Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
We non-New Yorkers implore the baseball gods: Please don't make us suffer a Subway Series.
Oct 17, 2000 | Oh, please, no. Not a Subway Series.
Go, Seattle! I can't take two weeks of the city so nice they named it twice. Please don't let the big spotlight that's always shining on New York shine 10 times brighter for an endless fortnight. Somebody win something. Somebody not from New York.
John Halama, won't you pitch a shutout in Game 6? Alex Rodriguez, could you get a few more big hits? Mike Cameron, Edgar Martinez ... uh ... Mark McIntyre. I mean McLemore. Whatever. My boys! Go!
From 1949 to 1958 there was at least one New York team in the World Series every year. In six of those 10 years, both teams were from New York, and five of those six times, the two teams were the Dodgers and Yankees, who also played each other in 1947, just to get warmed up.
This period is commonly known in the media as "baseball's golden age." Why is that? Because the media is centered in New York. Of course it was baseball's golden age. It was all about New York. How much more golden can you get? Finally, New Yorkers said to themselves every October, baseball has arranged itself the way all things should: There is no need to leave the city. We've been looking at sepia-toned retrospectives of that gilded age ever since.
In that same 10-year period the Pittsburgh Pirates finished last five times and next-to-last three times. Probably not a golden age if you ask Pittsburghers. It was no picnic in Washington either, where the Senators finished last four times, next to last three times and never higher than fifth in an eight-team league. At least starting in 1954 Washingtonians could go to Baltimore to watch the Orioles, who didn't have a winning season until 1960.
If the media were somehow centered in the Steel City, baseball's golden age would have been the early '70s, when the Pirates won a few division championships and a World Series, or maybe the mid-'20s, when they went to the Series twice in three years. Or maybe just that day in 1960 when Bill Mazeroski hit that home run to beat the Yankees in Game 7.
Beat the Yankees in Game 7. Mmmmm. Hear that, Mariners?
In Washington, the golden age started when the Senators left town for good.
