“FIRST OF 659” and “HARD TO HOLD THE HABS”

#754/#753

754. NEW YORK YANKEES VS BOSTON RED SOX

MAY 1, 1920

POLO GROUNDS

QUALITY OF PLAY—5.89

DRAMA—6.66

STAR POWER—9.25

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—6.75

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—9.11

LOCAL IMPACT—6.55

TOTAL: 44.21

“FIRST OF 659”

Babe Ruth hit 49 home runs as a member of the Boston Red Sox, even as the lion’s share of his time there was spent on the mound as a pitcher. His 11 dingers in 1918 and 29 in 1919 both led the A.L. Then, of course, he was sold to New York after the ’19 season, and set about clubbing 659 more homers over 15 (mostly) glorious and historic seasons in the Big Town, in the process becoming the most legendary slugger of all time.

There had to be a first home run hit as a Yankee, and it came, appropriately, against the team that had just shown him the door.

Remarkably enough, in retrospect at least, Ruth didn’t get off to much of a start with his new club in the 1920 season. He injured an ankle in the opener, and wasn’t quite himself with the lumber. In his first two weeks as a Yankee, encompassing nine games, the Babe was 7-31 at the plate, with just one double and three RBI in that first fortnight. In a related development, the Yanks were just 3-6 in that initial stretch.

But May dawned a bloomin’ red, as Boston came to New York for an early series. The Sox had already swept a three-game set in Boston from the Yanks, and there were many freezing cold takes in the press about what an adroit deal the Sox and Harry Frazee had made in dumping Ruth on New York. Boston beat the Yanks again in the Friday opener at the Polo Grounds, so the 3-7 and frustrated Upper Manhattan Duds (Not yet Bronx or Bombers) were already desperate for a win when the two teams met on Saturday afternoon, May 1, 1920. 12,000 fans came out to see the far less-respected of the two teams, the American League Yankees, that called the ground at Coogan’s Bluff home.

Herb Pennock, a future Yankee himself, took the hill for Boston, and he gave up a run right away, with Wally Pipp singling in a man. Ruth, hitting cleanup, forced Pipp at second. The Babe then led off the fourth with a double down the right field line. Even with the extremely short porch at the Polo Grounds, this liner wasn’t a threat to leave the yard, but it was hit with gusto. Two ground balls scored Ruth to make it 2-0, New York.

In the fifth there was fireworks, though not from longballs. Constant catcalls from the New York dugout prompted the umpire, Bill “Home Run” Dinneen (so-called because in his pitching days with Boston he gave up homers in the dead ball era, when they were rare), to invade the Yanks bench and eject three players. “”Dinneen began to get bits of the conversation and his gills started to turn a delicate purple,” wrote W.O. McGeehan in the New York Tribune. Some soda bottles were hurled on the field, implements “usually accepted as visiting cards from impulsive exiles from Cincinnati” (Reds fans were infamous at the time for tossing bottles of pop onto the playing ground).

Matters quieted at last, and the score remained 2-0 after five innings. Pennock faced the Babe to start the sixth, and his first pitch, a knee-high fastball, left the joint almost before Herbie finished his delivery. Babe crushed it to right. It was a truly Ruthian shot, sailing far over the top of the grandstand and out into adjacent Manhattan Field. The blast “cleared the top of the right field stands by thirty feet” according to McGeehan. It was the third ball ever to clear the Harlem rooftop, matching one Ruth hit in 1919, his final homer as a Red Sox player (Shoeless Joe Jackson hit the other).

“The fans went wild over the feat, for it was a mighty smash,” wrote William B. Hanna in the New York Herald. The anonymous Times writer covering the action went with an anarchist bent to describe the dinger; “Babe Ruth sneaked a bomb into the park without anybody knowing it, and hid it in his bat. He exploded the weapon in the sixth, when he lambasted a home run high over the right field grandstand.”

It was Ruth’s first home run in a Yankee (not yet pinstriped) uniform, and in another typical Babe flourish, the blow was the Babe’s 50th career homer. That made it 3-0, and it became 4-0 on the very next pitch. Duffy Lewis, yet another former Bostonian, followed the Babe’s shot with one of his own, hammering one off Pennock to deep left. The Boston Globe reported that “Hardly had the ovation to Ruth simmered when Duffy Lewis…brought another wave of enthusiasm by smashing the spheroid into the left-field bleachers for another four-base clout.”

In the seventh, Ruth knocked in another run with a groundout. He finished 2-4 with a pair of runs and ribbies, and of course his first home run as a New Yorker.

