NL by two and one-half games. The Cubs are fourth, two games below .500. Worse, Cubs manager Bob Scheffing has nominated Art Ceccarelli, a left-hander of little repute, to face Giants ace Jack Sanford.

It shapes up as a mismatch. Ceccarelli will go 5-5 with a 4.76 ERA in 15 starts. Sanford is on his way to a 15-12 season and 3.16 ERA in 31 starts. Beyond that, Sanford is backed up by an offense featuring Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, and a soon-to-be Rookie Of The Year named Willie McCovey.

Scheffing’s Cubs lineup does have Ernie Banks, but his support amounts to George Altman, Walt Moryn, and a bunch of guys named Let’s Not Talk About It.

It is memorable, but not the way we anticipated. The Giants scored seven times in the first three innings, dispatching Ceccarelli, but that’s only good for a 7-6 lead because Altman homers in the bottom of the first, Sanford leaves after two batters with arm problems, Altman homers again in the second, and Dale Long homers in the third.

Then the Cubs get going. After Eddie Fisher, the third Giants pitcher, permits two singles to open the third inning, he is replaced by Stu Miller. Big mistake. Two run-producing groundouts and three intentional walks later, somebody named Art Schult singles Banks and Irv Noren home to give Chicago a 10-7 lead.

The rout is on. After the Cubs fail to score in the fifth – the only time that will happen all day – they add two more runs in the sixth, six runs in the seventh and a final two in the eighth. It is almost irrelevant that Mays, Willie Kirkland and Jackie Brandt have all homered for San Francisco, or that the Giants have run up nine runs of their own.

The final score is Cubs 20, Giants 9. It was the most runs a Cubs team would score in any game between 1955 and 1966.

1973 MLB All Star Game, American League vs. National League, July 24, 1973, Royals Stadium, Kansas City

I am 24 years old and a young editor on the staff of a daily newspaper in central Kansas. The MLB All Star Game is to be played in the new Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) on the eastern edges of Kansas City, and the chief of the Associated Press bureau in that city has obtained a bunch of tickets.

He wonders whether any of his best clients, including us, would like to attend? Yes, actually, I would.

In those days, the National League dominated the MLB All Star Game, having won nine of the previous 10. This one was no different, the NL winning a largely colorless game 7-1.

Colorless, of course, is a relative term when you’re talking about an All Star Game. Although the play itself was not memorable, almost every position was occupied by a future Hall of Famer. For the National League, starters included Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan, Ron Santo, and Billy Williams, not to mention Pete Rose. Tom Seaver and Don Sutton were on the pitching staff, although the start was given to Rick Wise, a largely non-descript figure pitching at the time for St. Louis.

On the American League team were Carlton Fisk, Rod Carew, Brooks Robinson, Reggie Jackson, and starting pitcher Catfish Hunter. Bench, Bobby Bonds, and Willie Davis all homered to lead the National League victory, which was never in doubt after the third inning.

In retrospect, probably the most noteworthy occurrence was when Willie Mays grabbed a bat and pinch hit for Willie Stargell in the eighth inning. He struck out. On its own, that mattered little to the outcome. But it marked the 24th and final appearance by Mays in an MLB All Star Game; he would retire at season’s end.

Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Colorado Rockies, Sept. 18, 1996, Coors Field, Denver

By now a 47-year-old veteran newspaper editor with some reputation in that profession, I am in Denver attending a professional conference. The Dodgers are playing at Coors, where the morning papers are abuzz with the news that Hideo Nomo had thrown a no-hitter the previous night.

Never in baseball history had a team gotten back-to-back no-hitters, and the idea of such a thing happening at Coors, of all places, seems now too far-fetched to even contemplate. Still, the true shame would be if it did happen and I had passed up the opportunity to witness such a memorable event. So I went.

Pedro Astacio took the mound for Los Angeles against Armando Reynoso. The Dodgers scored once in the first and twice more in the second for an early 3-0 advantage. Atop that, Astacio set the side down in order in both innings. Maybe, just maybe…

The Rockies dispatched that dream of witnessing true MLB immortality in the third. After Steve Decker drew a leadoff walk, Neifi Perez grounded a single up the middle and into center field. The mere occurrence of a hit seemed to rattle Astacio and invigorate the Rockies; before the side had been retired they had tied the game.

In the fifth, Rockies slugger Andres Galarraga homered to put the home team on top for good, Sadly for me, Galarraga pulled his home run to left field; I was seated upper tank in right.

The final: Rockies 6, Dodgers 4. The outcome was more consequential than I realized at the time. Los Angeles, in first place on that day, lost six of its remaining 10 games – including the final four – to finish the season at 90-72, one game behind the division champion San Diego Padres. The last three defeats all came to the Padres.