Derek Zumsteg snarks all over the whole overblown Baseball’s Most Memorable Moments As Brought To You By MasterCard thing. I’m right there with him. What makes a moment memorable is what it meant to you at the time and what it still means to you years later. My most memorable basseball moment is probably watching Chris Chambliss hit a ninth-inning home run to win the 1976 pennant for the Yankees. It’s a pretty small moment compared to all of the Officially Sanctioned Memorable Moments, but I can still see it in my mind. I can still hear Bill White’s “Deep to right! That ball is GONE!”. I was ten years old and I’d never been more excited.
There have been a lot of wonderful moments in baseball since then, some of which were Officially Commemorated. None of them gave me the same thrill as Chambliss’ home run. My memories don’t need a corporate sugar daddy.
It’s odd being told what you remember by Mastercard. Hey, I remember what I remember, and it wasn’t those things.
It was Julio Cruz, weeping on the bench after losing both those remarkable NL Championship series btween his Astros and the Dodgers and Phillies in the 1970s.
It was waking up and reading that Thurman Munson had bottomed out, or that Lyman Bostock was dead in the front seat of a car in Indiana.
It was Mark Fydrich’s goofy grin, and the sad way we tried to hold it together after being injured.
It was Sports Illustrated featuring Roy Smalley(!) on its cover and asking if he could go .400.
It was Jimmy Piersall scaling the backstop and hollering for someone to understand him.
It was Gaylord Perry, doing all that weird stuff with the ball, in plain view of the whole wide world.
It’s Kirby Puckett, sitting in the dock awaiting bail. Kirby, say it isn’t so.
Mastercard, let me do the remembering.