Posted by crazystengel on 3/8/2021 12:35:00 PM (view original):
Good stuff, italyprof. I watched their 1970 World Series video. At the beginning of the clip Sparky Anderson comes out to argue with the ump who called Bernie Carbo out on a close play at home. The audio's great, you hear everything Sparky's shouting at the ump. Even funnier to me was remembering Sparky was only 36(!) in his rookie season as a manager. Looked 65, of course, just like he always did!
I have to watch it ! I didn't even realize that Sparky was the Reds' manager already in that Series, let alone that he was that young. And yes, he looked as if he'd been born at age 65.
I remember that Series very well. First of all, it was disappointing, in the sense that you thought it was a showdown between two of the greatest teams anyone could remember, and it was a one-sided Series if ever there was one. We watched the whole series at school - I was in fifth grade - and because a kid in our class' dad worked for the Orioles everyone rooted for them. But I could not possibly bring myself to root for the Orioles, first because they were the Darth Vader (anacronistic reference I realize since Star Wars did not come out until I was in high school) of my youth, as a Yankees fan, but also because the Miracle Mets whom we had all rooted for in our house as well the year before had had to play against the seemingly mega-invincible Orioles.
So, strangely, since I hated Pete Rose as symbolizing everything that I was already against culturally (though I did not know that he was at least very anti-racist and close to Black players, for which he deserves a lot of credit whatever his other failings) and because later I rooted hard against them in the 1973 Series against the Mets for the National League championship, in the great 1975 Series and especially for sweeping one of my very favorite teams ever the 1976 Yankees. But I rooted for Cincinnati in that one.
Still Brooks Robinson was awesome in that Series, tied for the best one-player performance in a Series with that of Roberto Clemente's the very next year.