Babe's Last Hurrah
- Thread starter Ambrose
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That's amazing. I never knew about his finishing up his career with the Braves. It's a shame the Yankees treated him so bad even after
everything he did for that team. To hit 3 home runs at 40 is simply incredible. At any age it's incredible.
There were only 18 home runs hit over the right field roof at Forbes Field in the 61 years it served as the Pittsburgh Pirates home field with Babe Ruth hitting the first one, and believe it or not I witnessed two of them, both by Willie Stargell. And not only witnessed them, I was sitting in the right field upper deck cheap seats both times and watched Stargell's blasts soar over my head and over the roof. Pretty amazing when you think about it.
Forbes Field had quite unusual dimensions, 365 feet down the left field line, 457 feet to center, but just 300 feet down the right field line. I don't know if anyone ever hit a home run over the 457 mark in center as it was the deepest of its kind of any major league park. Right field was very short and there was a lower deck and then an upper deck and then the roof, so it still took a prodigious blow to make it over the roof. Stargell hit 7 of the 18 blasts that made it over the roof.
The section of the left field wall that Bill Mazeroski's winning home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series went over is still standing in Schenley Park, very close to where Forbes Field was originally. That was the first Series title for the Pirates since 1925 and the city went wild. Pictures show almost all White people celebrating exuberantly but peacefully downtown.
Forbes Field had quite unusual dimensions, 365 feet down the left field line, 457 feet to center, but just 300 feet down the right field line. I don't know if anyone ever hit a home run over the 457 mark in center as it was the deepest of its kind of any major league park. Right field was very short and there was a lower deck and then an upper deck and then the roof, so it still took a prodigious blow to make it over the roof. Stargell hit 7 of the 18 blasts that made it over the roof.
The section of the left field wall that Bill Mazeroski's winning home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series went over is still standing in Schenley Park, very close to where Forbes Field was originally. That was the first Series title for the Pirates since 1925 and the city went wild. Pictures show almost all White people celebrating exuberantly but peacefully downtown.
Here are the 1925 Champions:
Look at the boy in the centre he he. Casey's not there he's off getting his hair ready for a night dancing at the William Penn Hotel by near the river near the Liberty bridge ...
Here's some celebration after the Pirates won the Series in '60:
Only 3 dark ones in the crowd but LIFE used this picture with them in the front.
Here's Mazeroski running into home:
Do you remember the play by play call? It goes something like "Bottom of the ninth inning, Mazeroski at bat. Fastball, inside, swing, and there she blows ... the Pittsburgh Pirates have done it all they do the virtual impossible ..." Maz. is still alive today. My father listened to that series on the radio (we didn't have tv). He said he was with the Pirates as he hated the Yankees and anything that had to do with NYC ha ha.
Do you remember the play by play call? It goes something like "Bottom of the ninth inning, Mazeroski at bat. Fastball, inside, swing, and there she blows ... the Pittsburgh Pirates have done it all they do the virtual impossible ..." Maz. is still alive today. My father listened to that series on the radio (we didn't have tv). He said he was with the Pirates as he hated the Yankees and anything that had to do with NYC ha ha.
At that distance the Pirates must have always had a Right Fielder with a cannon to gun down the sliders into first.
They had the great Roberto Clemente, who was a tremendous right fielder and who indeed did gun down a few baserunners at first base. I was at Forbes Field to see Clemente get his 2,000th hit, and went to Three Rivers Stadium to see him going for his 3,000th at the very end of the 1972 season. We thought he had hit a double initially for his 3,000th but the official scorer changed it to an error. Clemente did get his 3,000th hit the next day, which turned out to be his last one as he died that offseason in a plane crash on New Year's Eve 1972 while on a relief mission to Nicaragua following a devastating earthquake in that country.
Bill Mazeroski is now 89 and still lives in suburban Pittsburgh in a modest home, which is fitting as he was always a modest man, almost embarrassed by the fame and attention his homerun created. I was 4 at the time and we were living in Connecticut and I was a Yankees fan and Mickey Mantle was my hero. I don't have a lot of memories from when I was 4 but I do remember my dad telling me the Pirates had won Game 7. I cried.
The Yankees had been heavy favorites and crushed Pittsburgh in the three games they won. Maz's homerun topped off a 10-9 comeback in Game 7 and as mentioned Pittsburgh went crazy. The Steelers had never made the playoffs despite being around since 1933, and the Buccos had last won a pennant in 1927, when they were swept in the Series by the most famous Yankees team of them all. That was the year Ruth hit 60 homers and the Yankees went 110-44, so over three decades of pent up emotion was unleashed in the form of pure jubilation after Game 7.
This may still be the most famous home run in baseball history:
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