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The
New York Times TV
Sports Still
Perfect After All Those Years By
RICHARD SANDOMIR Published:
For
the 100 fans at the Yogi Berra Museum Theater Friday
night on the campus of They
cheered at the critical moments in Don Larsen’s perfect game as they watched
what may be the only known copy of NBC’s broadcast of Game 5 of the 1956 World
Series. They
clapped when Yankees third baseman Andy Carey caught Gil Hodges’s line drive,
as they had three innings earlier when Mickey Mantle backhanded Hodges’s fly
ball to left-center in the fifth. They whooped when Vin
Scully told NBC viewers that Larsen had set down 24 Dodgers in a row. They
joined in with the ovation for Larsen from the 64,519 at Yankee Stadium that
Monday afternoon when he came to bat in the eighth inning. And
when it was over, after the umpire Babe Pinelli had
called a third strike on pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell and Yogi had propelled
himself into Larsen’s arms, the crowd in the stadium-themed theater erupted one
final time. Sitting
in the theater, Larsen applauded himself politely. And
Yogi, who stood the whole time, smiled. “I
don’t think you or I shall see such a thing again,” the announcer Mel Allen
told Scully afterward, as they tried to make sense of the first — and still
only — perfect game in World Series history. “I
think,” Scully said, “we can both just go now.” In
the theater, one fan told Larsen, “Way to go, Don.” “Great
game,” another said. “Thanks,”
said Larsen, who, like Berra had never seen it
before. • For
the two men, the screening served as baseball enlightenment (at least to an
older demographic) and a way to raise money. Larsen’s foundation supports
several charities, and Berra is building a $7.5
million endowment to double the size of the museum. The
experience of watching a game from the 1950s is a rare event because our
memories are restricted largely to highlights from newsreels. (Larsen strikes
out Mitchell; Yogi leaps into Larsen’s arms.) Preservation was not a primary
concern a half-century ago, so few games survived. Only seers could have
predicted that networks would televise classic games, mostly from the 1980s to
the present, with some exceptions. But
last year, Doak McKinley Ewing (a name that Bob
Sheppard would probably love to pronounce) revealed that he had, 15 years
earlier, purchased reels of old baseball kinescopes that included the Larsen game. He
had acquired the kinescopes — films shot from television monitors — from an
Oregon film dealer who had bought them from the son of a man who had served in
the Armed Forces in Hawaii and had showed the old games on a projector to
occupy his students at a school in Alaska without television. NBC
made a few kinescopes of the games expressly to show to soldiers serving
overseas, but they were supposed to be destroyed, Few
have survived and still fewer are intact. The Larsen game is still missing the
opening reel, which ends in the top of the second inning. “I
haven’t given up on finding it,” said With
the 50th anniversary of the perfect game last year, he began discussions with networks
about licensing the game, but no deal was made. “If
we sell it, somebody will pay good money,” said He
insisted that there was no copyright, but John Filippelli,
the president of production for the YES Network, said there was lingering
ambiguity about whether Major League Baseball still owned the rights. The
black-and-white kinescope of Larsen’s perfect game is a revealing visual artifact.
NBC shot the day game with only four cameras, two behind home plate, two along
the bases. There was no center-field camera, an innovation that transformed
baseball production a few years later. There were no replays, no graphics
except for player names flashed on the screen, no fan-reaction shots, no
close-ups into Larsen’s nostrils, no reliance on statistics. There
were no in-game interviews with Managers Casey Stengel
and Walter Alston, and no NBC stars craving attention in the stands. Commercial
breaks lasted only one minute, and all the commercials, save one, were for
Gillette. In a reminder of the time when announcers pitched beer, cigars and
cigarettes live from the booth, Allen and Scully spouted player statistics
primarily to hawk Gillette’s offer of a free vest-pocket Encyclopedia of
Baseball with the purchase of a razor. The
simplicity of this old production is the very source of its appeal. “The
game was over in two hours,” Berra said. “That’s
great. I wish they’d do that now.” What
also stood out was the lack of byplay between Allen and Scully. Allen called
the first half of the game, Scully the second half. Even as they spoke solo,
Allen and Scully frequently stayed silent during the action. • To
add flavor to the game, As
he spoke, and when Allen and Scully returned for the happy recap, NBC showed
fans spilling onto the field, moving in apparent slow motion, as if they could
not believe what they had just seen. E-mail: sportsbiz@nytimes.com |