So, the Anaheim Angels are World Champions. This did not, despite what some have claimed, amount to a sign of the Apocalypse. That team was made up of young and older over achievers. There was a pitching staff ranging from veterans, who have waited for this championship to a 20-year-old rookie with ice water in his veins and a slider that made grown men weep. I confess, I rooted for the Yankees against the Angels in the divisional playoff that year. I am a New Yorker and the Yankees are my hometown team. The actual team I root for – the Chicago Cubs – are difficult to root for in the post season. Pretty much, you have to go to a golf course or a restaurant to cheer them on in October.
All in all, I was happy for the Angels. I admire Dusty Baker for his baseball knowledge and his leadership capabilities. But, truth be known, the rest of the Giants are a soap opera. The team has so many nepotistic batboys on the bench the dugout looks like a school bus stop. Barry Bonds hates Jeff Kent and Kent hates him. Kenny Lofton has arrogance way beyond his abilities. Rich Aurelia had to have made the starting line up the same way those little bat boys got in. There’s too much drama there.
So I was comfortable with the Angels winning, and then it happened. On the stage to help accept the trophy was Michael Eisner. Championship cap, blazer and Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. Suddenly the Giants weren’t looking so bad to me. Self-promotion is Eisner’s forte. Standing there with all those talented ballplayers and Mrs. Autry, whose family’s money and fore sight made this day possible, was this nasty little man with his Sardonic smile. “Relax”, I said to myself, “the hockey season has already started.” I kept waiting for Eisner to have David Eckstein placed in a Cinderella coach and driven around the perimeter of Edison Field to the “It’s a Small World After All” theme.
Then I thought of the Los Angeles Angels, the original expansion team that came into the American League in 1961. They played in Wrigley Field. Wrigley Field, Los Angeles that is. That stadium was used more frequently for making movies about baseball than actually having the game played there. But in 1961 that was all different. The American League, as you might imagine was not generous in the players they were making available to this new franchise. Their opening day lineup read like a who’s/who of journeymen players. But “in their day” each had been a star. Unfortunately for the new franchise, “their day "was long before 1961.
Bill Rigney, a former Giant manager was the skipper. Albie Pearson, who was shorter than David Eckstein, played right field. He was so short that at times you felt he was peering “through” the grass. Eddie Yost, “The Walking Man” played third. Yost led the league in walks every year. Not intentional walks, which are born of fear, but worked out walks born of patience, a good eye and a thought out approach to hitting. Eli Grba, who had won 6 games for the Yankees in 1960 was the first ever expansion draft pick and their opening day starting pitcher. Grba (pronounced gerr-bah) had the nickname “Gabe”. The Yankees on a long road trip realized that all the letters in his name “Eli Grba” could be rearranged to form “Gabriel”. Del Rice, tougher than a one-dollar steak, was their catcher.
My favorite, and I heard recently in an interview, also a favorite of Gene Autry, was Ted Kluszewski. “Klu” and I went back a few years. It was 1956; Bobby Greely’s dad took six of us to see the Reds play the Dodgers at Ebbets Field. It was noteworthy for several reasons. It was a twi-night double header. Yes, back then they were not only giving you two games for the price of one, they’d occasionally make them night games. They were so regularly scheduled, the newspapers even had a name for them – “twin arc tilts”. Another interesting aside was that I got to see Sandy Koufax pitch that night, in relief! We sat right next to the Reds’ dugout. The Reds had a pitcher named Herschel "Buster" Freeman. As Buster was heading to the bullpen, he noticed that a lace on his glove was broken. “Use mine”, John Klippstein, a Reds pitcher with such bad control he was called"The Wild Man of Borneo", said. “Nah, your glove is as stiff as [expletive deleted].” We all looked at each other. A major leaguer just cursed and we heard it.
But the thing I remember most was Ted Kluszewski. He was huge. Long before it was fashionable, he had the sleeves cut off his uniform. His arms were like tree trunks. Now, I had seen him many times on television, but this was up close and very impressive. Back in my youth, you never even saw a game in color unless you were at the park. Kluszewski hit a home run that night; it was still going up as it went over the scoreboard. Another interesting fact is that he also hit two home runs on the Angels first opening day. These current Angels are impressive, but I wonder if anyone will be remembering David Eckstein stories in forty-six years.
Recently, while reading a copy of the Sporting News, one fact literally took my breath away. Shea Stadium is 38 years old. That is hard to believe. It seems only yesterday that we were on the #7 train headed for Manhattan and we saw two huge circles being carved out of the Willets Point parking lot. That lot was originally built for the 1939 World’s Fair and was later used as a commuter lot, due to its easy access to the subway and Long Island Rail Road.
