Dream Deferred: Schooled by the “World Serious”
by Ken Hogarty
A high school student for about six weeks at Sacred Heart near Civic Center in San Francisco, I anticipated playing hooky for three days. On the fourth day, I did. And my Dad — upstanding citizen, WW II veteran, beloved parishioner — conspired with me.
He lived up to his “Hustler” nickname given by fellow Most Holy Redeemer Men’s Club members for selling parish raffle and crab feed tickets to everybody. Although a modestly paid warehouseman, he scored tickets to 1962’s sixth World Series game pitting my beloved, newly christened San Francisco Giants against the juggernaut New Yorkers.
First Out
The sixth game, with the Bronx Bombers leading the Series 3-2, got rained out three straight days. Since pundits regarded the day after that Series the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it would be apt to say that for this 13-year-old baseball diehard, game six would be all or nothing.
The Giants won my game six, 5-2. All Series games took place in daytime in 1962. Luckily, my last class ended early enough the next day to allow me to cram together in the class closest to the school’s office with about 80 others to watch game seven’s last two innings on a little television with rabbit ears.
Later in the decade, Altamont, literally my 21st birthday, got called the death of the Woodstock era. And in the early 1970s, Dan McLean’s American Pie mourned the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens as “the day the music died.” The 1959 and 1969 “game-changers” sandwiched, in this boy’s mind, another deadly day — the Richardson last-out catch of the McCovey liner that would have won the 1962 World Series.
I was sure, nevertheless, that we’d be back in the Series the next year — sure before the palpable fear the next days that the world could end during the Russian missile stalemate.
Subsequent near-misses and, more often, utter failures, magnified that 1962 loss. I, nonetheless, felt blessed seeing great players and games in person over the years.
Second Out
In 1989, after a threatened Toronto move and before another similar relocation to St. Petersburg got halted at the last moment, the Giants returned to the World Series against Tony La Russa’s Bash Brothers, Rickey Henderson, and a notable Oakland pitching staff.
The A’s quickly dispatched the Giants 5-0 and 5-1 in Oakland, but the A’s would need to play the next three games at the ‘Stick. By then, an English teacher at my alma mater, just renamed Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, I had tickets for Game Four for myself and daughter, almost the same age as I had been in ’62.
For the third game, October 16th, I hurried home across the Bay Bridge to my Oakland home by the 5:00 game time. At 5:04, I felt and watched the Loma Prieta earthquake wreak destruction that, among other things, cancelled game three. It was eerie seeing a section of the Bay Bridge collapsed – an hour after I had commuted across it.
Eleven days later the A’s won their third game in a row, 13-7. A father of my daughter’s friend had arranged transportation to game four on October 28th on a restored 1920’s boat that held sixteen fans, half Giants and half A’s fans. The game wasn’t as close as the 9-6 final score.
With the A’s fans finishing their celebration that started when their team took a 7-0 fifth inning lead, our “Captain” offered a couple stranded fans a ride south before recrossing the Bay to our cars. I felt crushed, just as I had in ’62. My daughter, however, literally sick, was crushed in the prow of the little vessel.
It sputtered and stalled mid-Bay. A couple of the A’s fans passed out on the deck. We bobbed in the Bay for hours with bigger boats streaming past, our flickering running lights meekly alerting our presence. The smell of gas overpowered. We barely restarted in time to get our car before the parking lot closed at 1 a.m. I thought the chance to enjoy a World Series victory also had closed.
Third Out
By 2002, a gem of a ballpark had replaced the ‘Stick. In 2002, even with steroid accusations hovering around Barry Bonds like the cloud floating around Pig-Pen in a Peanuts’ comic strip, the Giants made it as a Wild Card to the Series against the Angels. I attended games three and five. The fifth game, in which the Giants crushed the Halos, 16-4, provided the iconic image of J.T. Snow scooping up Giants’ batboy Darren Baker (the manager’s son), who had strayed to home plate as Snow romped home.
And though what would hopefully be clinching game six would be played in Anaheim, I would enjoy it watching concourse projections and the huge centerfield scoreboard while roaming the Club Level at the newly christened PacBell Park. A school administrator then, I had applauded S.H.C.’s booking the stadium the year before for that night (with no idea who would be playing in the Series) for an all-class reunion.
Colleagues, former classmates and students, and current parents anticipated a joyous night. Game six played out perfectly — through six innings. The Giants 5-0 lead had fans heading to us to congregate outside PacBell to celebrate. My Series drought would end at the perfect place, the Giants’ home, though my team was playing 400 miles away in Anaheim.
That was the game in which Dusty Baker handed starter Russ Ortiz the ball as a souvenir of his impending clinching win when everything unraveled. The Angels won 6-5. My World Series drought unexpectedly continued for at least one more day.
The next day, my wife and I drove to L.A. for game seven. A former student with Hollywood connections, had tickets for us.
Thunderstick noise, rally monkey sightings, and an inept Giants’ offense choked off any chance of experiencing a Series celebration. The Giants fell, 4-1. The drive home Monday was the most dirge-like 400-mile ride since when I had driven a girlfriend home from school to L.A. the day after Sirhan Sirhan assassinated RFK. Once again, the World Series gods had rained out my Giants’ victory parade.
New Inning,Over Triples Alley: Walk-off Home Run
Finally, 52 years of misses melted away with three 2010-2014 World Series crowns. I beam remembering those three wins: The Misfits winning in 2010; the back-against-the-wall 2012 victory (escaping from six “loser go home” playoff games before sweeping the Tigers in the Series); and the Bumgarner-fueled 2014 triumph. I attended three Series games in the stretch.
After many misses, the 2010 Series assuaged years of frustration. I gloried in an announcement I made to 1300 students that November, one of the most pleasurable moments I had as Principal of my alma mater. The announcement: “School is dismissed so you can attend the Giants’ first-ever San Francisco victory parade. Enjoy yourselves, stay safe, and treasure a moment that may last forever.”
Ring Lardner called baseball’s championship the “World Serious.” Over my lifetime, the World Series seriously schooled me about delayed gratification, persistence and hope.
Ken Hogarty was a long-time English teacher and high school principal. Since, he has had two prior pieces that appeared in Sport Literate, as well as short stories, a couple memoirs, news features, and over 20 satires and comedy pieces published. He lives with his wife Sally near Oakland. He is an avid reader and writer about sport and his long-ago MA thesis explored “The Metaphor of Baseball.”