1960 game 7 victory film to be aired at theater here

Saturday, October 02, 2010
By Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/?m=1

Pittsburghers once again will see the seventh game of the 1960 World Series before anyone else.

A kinescope of the game Bill Mazeroski won with his home run will be replayed in its entirety at a Pittsburgh theater in November, Bob Costas of MLB Network said Friday. It will be the first time the game has been shown in 50 years.

"We'll show it sometime in November at a theater in Pittsburgh and make it a Pittsburgh event," said Mr. Costas, who will host the program.

A kinescope of the event was recently discovered in the California home of the late Bing Crosby, who was a part-owner of the Pirates in 1960. Bing Crosby Enterprises conveyed the rights to MLB.

Mr. Mazeroski, Dick Groat, and other surviving Pirates and New York Yankees from the storied game will be invited, Mr. Costas said, as will members of the Crosby family and Pittsburgh-bred athletes.

Footage of the event, which will include onstage conversations between innings, will then be used for a national MLB broadcast in December. A DVD is expected to follow.

A theater has not been chosen, but Mr. Costas said, "We'd prefer someplace that feels like it has some history to it, feels like it has some character to it."

The event will not be on the Oct. 13 anniversary of the home run because Major League Baseball doesn't want to drain national press and audience attention from this year's post-season contests, Mr. Costas said. Nor does it want broadcasts of this year's games to keep sportswriters or fans from the Pittsburgh event, he said.

Mr. Costas, who was an 8-year-old Yankees fan in 1960, said he is "30 years past fandom for any one team. I love baseball and I love its history."

If the Yankees had won that game, it wouldn't be nearly as well remembered, he said. Hosting an event that is both nostalgic and brand-new is "a strange privilege."

"Everything is overexposed in sports," he said, "seen and replayed. Here's something that we all know about but, other than the clip of Mazeroski hitting the home run, what else have we seen?"

Mr. Costas hosted the MLB's first program on Jan. 1, 2009, a replay of the perfect game pitched by Yankees pitcher Don Larsen in the 1956 World Series. Mr. Costas interviewed Mr. Larsen and Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, conversations that were interspersed through the airing of the game.

The Pittsburgh event is expected to be similar. Mr. Costas would like to have the core players of the '60 series on stage with him. The audience might see three innings of the game and then a discussion with Mr. Mazeroski or Mr. Groat or Yankee Bobby Richardson.

The game that ended in a 10-9 victory for the Pirates seesawed throughout. Hal Smith hit a three-run home run in the eighth inning to give the Pirates a 9-7 lead, only to see the Yankees tie it up in the ninth with the help of an improbable slide back into first base by Mickey Mantle.

That play alone was analyzed in a long story in The New York Times on Friday.[1] Mr. Costas thinks he could break from the game action every half-inning to talk with the surviving players as the game nears its end. He'd like to talk with Mr. Smith about his homer and to perhaps ask Yankees relief pitcher Ralph Terry why he threw Mr. Mazeroski a high slider when his catcher advised against that.

"Certain things retain romance and mystique," Mr. Costas said.

"This won't remove the mystique. It is in black and white, and there will still be debates and questions unanswered."

The game lasted only 21/2 hours, considerably shorter than the modern game, so he doesn't think fans will mind a broadcast that stretches 31/2 hours. Without the baseball network, he said, there would be no suitable place to broadcast this game.

Mr. Costas also intends to interview Kathryn Crosby, Mr. Crosby's widow, before the event. MLB should also have a short feature in October about the tradition of Pittsburgh fans assembling every Oct. 13 at the remnants of the Forbes Field wall, where they listen to a taped radio broadcast of the seventh game that many of them know by heart.

Brian O'Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/sports/baseball/01mantle.html?_r=1