Around The Horn Baseball: July 4th Baseball

For years, baseball was as big a part of the Fourth of July as fireworks and picnics. Every team in baseball played doubleheaders, giving fans a long day at the park. It marked the midpoint of the season and set up the rest of the summer.

In the 1970s, the doubleheader went the way of the dinosaur, and baseball and this week’s holiday are not as linked as they once were. Still, baseball gets a large audience on the Fourth as fans settle in on a day off from work to see how their team is doing.

The holiday has been the date of many magic moments in baseball history. I know that many of you are not from the NY Metropolitan area, but much of baseball history involves NY teams. Here is a look at some Fourth of July New York baseball moments ranging from the tragic to bizarre (if any of you have some famous Fourth of July moments from other parts of the country we’d love to hear them):

ATLANTA MARATHON

At 4:01 a.m. (I know it was 4:01 a.m. because like an idiot I stayed up to watch the game until it ended) on July 5, 1985, the fireworks finally went off over Fulton County Stadium. The Mets and Braves had just played a game that featured two rain delays and six hours, 10 minutes of playing time. When Ron Darling struck out Rick Camp at 3:55, the Mets 16-13 victory was complete.

It was Fireworks Night, and even though only about 100 people were left in the stadium, the Braves decided to set them off. Atlanta residents, asleep for hours, panicked that the city was under attack.

It was a fitting finish to a bizarre night. The game had 19 innings, 29 runs, 43 players, 114 outs, 615 pitches, 45 hits, 23 walks, 22 strikeouts, five errors and 37 stranded base runners.

The Mets had taken a lead in the top of the 18th inning, and they were ready to go home. Then Camp, a relief pitcher with a .060 career batting average, came to the plate. He hit a two-out, two-strike Tom Gorman pitch out of the ballpark for his only career home run to tie the game.

The Mets broke through in the 19th to put the game away and Darling closed it out. Keith Hernandez hit for the cycle in the game, and Gary Carter caught all 19 innings - 305 pitches.

IRON HORSE SAYS GOODBYE

It is the most famous speech in the history of baseball. Lou Gehrig, dying at age 36, stood before 61,808 fans at Yankee Stadium on a day in his honor on July 4, 1939.

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got,” he said. “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?”

The Yankees retired his No. 4 that day, the first major-league number to be so honored. His streak of 2,130 straight games had ended more than two months earlier, but this day would become the iconic image of Gehrig.

RAGS BAGS BOSOX

It had been 27 years since a Yankee had thrown a no-hitter when Dave Righetti did it on July 4, 1983, against the Red Sox. When Wade Boggs struck out on a slider to end the 4-0 Yankees victory, Righetti jumped in the air.

Righetti started the afternoon by striking out seven of Boston’s first nine batters. Righetti, 24 at the time, issued four walks in the game and had nine strikeouts. Only two of the 27 outs were hit hard.

DRESSEN GETS THE HOOK - TWICE

Three months later, the Giants and Dodgers would play one of the most famous games in baseball history. But on July 4, 1951, the pennant race was just getting started. The two teams met at Ebbets Field for a crazy doubleheader.

The Giants built a lead on home runs by Don Mueller and Willie Mays in Game 1. Brooklyn came back in the eighth, getting a pinch-hit homer from Roy Campanella, a home run by Pee Wee Reese and a single from Gil Hodges in the ninth to tie the game, 4-4.

In extra innings, Bobby Thomson homered in the 11th to move the Giants up by one, but Preacher Roe laid down a squeeze bunt to give the Dodgers the 6-5 victory.
In the second game, Dodgers manager Charlie Dressen got thrown out for arguing balls and strikes in the second inning. After he was tossed, Dressen took a seat behind the dugout, drawing the umpire’s anger and earning his second ejection of the game.
Ralph Branca won the second game, 4-2, with homers from Hodges and Duke Snider. The victories gave Brooklyn a 61/2-game lead that would dissolve as the summer progressed.

LARY STRIKES AGAIN

Tigers pitcher Frank Lary was known as “The Yankee Killer” because of the damage he did against the team in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He had a lifetime 27-13 record against them and went 7-0 in 1958.

On July 4, 1961, Lary broke the hearts of Yankees fans with not just his arm but his bat. Before 74,246 fans, the largest Stadium crowd since 1947, the Yankees won the first game of the doubleheader 6-2 behind Whitey Ford.

In the second game, Lary allowed three runs and pitched into the 10th inning. With the score tied at 3, Lary came to the plate in the 10th with men on second and third. He laid a bunt down the third-base line that scored Steve Boros and gave the Tigers a 4-3 victory that cemented Lary as the all-time “Yankee killer.”

TRAGEDY AT THE POLO GROUNDS

Bernard Doyle was just getting to his seat on July 4, 1950, for a doubleheader between the Giants and Dodgers when a bullet hit him in the forehead, killing him instantly. The bullet had been fired from a nearby apartment rooftop randomly by a teenage boy. Doyle was at one time a fight manager who was credited with starting James J. Braddock on his ring career in 1926.

Reports the day after said as the body was removed from the upper tier of the Polo Grounds, the standing-room-only crowd fought over his vacated seat.

DICKEY FIGHTS BACK

In the first game of a doubleheader on July 4, 1932, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, Bill Dickey got into a fight for the ages.

Senators outfielder Carl Reynolds slid hard into the Yankees catcher on a squeeze play. Dickey took offense to the slide and punched Reynolds, breaking his jaw. Dickey was fined $1,000 and suspended for 30 days. - Mike Cardano