Sweet and Sour Victory (1976)
New York Yankee fans were depressed after their team was trounced four games in a row by the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series, but did you ever hear of a fan who was depressed when his team won?
The word “fan” comes from “fanatic,” and my friend Herb Kupferberger was a fanatic on the subject of the New York Giants. He might not have been willing to die for the giants, but I suspect that he would have been willing to be mutilated.
* * * *
Herb is now senior editor of Parade, the Sunday supplement, but 25 years ago, when a giant victory in the National League pennant race almost broke Herb’s heart, we both worked for the New York Herald Tribune — Herb in New York, me in Paris.
Here is what happened to Herb during that historic contest — a game that is still talked about wherever baseball nuts gather:
The Giants were playing the despised (by Giant fans) Brooklyn Dodgers for the pennant. It was the final game — Oct. 3, 1951. New Yorkers thought and talked of nothing but The Game. Divided loyalties split the city, and even families.
Herb was sitting in the press box, knotted with tension as the game stood at 1-1 at the top of the eighth inning. Then the Dodgers began to hit, driving singles through the infield, and Herb says, “every one was going through my heart. One runs, two runs, three runs.”
* * * *
When the game stood at 4-1, the pain was more than Herb could stand. “I decided to go back to the Trib and compose myself so that I could write an editorial. I had to go out on the right field line, past the Giants’ bullpen. There was a relief pitcher, Larry Jansen, warming up. I said to myself, half aloud, ‘Go sit down, Larry. Save it till next year.’ “
As Herb sat on the subway train, wrapped up in bitter thoughts, a miracle was shaping up back in the Polo Grounds. A ninth-inning rally began that still brings goose pimples to the arms of hardened longshoremen.
The first batter, Dark, singled. The second batter, Mueller, singled. The third batter, Irvin, popped up. One out, two on.
Then Lockman doubled, scoring Dark, and leaving runners on second and third.
* * * *
Herb, at that moment, had emerged from the subway and stopped at an automat “to get a cup of coffee to steady my nerves before going to the office to write an editorial. I was standing there, feeling awful, when I heard this incredible noise from behind the wall of the cubicles that held all those foods.
“Guys were yelling and screaming, so I stuck my head around the end to ask what happened.”
What happened, as any baseball buff can tell you, was that Bobby Thomson had just hit one of the sport’s most famous home runs — a home run that drove in three runs, won the pennant for the Giants, and won Thomson a secure spot in baseball legend.
* * * *
And where was the young newspaperman, who was such a passionate Giant fan that he couldn’t bear to watch his team lose the pennant? Standing in the middle of an automat, miles from a scene that he would have treasured forever, along with his marriage, the birth of his children, and his first paycheck. And, since there was no television, there would be no replays on the evening news.
The lead editorial in the Herald Tribune the next morning was entitled “The Last of the Ninth.” Herb pulled himself together enough to write the victorious piece, but even now — a quarter of a century later — he refuses to confirm the office rumor of the time: that the paper on which he wrote about the famous victory was damp with tears.