It’s funny how amazing thoughts sneak up on you sometimes.
I started reading a baseball book called “The Sputnik Season: 1957,” and the very first paragraph just blew me away.
“The late Lawrence Ritter, author of ‘The Glory of Their Times,’ was once asked what was the golden age of baseball. He responded with great wisdom. ‘It was,’ he said, ‘when you were eleven years old.'”
Wow.
I first became a baseball fan when I was six years old, and by the time I was eleven — in 1961 — I had already been following and playing the game for nearly half my life. I had seen games in Cincinnati, Cleveland and New York. I had seen Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Rocky Colavito and other great sluggers.
But 1961 really was something of a golden age for me.
It was the next to last summer we lived in Ohio, and for the first time in recent memory, the closest thing I had to a hometown team was really really good. We lived a little more than an hour north of Cincinnati, and in 1961 the Reds were the class of the National League.
It would be another decade before the Reds would be Big and a Machine, a roster with Hall of Famers named Bench, Morgan and Perez and a guy named Rose. But that ’61 team had wonderful players like Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson and three outstanding pitchers — Joey Jay, Jim O’Toole and Bob Purkey — who combined to win 56 games.
They went 93-61 and won the NL pennant for the first time since 1940.
We were, of course, excited that they would be in the World Series, even if it meant their opponent would be a team on the short list for consideration as the greatest team of all time.
The New York Yankees were 109-53, eight games ahead of the field in the American League. A very good Detroit team went 101-61, which would have been eight games ahead of Cincinnati in the NL.
The Yankee catcher had an amazing season. Elston Howard batted .348, a truly outstanding year for a catcher, but he was completely overshadowed by two outfielders. Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle spent the summer chasing Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs.
Maris hit 61 and Mantle 54, establishing an American League record that stood till Aaron Judge hit 62 this year.
A Golden Age? You bet. All-Stars that summer included Whitey Ford, Brooks Robinson, Harmon Killebrew, Yogi Berra, Al Kaline, Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax, Eddie Mathews, Maury Wills, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Don Drysdale and Ernie Banks.
Not to mention a half dozen or so other lesser names who nonetheless made it into the Hall of Fame.
I don’t think there’s been a year in the 61 seasons since 1961 that I haven’t loved baseball. I have said numerous times that the three things I love best in the world are family, friends and baseball, and thinking about 1961 reminded me of a “Twilight Zone” episode in which a worn-out advertising executive has the chance to return for a visit to the summer when he was 11.
He finds himself talking to his father and says he wishes he could stay and be 11 again.
He knows it’s not possible, but asks why.
“I guess because we only get one chance,” his father responds. “Maybe there’s only one summer to every customer. That little boy, the one I know – the one who belongs here – this is his summer, just as it was yours once. Don’t make him share it.”
I suppose the same rule applies to so-called Golden Ages. You can have lots of good years, even great years, but I suppose there is just one golden year to a customer.
And 11 is as good a time as any for it to be yours.