Bob Shawkey, the Yanks starter, threw a tidy four-hit shut piece for the 6-0 win. The Yanks had won a ballgame, at last, and now the Babe was hitting. Perhaps the slow start would be forgotten by summer.

AFTERMATH:

Ruth’s 1920 season would completely reconfigure the imaginations of baseball fans across the country. Ruth homered the following day, and would hit a dozen in May as the Yanks surged. He was off on a slugging tear the likes of which had never been seen before, one that ended with an heretofore incomprehensible 54 homers. That mark, along with his 150 walks and 1.379 OPS, were not just new records but so far beyond previous standards (mostly set by Ruth himself) that they constituted a whole new, uh, ballgame. The debut of a jumped-up baseball and abolishment of the spitball, among other rules, certainly helped usher in the new paradigm—mainly, however, it was the Babe’s exceptional ability that was responsible. Ruth’s incredible season also became an unprecedented box office attraction. The Yankees drew nearly 1.3 million fans to the Polo Grounds in 1920, far more than the Giants, their landlords. That new reality began a chain reaction that led to the Yankee Stadium being built across the Harlem River.

But despite Ruth’s heroics, the Yanks didn’t win the pennant. They finished in third, just three behind Cleveland. One could say that bad initial stretch cost them the flag.

As mentioned above, the Sultan Swatted 659 homers as a Yankee after 49 in Boston. As a 40-year old playing briefly with the 1935 Boston Braves, Babe hit six more homers in 28 games. That boosted his career total to 714, by far the most of any player at the time. The number remains among the most hallowed in sports, despite it having been surpassed.

WHAT THEY SAID:

“Boston was certainly slaughtered to make a Yankee holiday, and the chief cause of the jubilation was the fact that the great Babe Ruth found his batting eye.”

—Boston Sunday Globe (unbylined)

FURTHER READING:

Babe: The Legend Comes To Life by Robert Creamer

VIDEO:

753. NEW YORK ISLANDERS VS MONTREAL CANADIANS

STANLEY CUP SEMIFINALS

GAME THREE

MAY 1, 1976

NASSAU COLISEUM

QUALITY OF PLAY—7.33

DRAMA—6.40

STAR POWER—7.42

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.85

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.46

LOCAL IMPACT—7.76

TOTAL: 44.22

“HARD TO HOLD THE HABS”

The Montreal Canadians between 1976-1979 are one of, if not the, greatest hockey teams ever. Yes, the Rocket Richard-led Habs from the late-50s and the Jean Beliveau teams of the late-60s were also incredible, so your mileage may vary. But I favor the late-70s version, fronted by Guy LeFleur and Larry Robinson and Ken Dryden and Steve Shutt and Jacques Lemaire and Guy LaPointe and Pete Mahovlich, etc etc etc. Those “LaPointe…Lemaire…Lefleur…Le GOAL!!” teams were not only unstoppable but beautiful to watch—free-flowing but tough, laden with swift-skating defensemen who linked play forward with aplomb, and backstopped by Dryden, a cat-quick netminder with a literary bent (and a Cornell alum, like my late father).

Coached by the legendary Scotty Bowman, the Canadians took over a league sullied by the violent antics of the Broad Street Bullies from Philly and showed people what real hockey was meant to look like. They were easily the best team in the 1975-76 regular season, and went into the playoffs as massive favorites.

But there was one pesky young team that could give them problems, the nascent Long Island club that would grow into their own dynastic juggernaut, the New York Islanders.

The playoffs at the time held 12 teams with no conference affiliations—the best dozen in the league made it and were seeded as such. Montreal, of course, was first, while the up and coming Isles were fifth. The Habs got a first-round bye while New York was sweeping the best-of-three opener from Vancouver. Then the bleu, blanc et rouge crushed the Blackhawks in four straight while the Isles shuffled past Buffalo in six after dropping the first two games at the Aud in western NY.

That set up the first-ever postseason meeting between the upstarts from Long Island, in just their fourth season of existence, and the sangbleus from Quebec, winners of 18 Stanley Cups and counting. In the opener at the Montreal Forum the Isles grabbed a third period lead, only to see it slip away on goals from Robinson and Yvan Courneyer (long one of my favorites due to his wonderfully sibilant name, pronounced “CORN-Why-eyy”). In Game Two the favorites took a 3-0 lead and held off a furious Isles rally to win another tight game, 4-3.

