1960 World Series Game 7: Pittsburgh Pirates vs. New York Yankees (last 3 innings)

Published on Feb 2, 2014

One of the greatest WS games of all time. This was broadcast on the MLB Channel. The footage was “lost” for 50 years before someone found it among the personal archives of the legendary singer, Bing Crosby. Bing was a part owner of the Pirates and he hired someone to shoot a ‘kinescope’ film of this game while he was in France. He reportedly was too nervous to watch the game in person, so he had a film made of it for him to watch later. No official videotape was made of this game altho it was televised, so the public had never seen this game since it was played in 1960. It was debuted in public before a live audience in Pittsburgh in 2010. Bob Costas hosted this showing and on the ‘panel’ with him on stage were 3 of the players in this game: Bobby Richardson of the Yanks and Dick Groat and Bill Virdon of the champion Pirates. Among the audience were Franco Harris, Hal Smith, who hit a key 3-run HR late in the game for the Pirates, the widow of Roberto Clemente, who also of course played in this game, as well as other members of the 1960 Pirates. Bill Mazeroski also was asked to attend, but he couldnt make it (I believe he was ill), but there is recorded footage of an interview with him at the end. The broadcast was paused several times for Costas to speak with the players about what happened in the game and also with Ms. Clemente about her husband. It was a great presentation.

This is the latter part of the game, beginning in the top of the 7th inning. New York has overcome an early 4-0 deficit to go ahead 5-4. Most of the scoring occurred in the last 2 innings.

Besides Mazeroski’s historic series-ending HR, the game features an unusual play that I’ve never seen before in all my years of watching baseball. In the top of the 9th, the Yankees rallied to tie the score at 9-9 after Pittsburgh had gone ahead 9-7. The game-tying play occurred with runners on 1st and 3rd with 1 out and Yogi Berra at the plate. He hit a hard smash to first which was snagged by the 1Bman, Rocky Nelson, right after it hit the ground. The runner on first, Mickey Mantle, evidently thought the ball was caught on the fly and he dove back to first to avoid being doubled up. In fielding the ball, Nelson’s momentum carried him right towards the bag, which he tagged to record the out on Berra. Mantle somehow avoided Nelson’s attempt to tag him out getting back and he made it back to 1B safely. On the play, the runner on 3B, Gil McDougald, scored the tying run. The play is unusual because the ball was a fielder’s choice ground ball where the batter was out at 1B but the runner on 1B neither was out nor advanced to 2B. Never seen anything like it.

Mazeroski’s HR came on came on the 2nd pitch leading off the bottom of the 9th. Final score: 10-9. Another unusual aspect of the game is that there were no strikeouts at all. This series was also very unusual in that Pittsburgh was outscored by the Yanks 55-27, yet won the series. Still another unusual aspect: Bobby Richardson was the series MVP, I believe the only time a WS MVP was selected from the losing team.