BROKEN HEARTED MELODY

This is my sad story of Game 7 of the 1962 World Series which my favorite team lost.

BROKEN HEARTED MELODY

            The year 1958 was the first year my favorite team, the New York Giants, played in San Francisco at Seals Stadium. I had moved to California in 1954, and thought it was a tribute to my loyalty that persuaded them to follow me there. They had a few stars I remembered, including Willy Mays, but the new kid on the block was the Baby Bull, Orlando Cepeda. That team also featured Felipe Alou, Leon Wagner and Jim Davenport, while Johnny Antonelli, Stu Miller and young Mike McCormick were the starting pitchers.

            I never saw any of their games that initial season for a number of reasons. My second child was born in July, and she exhibited no interest in the sport. You might think that I would have made the effort, but traveling to that park from San Mateo, about forty miles to the south, would have taken me forever by car. Commuting to that city from any of the towns on the Peninsula is singularly difficult. I know from personal experience.

            In 1961 the Giants played their first game in their brand new stadium, Candlestick Park, located on the Bay, near San Bruno and a city dump. It was a terrible place to play ball, always windy and cold. Once I took my pregnant wife to see a night game there. We arrived in the bottom of the first inning just in time to see McCovey come to bat with two men on base. He hit a pop-up that got lost in the ever-present fog bank. It landed about twenty feet behind second base, where he now stood with a double. The umps called a “fog” delay that lasted for about a half hour, at which time my wife and I departed for home, cold and unhappy. I have no recollection of who won that game.

             I only went to one other game there, but it was a lulu. In the final game of the 1962 World Series the Giants lost 1-0 to the Yankees when second baseman Bobby Richardson caught McCovey’s scalding line drive in the ninth inning for the final out with runners on second and third. Where was the fog that day when we needed it most? That heart-breaking loss left me and some forty thousand fans misty-eyed. Damn Yankees.

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