So New York was once more up against the wall, but they didn’t mind that—the Islanders had established themselves as “Comeback Kings” after not just the Buffalo series but the 1975 playoffs, when they roared back from an 0-3 deficit to shock the Penguins and almost did the same against Philly in the next round, forcing a Game Seven before at last falling. So they felt confidant returning home down 0-2 in a series, even against the awesome Habitants.

The teams took to the ice for Game Three, held live from New York on Saturday night, May 1, 1976 at the Nassau Coliseum (exactly 56 years after the last event on the countdown, Babe Ruth’s first home run as a Yankee). Chico Resch replaced the usual starting goaltender for the home team, Billy Smith, midway through Game Two, and now he got the start in Game Three. Any butterflies Chico may have felt were removed by his offense, which scored twice in the opening period. During a four-on-four with a man from each team in the sin bin, Garry Howatt took a precision pass from Denis Potvin, wheeled in alone on Dryden, and slapped one under his left leg pad for the opening goal.

Less than ninety seconds later it was two-zilch. Bryan Trottier, New York’s outstanding young two-way center, had been heretofore shut down by Montreal’s “ruffian unit” of Doug Jarvis, Bob Gainey and Jim Roberts. But with the home ice advantage, Isles coach Al Arbour was allowed to make the last line change, and he kept Trots away from the hard-checking Montreal threesome. Trots bested Lemaire on a face off, drawing it back to Gerry Hart while Trottier crashed the net. Dryden saved Hart’s drive from the point but the rebound kerranged off Trots and into the net. Not the most aesthetic way for the totemic center to get off the schneid but it counted nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Chico was the Man. He took a Shutt drive off his throat early in the second period, and lay motionless on the ice. Suddenly, he bounced to his skates, eliciting a mighty roar from the Uniondale faithful. Moments later, he stopped another point-blank shot from Shutt (Rush frontman Geddy Lee’s best childhood buddy) and another from LaPointe. The “Cheee-co!!! Cheee-co!!!” chant filled the barn. He made several more excellent saves, stopping 21 shots through two periods, as the Isles held that 2-0 lead after forty minutes.

But the Canadians were a great, great team, and they showed why in the third. Immediately they forced a penalty, and just after the ensuing power-play ended they finally solved Resch. Shutt, omnipresent, stole the puck from Lorne Henning and fired it across the goal mouth, where Lemaire stuffed it home.

Now the Habs had the wind filling their sails, and the Isles were in protect mode, never a recipe for success. Moments later, Yvon Lambert swooped in on Resch, deked him to the ice, and clanged one off the left post, then slumped over, having “hurt” his back while missing the yawning net.

It was break for the home team, but it wouldn’t last long. Roberts had a similar breakaway, shorthanded, and he slotted the puck past Chico to tie the game with just over eight minutes to play.

The Canadians were like an avalanche rolling down Mont Blanc, and sure enough, it was Lambert who got another chance to bury the Islanders. With just under four minutes left the puck was in the corner when New York winger Clark Gillies tried to kick it over to Trottier. Robinson intercepted it, and passed the rubber to Cournoyer. He tried to spear it past Resch, but the puck pinballed off sticks and limbs—right to Lambert, who popped it into the empty net, not missing this time.

“The puck hit a defenseman, I think,” said Lambert. “I don’t really know what happened. And then I had a goal.” His back no longer hurt, that’s for sure. The entire Montreal bench emptied on to the ice to congratulate Lambert, a sign of the team’s relief.

The Habs had stormed back to score thrice in the third and come back against the Comeback Kings. Dryden saw off any further Islanders chances, and Montreal won 3-2 to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the series. New York had erased that before, but not against a team this good.

AFTERMATH:

The Isles avoided the sweep with an easy 5-2 win in Game Four, but Montreal finished them off back in Canada to take the series in five. They then swept Philly to win the first of what would be four consecutive Stanley Cups, a run of dominance only ended when the Islanders embarked on their dynasty in 1980.

It was something of a sop to the young Isles that the Canadians praised them as their toughest playoff opponents during the streak (Montreal bested the Islanders again in 1977). “We were the one team they feared,” said Resch.

WHAT THEY SAID:

“Chico Resch had all but completed a masterpiece only to wind up with a picture of Dorian Gray. He had a 2-0 shutout going all the way to the third period at Nassau Coliseum and then the swift Canadians of Montreal smeared and streaked his beautiful creation with a flying finish that produced three goals.”

—Gene Ward, New York Daily News

FURTHER READING:

Montreal Canadians: A Hockey Dynasty by Claude Mouton

VIDEO:

No video of this game is around, so here is the official film of the ’76 Cup Finals..

And here is a snippet from the Isles beating Buffalo in Game Six of the prior round…