As to THAT claim, while it’s true Buckner just happened to make the last mistake as opposed to most of the mistakes, they certainly would have made the playoffs without him. The division race wasn’t really all that close - they beat New York by five and a half - and Buckner had a mediocre year, maybe the worst of his career. He also sucked pretty bad in the postseason.
But yeah, the blame for that choke job rests mainly on Schiraldi and Stanley.
Elvislives, I was just having some fun. The first ballgame I ever went to was at Chavez Ravine in '76. I was 5 and Buckner must have had a hell of a game because I remember him being my first favorite player. I only know about the '46 Series because of a book my parents had The Way it Was. It is a book form of a '70’s PBS series about sports. '41 Conn-Louis fight, '46 Series, '46 Army-Navy game, '47 Series, '51 National League playoff, '56 Series, 1st NFL overtime(Colts/Giants 58?59?)?, '62 NBA Finals. I better go and see if they still have it. There is a few more stories in it but those are the ones I can recall. Happy Days are Here Again I believe was the title of the '46 Series story.
No worries, mate. All in good fun, eh?
Yes, it’s 302 feet to Pesky’s Pole, heheheh - what’s that about digit reversals being the most common typos? Still closer than the Wall.
Gotta love any sport where you can still argue about plays that happened 50 years ago. Pesky’s never made excuses anyway, and too many current players could copy his example.
Since you ask, I’ve been to games at Montreal with the roof both open and closed, and it’s miserable either way. That may have something to do with this apparent Canadian law against crowd noise of any kind in sports other than hockey - fer chrissakes, it isn’t golf or tennis, people, go ahead and cheer! Part of the scariness of games I’ve been to in Montreal and Toronto is the total lack of the ordinary background noise. What’s the deal? You’re there to have fun - perhaps the attendance problems there are due in part to the funereal atmosphere in Canadian grandstands inhibiting fan enjoyment?
Attendance even during the Expos’ playoff runs was only average IIRC, btw - I don’t know if they’ve ever sold out the Big O or even come close. Hell, I don’t know if they ever sold out Jarry. We can disagree about when it became obvious the franchise was hopeless, but it’s been a number of years anyway.
The SkyDome can be pretty loud if there’s a decent crowd there. Since the team hasn’t contended in a decade, you don’t get many big crowds. I was at a White Sox game recently and they seemed very quiet, but the place was half empty and the Sox were getting beaten like a rented mule. The crowd at Angels Stadium wasn’t very loud either, and I was there when the Yankees were in town; like a Canadian crowd, they shut up until something happened. A’s fans, too, actually - they didn’t make that much noise. Giants fans weren’t noisy either. Maybe it’s a Boston/New York thing to be noisy all the time - all the U.S. parks I’ve been to have had crowds that seemed no more noisy than Canadian crowds.
Expo attendance has never been great; it was top half in the early 80’s, though. As you probably know, the Blue Jays hold most of the season attendance records in the American League, which I find weird because the Yankees have a bigger stadium in a bigger city so why haven’t they drawn more than the Jays used to? Anyway, a big Montreal crowd can be pretty noisy, and Jays crowds used to be very enthusiastic. No longer. Canadian fans seem to have a very sharp elasticity of enthusiasm.
Of course, it also happens that both stadiums are relatively immense as compared to most ballparks. They’re more similar to the old concrete ashtrays than to real baseball stadiums. It’s hard for a smaller crowd to be noisy in those places. Crowds at Exhibition Stadium (the Jays’ home pre-SkyDome) always seemed a bit louder, at least on the infield, despite it being an open air stadium and seating fewer people. You were crowded in there more. I never went to Jarry Park.