Each day we passed those circles got larger. Soon the circles were dotted with evidence of steel beams. It took a long time for the outline of the stadium to appear. When it did, we were all excited that National League baseball was going to be a scant 15 minutes from our front doors. The Giants and Dodgers had both left for the west coast in the mid-1950’s. There were several stumbling attempts to fill the void left by their departure. New York based business groups tried to lure the Reds and the Phillies to the “Big Apple” to no avail. Perhaps the strangest idea happened in 1960. A third major league (the Continental League) was proposed. It was a well-financed dream that just didn’t work out. The front man for that league was a New York lawyer named Bill Shea. When the Continental League failed, Mayor Robert Wagner charged Shea with making New York part of the National League’s proposed 1962 expansion to ten teams. Part of that inclusion was a guarantee that the new team would get a new, state of the art ballpark. The New York Mets were born and after two seasons in the Giants old Polo Grounds, they moved to Shea Stadium in Queens.
Originally, the Mets were supposed to only play one season in the Polo Grounds. But construction schedules slipped and costs grew. The total cost of construction for the new ballpark was, a then whopping, $29million. Today that is about the cost of three mediocre infielders. Interestingly, the planners visited Willets Point in the winter. That doesn’t seem important but it is. The stadium is adjacent to LaGuardia Airport. The landing patterns change according to the season. In the winter the skies over Shea Stadium are free of aircraft. During the baseball season, however, planes come in for landings over the first base side stands and out through left center field. More than one balk has been called as a pitcher in mid-windup was frightened by the roar of a jumbo jet.
Now, Shea is ancient history. On April 17, 1964 (opening day) I remember rummaging through my program to find the name of the Pittsburgh Pirate who had just hit the first home run in the new ballpark. It was a line drive down the right field line. It never went higher or lower than 15 feet – awesome. His name was Willie Stargell, and he was awesome too.
In subsequent years there were Hodges, Seaver, Staub, Ryan, HoJo and Mookie. There are a million memories in that old ballpark. Of personal interest to me was being there for each Cub game in 1969, as my team lost the pennant to the Mets. For the record, there was a play at home plate where Met Tommie Agee was out by a mile but called safe. That was the beginning of the end. But, like I said, it’s all history now.
A new ballpark is being proposed. It will be in Queens. As is the standard today, it will have old lines to it. The proposal is to build a replica of Brooklyn’s old Ebbets Field, with a retractable dome on it. This is the "cover band" approach to life. You can't get the real thing, The Rolling Stones cost too much and Elvis is dead, so let's get a look alike. Like so much else in baseball, it is form over substance. Baseball thrives on it's rich tradition, then it dismantles and replaces artifacts of that legacy.
His Name was Lorne Worsley, also known as “Gump”. He was a rotund little man, who put himself in the way of slap shots and wrist shots and burley center men intent on crowding his crease. The “Gumper” was a goalie. Hard as nails, committed and unafraid. For 19 of his 21 seasons in the NHL, he played without a mask. His style was what they called “flop”. He threw any part of his body in front of a shot.
Worsley came into the NHL with the New York Rangers for the ’52-’53 season. The team was pitiful. Of the 50 games he played in, the Rangers were 13-29 and 8. Still, his skills were evident enough to win him the Calder Trophy as “Rookie of the Year”. Rather than nurture and season Worsley with the big club, they sent him to the minor leagues to spend a year with the Vancouver Canucks of the WHA. The Ranger goalie that year was the legendary John Bower. The ’53-’54 Rangers were as dismal as ever. Management realized that Bower wasn’t the answer, and they brought Worsley back.
He returned to New York with much fanfare. He played goal for Ranger coach “Fiery Phil” Watson. There was no love lost between the two. In public, Watson would refer to Worsley as “the beer barrel”, Worsley would reply that he drank Scotch, a beverage, Worsley said, that Watson “…was obviously too cheap to ever order.” And so it went. I have memories of many games, when Gump would have more than 60 saves and the Rangers would lose 1-0 or 2-1. He’d bounce around like a rubber ball, deflecting shots into the corners, only to have the impotent Ranger attack give the puck up, time and again in neutral ice. To the Rangers of the ‘50’s , hockey was a half court game, and Worsley paid the price. During the 1962-63 NHL season, Worsley once stopped an incredible 269 shots from opposing players in the span of only six games. Ranger trainer Frank Pace would be the last man out of the Garden several hours after a game. His final duty was to check the players’ parking lot each night, where he would frequently find an exhausted Worsley asleep in his car.
He gave all he had for a decade as a Ranger and was finally dealt away. He was traded to Montreal with Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort, and Len Ronson for Jacques Plante, Don Marshall, and Phil Goyette in the summer of 1963. How ironic that the fearless little man without the mask was replaced by Jaques Plante, the first goalie to wear a mask full time. Life at the Garden was significantly different. Life was significantly better for Gump Worsley.
He went on to win 4 Stanley Cups with Montreal. The talented, underrated goalie showed what he was made of, when surrounded by a supporting cast equal to his abilities. Having gotten what they could out of him, Montreal then sold Gump outright to Minnesota in 1970.In 861 regular season games, Worsley had 335 wins and 352 losses with 150 ties. He did post 43 shutouts. During the postseason, Worsley, in 70 career games, boasts a record of 40 wins and 26 losses with a 2.82 goals against average and 5 shutouts. Gump Worsley was inducted into Hockey's Hall of Fame in 1980. I felt validated by that induction. You see, he was always a Hall of Famer to those of us sitting in the “cheap seats” at the Garden.
