50 Years Later, a Slide Still Confounds
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: September 30, 2010
The play — a pivotal moment in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series — demanded expert analysis.
Barton Silverman/The New York Times
After watching Mantle’s slide, Keith Hernandez, the Mets’ analyst on SNY, said, “It was like the elephant and the gazelle.”
Major League Baseball
Yankees
Mets
MLB Properties Inc.
The kinescope of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series showed Mickey Mantle’s inexplicable ninth-inning slide beneath the tag of Rocky Nelson, which allowed the Yankees to tie the game.
But when Mickey Mantle slid headfirst back into first base in the top of the ninth inning to avoid a game-ending double play and allow the tying run to score, there was no analyst working in the TV booth with Mel Allen at Forbes Field. There was no one to set up the situation beforehand nor to break down the play after it occurred. There was only one live camera angle and no instant replay.
It was a different world then, and a much simpler one. Allen and Bob Prince made up the World Series TV pairing — one play-by-play announcer from each team, each calling half the game. It was Allen’s turn in Game 7 to call the second set of four and a half innings.
“The old way depended largely on the skill and panache of the local-team announcers” who knew the teams well, said Curt Smith, a sportscasting historian.
Today, that legendary ninth inning, which began with theYankees tying the score at 9-9 and ended with Bill Mazeroski’s home run winning the Series for Pittsburgh, would have been produced far differently on television.
In the top of the ninth, with the Yankees trailing by 9-8 and with one out, Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third, today’s cameras would have made clear whether thePirates’ infielders were at double-play depth or playing in for a play at the plate. The broadcasters would have debated which of the two was the right strategy. To enhance the end-of-game tension, there would have been rapid camera cuts to Mantle and McDougald, to Yogi Berraat bat and to Harvey Haddix on the mound.
And the dramatic, and confounding, play that followed — Berra’s sharp grounder to first baseman Rocky Nelson for the second out; Mantle’s subsequent elusiveness, moxie and perhaps outright recklessness in then diving safely under Nelson and back into first as the tying run scored — would be synchronized on a split screen and then examined and re-examined. Questions would be asked, answered and asked all over again, on the broadcast.
The 50-year-old kinescope of the game — which The New York Times reported last week was found in Bing Crosby’s old wine cellar — does not do any of that. Why, for instance, didn’t Nelson, upon fielding Berra’s grounder, throw to second to start a double play that would have ended the game?
Why, after instead stepping on first for the second out, did Nelson try to tag Mantle for the third out instead of firing home to Hal Smith, the Pirates’ catcher, for a tag play on McDougald? If he had thrown home, would McDougald have been safe or out? And what was Mantle doing so close to first base anyway? Why didn’t he immediately take off for second when Berra hit the ball on the ground?
Providing that analysis 50 years later was an interesting challenge. Asked to watch and comment on the play, Keith Hernandez, the Mets’ analyst on SNY and a former first baseman, was, more than anything, astonished by Mantle’s evasive slide back into first.
“An amazing presence of mind to do what he did,” Hernandez said while studying the sequence on his laptop at Citi Field. “What a play, huh?”
An e-mail response from Berra, through his spokesman, provided a bit of insight. “I hit the heck out of it,” he said of the one-hop grounder that the left-handed Nelson backhanded before quickly stepping on first.
But in doing so, Nelson’s momentum pulled his left foot into foul territory. “The ball ate him up,” Hernandez said of Nelson.
The camera then shows Nelson turning back to the field, his left arm briefly cocked to throw. But to where? To shortstop Dick Groat, who was covering second? That might mean getting Mantle in a rundown play, but meanwhile the tying run would score easily. To Smith, at the plate? Smith said in a phone interview that he thought Nelson was going to throw home to him so he could tag McDougald and end the game.
“I thought we had a shot at McDougald,” Smith said, adding that he asked Nelson years ago why he did not throw home and that Nelson told him, “To be truthful, I didn’t see you.”
What Nelson did see was Mantle standing right near him, maybe eight feet away, temporarily frozen in a predatory crouch.
“I understand Rocky’s position,” Smith said. “He sees a runner right there and thinks he can get him. He thought he could get Mantle.”
Groat said in a phone interview that it was “easy to say in hindsight” that Nelson should have thrown home. Hernandez said that although Nelson probably had the time to throw home, he might have been thinking, “Oh, my God, there’s Mickey!”
As Hernandez watched the final part of the play unfold in slow motion, he saw that Nelson, as he moved to tag Mantle, was too far from the bag, with his feet on the outfield side of first base. Still, Mantle must have looked to him like a certain out — except that Nelson was not a nimble match for the still-quick Yankee star, who was a week from turning 29.
“It was like the elephant and the gazelle,” Hernandez said.
For a split second, Mantle and Nelson eyed each other. Mantle made an initial move toward first, then gave a head fake toward second. He quickly reversed himself, sliding and sprawling toward first on the inner side of the bag with his left hand reaching out.
Nelson lunged forward, angling himself toward Mantle instead of moving to the base.
“I would have caught him right in front of the bag and blocked him,” Hernandez said of Mantle.
There were numerous New York newspapers in 1960, but their accounts of the play were not elaborate. However, Mantle, who died in 1995, did tell The Daily News that he started for second base when Berra hit the grounder but knew that Nelson “had me dead either way, so I ducked down and went underneath as he tried to tag me.”
Of course, even if Mantle had been tagged as he dived back to first, is it possible McDougald would have already crossed home plate, which would have meant the run still counted? One more question that is not easy to answer.
Looking back 50 years, Hernandez said that he would have done what Nelson did — step on first immediately, then try to tag Mantle to end the game instead of throwing home. “I can’t blame the guy,” he said of Nelson, who died in 2006. “You have to make the play. It’s right there in front of you.”
“Kudos to Mantle,” he added. “What a deke.”
