The Rick Camp game is fairly well known, especially among those like myself who were baseball fans during the Superstation era. I remember specifically coming home after shooting off fireworks with a friend and the game still being on. Just stayed up and watched as I imagine a lot of people did for the novelty and there wasn’t much else on at the time
The " Homer in the Gloamin’" game where Gabby Harnett of the Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the bottom of the 9th as the sun was fading in Wrigley Field. This allowed the Cubs to beat and pass the Pirates the very next day and clinch the pennant in St. Louis thereafter.
That game was really something, and I remember watching it. I was a teenage Mets fan at the time and when Camp hit the home run the left fielder, Danny Heep, threw his hands up in complete disbelief after watching it go out.
I was actually at that game! My dad refused to stay past the 11th inning, and I gave him a ton of grief, and the next day he pushed the newspaper over to me and said “see? I was right” And I pushed it back and said “see? I was right”
How about the Dock Ellis on LSD game?
The Mets have the “crying game” and the Wilmer Flores game two days apart.
If it does, I haven’t heard of it here in San Francisco.
And oh yeah, Go Giants!
The Kerry Wood game in 1998, when Wood, in only his 5th MLB start with the Cubs, struck out 20 Houston batters and only allowed one hit (which could have been ruled an error).
Dammit. I just saw this thread pop to the top and that’s exactly the game I thought of.
On the other side of town, there’s the Sox-Yankees no-hitter, where the Yankees did not allow a hit and lost 4-0, on July 1, 1990. I’m not sure of a “name” for it, per se, but it’s a pretty well-known game in local lore.
I would call that the Andy Hawkins game. I watched that game and boy was it a mess. Hawkins walked five, only struck out three, and the Yankees committed three errors. IIRC, two of the errors were dropped fly balls in the outfield. It was a dark time for pinstripe fans (the Yanks finished dead last in the AL East with a 67-95 record.)
Hawkins, of course, wasn’t credited with a no-hitter as he only pitched 8 innings. Weird game.
Matt Young had a similar no-hitter with the Red Sox in 1992. No hits over eight innings but seven walks and Cleveland won 2-1.
July 18,1999, The Yogi Berra Day game. After a long absence due to George Steinbrenner being an asshole the Yankees honored Yogi Berra. As part of the festivities Don Larsen threw out the first pitch to Yogi. They had the Yankees first perfect game back in 1956.
David Cone took the ball and then threw a perfect game with Yogi and Larsen in attendance.
Indeed, playoff games become legendary when they have an iconic moment. Moreso than do regular season games. The ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ was actually a playoff game, not a regular season game.
There is a good local story about that iconic game around these parts where we are SF Giants fans and we have a chip on our collective shoulders against the LA Dodgers. (This famed Giants-Dodgers rivalry means more to us up here in Northern California than it does down south in ‘Smell-A’ country, where for the most part the Dodgers fans don’t care about this so-called rivalry.)
The story is that 1951 playoff game happened before the broadcasts were recorded by network television, and the only reason we have a recording of that ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ is because of a pair of Giants fans who used a tape recorder to capture the broadcast. They put their tape recorder next to the radio in a separate room in their house, set it to record, then quietly left the room.
At about the 35-37 seconds mark in this recording, ➜ https://youtu.be/lrI7dVj90zs ■ you can hear an individual happily scream, a “Woo-hoo!”, above the roar of the crowd and above Russ Hodges’s repeated calls of “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”. That scream is not coming from the crowd at the game, it’s coming from the ecstatic Giants fan who recorded it in his house.
And that’s the only reason we have a recording of Russ Hodges’s iconic call of Bobby Thompson’s walk-off home run.
In fact, Kevin Orie, who was played 3B for the Cubs in that game, volunteered to take the error so Wood would have a no-hitter.
“The Game with Rick Monday’s Great Play” occurred during the regular season and was marked by unusual circumstances:
That is a great story. I have a bobblehead of that. It’s one of the few I have.
It was both, actually. While it was the second of three planned best 2-out-of-3 games to decide the National League pennant, it counted as a regular season game and all stats are considered regular season stats. That home run was Bobby Thomson’s 32nd of the season and pushed him over 100 RBI, but he is not credited with any playoff home runs that year (or in his career.)
Tiebreaker games, when we had those wonderful things, were always considered regular season games.
Thanks for that clarification!
Oddly, only the NL had those 3 game playoffs, the AL always used single elimination for ties.
And doesn’t that bring to mind Bucky Dent?
Or as he’s known in Boston, Bucky F. Dent?