John G. Robertson - The Games That Changed Baseball: Milestones in Major League History

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As Bad as It Gets: Connie Macks Pathetic Athletics of 1916, by John G. Robertson and Andy Saunders (2014)

The Babe Chases 60: That Fabulous 1927 Season, Home Run by Home Run, by John G. Robertson (1999; softcover 2014)

Baseballs Greatest Controversies: Rhubarbs, Hoaxes, Blown Calls, Ruthian Myths, Managers Miscues and Front-Office Flops by John G. Robertson (1995; softcover 2014)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-2259-0

2016 John G. Robertson and Andy Saunders. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover photograph: Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier, April 15, 1947 (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

This book is dedicated to our mutual friend and fanatical baseball enthusiast John Dungey. Johns unsurpassed passion for the grand old game, his remarkable in-depth knowledge of all aspects of the sport, and his unbridled zeal for anything and everything about the history of Americas national pastime are unmistakable and endearing traits that have always been truly inspirational to us. We could not possibly have penned this work without his keen and unwavering interest in the project. Thank you, John!

As always, our thanks go to the many amateur baseball historiansamateur in the truest and noblest sense of the word; they do it for the love of the sportwho maintain the wonderful baseball information websites that have developed and proliferated on the Internet during the past two decades. Those caches of data really are a godsend. It certainly beats the crapshoot of having to travel to far-flung research libraries to discover what their microfilm collections may or may not contain.

Special thanks go to the following people:

Carl Madden, for his invaluable service as a volunteer proofreader, keenly alerting us to several typos that somehow escaped us despite numerous readings of the manuscript;

Bruce Saunders for contributing his personal suggestions for historic MLB games that he felt ought to be included within our list, and for his unofficial proofreading work on some chapters;

Alan Stern, for alerting us to the controversial video-review situation that occurred at the DetroitKansas City game on Saturday, September 20, 2014;

Dr. Terry Aitken, a New Zealandborn, Canadian physician who knows absolutely zilch about baseball, but did supply us with some insightful medical analysis about Doc Powers untimely death in April 1909;

John Horne from the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY, who helped provide the photographs for this book.

The exploits of Cy Young or Don Larsen, of [Sandy] Koufax, Catfish [Hunter], and Dennis Martinez would really amount to less in the public mind than the game of jacks played on porch fronts over the decades if not for the endurance of the institution of baseball. Todays Little Leaguers are at least the seventh generation to be following box scores in their local papers, and to have baseball to talk about with their elders. Baseball is Americas great perennial, shooting up every spring and blossoming in the summer and ripening in the resplendent drama in the fall for every new class of citizens since before the Civil War.baseball historian Michael Coffey

You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseballand in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.MLB pitcher and author Jim Bouton

The strongest thing that baseball has going for it are its yesterdays.baseball historian Lawrence Ritter

With the aid of modern computer technology and an excellent database, virtually anyone, without too much exertion, can create accurate and unchallengeable baseball lists. For example, it would not be too terribly strenuous to compile a list of the top 100 triples hitters in Major League Baseball history, or the top 25 fielding averages by National League second baseman since the Second World War, or even the best World Series batting averages compiled by players named Smith. Theres nothing to it, really. Numbers do not lieand they are brutally blunt in their raw truthfulness. The bare facts of arithmetic are irrefutable.

However, compiling a list of anything to do with baseball history can be a challenge if the topic requires any degree of judgment. Deciding what should appear on a list of the greatest games or the biggest blunders or the most dramatic events in baseball history inevitably creates muddy waters simply due to the subjective nature of the endeavor. What is obviously memorable or tremendous to one observer might not even register in the mind of another fan of the grand old game due to age differences, knowledge of the sports history, or some level of personal bias. Thus any list of the 43 most important/historically significant games in baseball history could never possibly attain anything close to unanimity. What constitutes importance is clearly very much a matter of personal opinion.

An amusing old adage states, Opinions are like noseseverybody has one. Well go along with that. Since our opinions are as meaningful or meaningless as any other fans viewpoints, we boldly proffer here a compilation of 43 games that we think are the most important in baseballs long, colorful and illustrious history. Lets be clear about this: What follows is not a selection of the greatest MLB games ever played; its a list of the most historically significant MLB games. There is an important difference. For example, no one can deny that Game Seven of the 1960 World Series was certainly thrilling, but it is not especially historically significant unless your name is Ralph Terry or Bill Mazeroski or you are a die-hard Pittsburgh Pirates fan. On the other hand, Game Six of the 1975 World Series was both thrilling and historically significant because of its undeniable positive impact on baseballs rejuvenation and surge in popularity in the years that followed. Similarly, most Opening Days are forgotten soon after the final pitch is thrown. However, the first Milwaukee Braves home opener in 1953 provided an attention-grabbing harbinger that the traditional locales of MLB teams sometimes were not necessarily carved in stone. Likewise, Opening Day at Fenway Park in 1973 ushered in the profoundly game-changing designated hitter position in the American League. Both those games certainly possess clear historical merit.

This list we have compiled in this book was done so for your amusement, entertainment and enlightenment. Keep in mind that the list is not designed to be everything to everyone. We expect dissent. It represents merely only our personal choicesalthough we do firmly believe them to be valid and educated selections.

The games we have chosen span the entire 14 decades of professional baseballs history. They include contests that any baseball fan worth his salt ought to be familiar with, along with some games so obscure that they will be revelations to a great many readers. After beginning within a brainstormed list of about 130 candidates, the 43 selections that made the grade for this book did so for a wide variety of reasons: some obvious, some subtle. No bias was given for or against a particular era or decade. As it turned out, though, the decades of the 1880s and 1980s provided just one game apiece. Remarkably, the two games from 1974 that are included here occurred on consecutive days on opposite sides of the continent, but each represents a dramatically different reason for being significant. Curiously, two other games on our list were incapable of producing a winner, which must be a statistical anomaly considering how rarely tie games occur in MLB.