798. NEW YORK HIGHLANDERS VS BOSTON RED SOX
JUNE 30, 1908
HILLTOP PARK
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.66
DRAMA—5.25
STAR POWER—7.66
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.85
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.55
LOCAL IMPACT—7.80
TOTAL: 43.77
“FOREVER YOUNG”
Ohio before the turn of the 20th Century was still mostly farmland, so it isn’t much of a surprise that Buckeye State ballplayers of that era were often straight off the north 40. One of, if not the, greatest Ohioans to play ball was so hick he was literally called “Farmboy” when he first broke into organized ball as a flame-throwing teenager. His name was Denton Young, but he threw so hard he could shatter the wooden planking on the grandstand with his fastball, make it look like a twister had roared through. So he became known as “Cy”—short for “Cyclone”—Young.
Cy started in the majors in 1890 with the Cleveland Spiders, a mostly harmless group that caused little arachnophobia during Young’s decade with the team. At the turn of the century he jumped over to the upstart American League and joined the Bostons. In 1903 he started Game One of the first ever modern World Series for the Americans, as they were known then, and threw the very first pitch in Fall Classic history. He threw a perfect game in 1904 (one start after a one-hitter), to go with a no-hitter he threw with Cleveland in 1897.
By 1908 Young was no longer young, aged 41 and a much different pitcher than the one who inspired nicknames based on natural disasters. His blow-it-by-ya days well in the rearview, Cy relied instead on off-speed pitches, in particular a perfectly controlled curve, though in his mind, the sharp nature of the breaking ball was immaterial so long as it went where he wanted it to. As Young put it, "Some may have thought it was essential to know how to curve a ball before anything else. Experience, to my mind, teaches to the contrary. Any young player who has good control will become a successful curve pitcher long before the pitcher who is endeavoring to master both curves and control at the same time. The curve is merely an accessory to control.” He also threw from various arm angles, an ability that many believe accounted for his amazing longevity—the delicate bits in his arm and shoulder weren’t overworked to the point of breakage, despite his historic workload, which included more innings pitched than any pitcher ever (7,356).
Likewise, the Red Sox—no longer the Americans—were much different by then, a mediocre group a far cry from their glory days. But the Hub could take solace in the fact the local nine remained far better than their rivals in New York. Still officially the Highlanders (so-called for their elevated Washington Heights home, Hilltop Park), the nickname “Yankees” was becoming ever more popular in the press. Regardless of moniker (they were also called the Hilltoppers on occasion) the squad was dreadful in ’08, even as the nearby Giants were taking part in one of history’s great pennant chases a few blocks south. New York’s best player, Hal Chase, one of the most corrupt and selfish lads in the history of the game, didn’t make it through the season. Other than the great but denuded outfielder Wee Willie Keeler, aged 36, the lineup was one of the softest and most anonymous in franchise history.
Manager Clark Griffith quit the sinking ship in June with the club still kinda-sorta in contention, at 24-32. The “Tabasco Kid,” Kid Elberfeld, once called “the dirtiest, scrappiest, most pestiferous, most cantankerous, most rambunctious ball player that ever stood on spikes,” took over. A solid hitting shortstop, the Kid was oft-ejected and regularly feuded with teammates, a forerunner to future NYC pepperpots Billy Martin, Leo Durocher and Eddie Stanky. He was the opening day starter at short for New York, but 19 games in he was severely spiked, accidentally-on-purpose, by an opponent, which put him out for the rest of the season. Since he was just hanging around, team owner Frank Ferrell put the Kid in charge of the dugout. That cost the team its lone good player, Chase, who wanted the job and sulked about it until he up and bounced back home to California (he was also under clouds of suspicion for throwing games, not that this team needed any assistance in that regard).
Elberfeld lost 15 of his first 18 games in charge, and was such a lunatic in the dugout one teammate complained to the Washington Post, “We are … playing under the direction of a crazy man. It won’t take Elberfeld more than two weeks to make us the most demoralized ball team that the American League has ever known. He thinks he is a manager, but he can’t convince any one but himself that he has the first qualification for the place. It’s a joke.”
The Highlanders were right in the heart of Kid’s dubious managerial start when Boston visited Hilltop Park on a sunny Tuesday, June 30, 1908. New York had actually managed a rare win in the first game of the series, but lost the day before in 11 innings. The home team was eager to build on this miniature spark of good play under Elberfeld, but alas, they had to face Cy Young—“Old, ancient, antediluvian Cy Young, relic of antiquity and the youngest man in baseball, for he gets better with the years,” as the New York Sun put it. And on this day, Young was indeed his old, best self.
The poor schlub who opposed Cy on the mound that afternoon was named Rube Manning (career record—22-32). He lasted a mere inning and a third. Boston scored in each of the first four innings, and led 6-0 after six. “There were several reasons for this,” noted the Times. “To wit: Pitcher Manning. Pitcher [Doc] Newton. Pitcher [Joe] Lake. If the reader will imagine quotation marks before and after the word pitcher in each of the foregoing instances he won’t go wrong.” The key hitter? Cy Young hisself, of course, who had three singles and four RBI to help his cause. New York also charitably donated defensively, committing three errors.
Not that Cy needed much of this generosity. The Highlanders (or Yankees, or Hilltoppers) couldn’t buy a hit by any name they chose to be called. Young only struck out a pair. But he kept New York’s Punch and Judy lineup completely off balance, and was totally in control throughout (he only went to three balls on a single hitter, leadoff man Harry Niles, who walked to start the game, else Young might have had his second perfecto). “His surpassing whip was there with all its power and cunning,” wrote the Sun.
The final was 8-0. It was Cy’s third no-hitter of his career, at the time the only modern pitcher to accomplish that feat (Larry Corcoran of the old Chicago White Stockings also hurled three no-nos in the 1880s). It was a fine capstone to an immortal career.
AFTERMATH:
1908 was Young’s last great season. He finished 21-11, with a 1.26 ERA, for the fifth-place Sox. He was dealt to Cleveland in the offseason for a couple of mediocrities and some cash, returning to Ohio for the last lap of his career. He won 19 games for the Naps in 1909, but just seven in 1910. Midway through 1911, he was released by Cleveland. That fall Cy retired after 22 professional seasons. In all Young won 511 games, by far the most in history (Walter Johnson is second with 417), and lost 315, also the most. His career ERA was a stunning 2.63. Emblematic of his time, Young completed 749 of the 815 games he started. Cy was elected in the second class of Hall of Famers in 1937. He died in 1955, at age 88. The following season, as a tribute to the greatest pitcher of the game’s early days, Commissioner Ford Frick announced that an annual award for the league’s best pitcher would be given, and it would be named for Cy Young.
As for the Tabasco Kid, after the Highlanders finished last in the A.L. at 51-103-1, Elberfeld was canned, never to manage again in the bigs, though he had some success running minor league teams.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“Did you hear about what old Young did up at the American League Park yesterday? He didn’t exactly beggar description, but he came mighty nigh it. He beggared the Elberfeld aggregation so far as runs were concerned, and he made hitless Yankees out of the whole outfit, and he smashed singles thisaway and thataway, and he scored people he liked, and he scored people that we don’t know whether he cares much about, and he was the jolly old plot of the piece, and there wasn’t an inning that you could lose track of him.”
—The New York Times (unbylined)
FURTHER READING:
Cy Young: A Baseball Life by Reed Browning
VIDEO:
797. JOHN MCENROE VS BJORN BORG
GRAND PRIX MASTERS FINAL
JANUARY 15, 1981
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.25
DRAMA—6.79
STAR POWER—9.25
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.02
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.77
LOCAL IMPACT—6.70
TOTAL: 43.78
“THE FIERY BORG”
There are other contenders, but the 1980 Wimbledon final between John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg is generally considered the greatest tennis match of all time. It is certainly the most beloved by anyone fortunate enough to witness it, or, in the case of this summer camper in Maine, listen to it on the radio, that afternoon’s soccer game having been called to a halt (yes, Wimbledon was once that important). Borg’s comeback in a mighty fifth set after an all-time epic fourth-set tiebreaker won by McEnroe is still vividly recalled. Two months and two days later, McEnroe defeated his great Swedish counterpart in another incredible five-set encounter, this time at the U.S. Open, a few miles from where McEnroe learned the game.
Little remembered is their fourth entry in their 1980 rivalry (they also met at the Swedish Open, where Borg won easily on his home turf), which took place at the season-ending Grand Prix Masters, held indoors at Madison Square Garden. The “just one last tournament, guys, here’s a big check to convince y’all to play” round-robin involving the ATP Tour’s top eight players had been held since 1970. After bouncing around the globe for a few years, the tournament settled in NYC in 1977, with Jimmy Connors winning the first one held at MSG. It became an instant winter institution for the tennis enthusiast. As the calendar flipped to 1981 after the incredible 1980 Tour season, all eyes were on the two players of greatly contrasting styles and temperament—the icy cool aesthete with the thunderous groundstrokes, Borg, and the tempestuous Long Islander with the feathery serve and volley game, McEnroe.
McEnroe was still so young, just shy of his 22nd birthday, but in January of 1981 he was exhausted. Ill with a stomach virus and hamstrung with an injury to the back of his thigh, Johnny Mac’s frailty was apparent during his opening pool play match, where he lost in three sets to a relative non-entity named Gene Mayer. McEnroe couldn’t even make it to the post-match presser. Mac looked so green during the match that GP supervisor Dick Roberson leaned over to his seatmate and “whispered that I thought McEnroe was going to lose his cookies.” He managed not to vomit (publicly, anyway), but there was concern that he might have to abandon the match with Borg, the lone guaranteed meet up between the two titans and one that had a huge advance sellout gate.
But McEnroe rose to the occasion, and was out there facing his great rival before 19,000 geeked fans on a brutally cold Thursday night, January 15, 1981. “They made a Thursday in January into one of those gripping Garden nights, when the sparks begin on the street and race through the lobby and then head upstairs, where the evening explodes like a fireworks display,” wrote Mike Lupica in the Daily News.
For his part, Borg, sporting his trademark headband and Yonex racket combo, had treated his opening match with Jose-Luis Clerc of Spain like an extended practice session, experimenting and drawing matters out with the Spanish bull before at last administering the finishing gore in a straight sets win. Now Bjorn would face off with an opponent who had beaten him earlier that fall, a few miles to the east. The two players had given the world ten immortal sets of tennis over the past six months. What could they do for an (indoors) encore?
Borg had famously never won the U.S. Open, and a return to New York offered the amateur psychologists in the media a chance to question his mental fitness to compete on the mean streets. Borg’s coach, Lennert Bergelin, dismissed the idea. “I don’t think you can look at it that way,” he told Newsday. “He was lucky to win at Wimbledon but unlucky to lose the Open.”
Bergelin also offered a prescient thought about his charge. “He’s been doing the same things more or less for ten years,” Bergelin noted. “The job today is to ensure that the interest is still there. Maybe it is harder for him to keep serious.”
They were certainly serious, both players, on this NYC night. Mac’s advantage of youth was erased by his queasy tummy and bum hammy. But the impairments faded once he got a load of Borg standing opposite. For nearly three hours the two men reminded the sports world that nothing, not Islanders-Rangers nor Cowboys-Redskins nor Bird-Magic, matched this particular rivalry for theater and evenly matched struggle.
The first set was tight, won when Borg slipped out a break to win it 6-4. Then came the second set, when the usual “Fire and Ice” personae switched sides of the court. It was Borg who, shockingly, went bananas. They had matched one another like grandmasters in the set, reaching yet another tiebreaker, their sixth over 18 previous sets of tennis dating back to the Masters semifinal the year before (won by Borg, 7-6 in the third). At 3-all in the tiebreak, Borg smashed a forehand that was close, called in by the linesman, but (correctly) overruled by the umpire, who called it out. “I was 100 percent sure it was in,” Borg said.
So the monochrome Swede went—by his standards—ballistic. He engaged the umpire, an Englishman named Mike Lugg, in an extended argument, while McEnroe watched, jaw agape. This was his act, after all. Roberson was called to settle matters. Borg wouldn’t calm. He was penalized a point, then another. Incredibly, he now trailed 6-3. The crowd roared as one for Borg, figuring that if Epictetus with a racket was going so crazy he must be in the right. “Could you imagine if I did that?” asked a shocked McEnroe. “They’d have booed me off the court.”
At last order was restored, and McEnroe took the tiebreak and the set, 7-6. In the decisive frame, another close call went against Borg, and the point only ended when Mac threw it, belting the ball deliberately into the crowd. He received a standing ovation. “The last guy you should give a point to is Borg,” Johnny Mac said. “But I wanted to win fair and square.” It was an early glimpse into the fundamental honest decency McEnroe hid behind the anger in those early years, a trait that has long since made him the Darling of the Sport.
The third set was a doozy, one that of course went to yet another tiebreak. “The tennis became dazzling,” wrote Lupica, “and the crowd noise built into something monstrous, something that was all around you, all the time.” It was the best of both men, Mac booming serves from his uniquely twisted stance, then slicing volleys that found unexplored gullies of the court; Borg racing down impossible gets, blonde locks flowing behind him, and cannoning winners with either hand off them.
In the end the difference came down to a delicate backhand lob by McEnroe in the tiebreak that just barely missed long. That was the key point, as Borg served out to edge his great dance partner, 6-4, 6-7, 7-6. It wasn’t a major, and couldn’t make up for the Open loss, but it was a nice slice of revenge for Borg, even at the cost of his famous placidity.
“It is always so satisfying to beat him,” Borg said afterwards. “It is so special to beat John.”
AFTERMATH:
After surviving Johnny Mac, the rest of the tournament was candy for Borg, who took out Connors in three sets in the semis and swept past Ivan Lendl in the final with contemptuous ease. It was to be his final appearance in the Masters, and at Madison Square Garden. After losing in the 1981 U.S. Open to McEnroe again, Borg abruptly retired. Their head-to-head series finished in an appropriate 7-7 tie.
The Masters Grand Prix is now the ATP Finals, and hasn’t been played at the Garden since 1989. The last three editions have been held in Turin after a decade in London.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“When the match is over, you always want them for curtain calls. They take tennis and hold it up high for all to see.”
—Mike Lupica, New York Daily News
FURTHER READING:
Epic: John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and the Greatest Tennis Season Ever by Matthew Cronin
VIDEO: