Lifespans

The former Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski died on February 20th at the age of eighty-nine. Mazeroski, who retired as a player in 1972, was only a middling hitter, but he was a standout defensive player who still holds the all-time record for turning the most career double plays at his position. The moment he will always be most remembered for, though, came at the plate: with the underdog Pirates batting against the New York Yankees in the bottom of the ninth inning in the decisive seventh game of the 1960 World Series, he belted a home run over the left-field fence, breaking a 9-9 tie and giving his team the game and the series. It's considered one of the greatest games in baseball history.

As famous as that moment was, I wouldn't bother to mention it except that it forms one of my earliest imaginary memories, certainly the first related to baseball or, for that matter, to anything outside of home and family. I say "imaginary" because I suspect that, given my age at the time (four), I would have been at best only vaguely aware of what was happening, and I only think I recall it because it was reinforced by repeated retellings after the fact. My parents weren't big sports fans, but since the Yankees were involved I'm sure they had the game on, and it's likely that I was in the room. The first baseball games I have definite memories of watching came four years later, in the 1964 series in which the ascendant St. Louis Cardinals put an end to the Yankee dynasty, at least for the next decade or so.

Mazeroski's death came just eight days after the death of his longtime teammate, the brilliant relief pitcher Roy Face, who was ninety-seven. I have no statistics to back this up, but longevity seemed to favor that 1960 Bucs team; as I write starting pitcher Vernon Law is alive, just shy of his ninety-sixth birthday, as is outfielder Bob Skinner, who is ninety-four. Bill Virdon, another outfielder, made it to ninety, and pitcher Bob Friend to eighty-eight. Who knows how old the great Roberto Clemente might have lived to be, if he hadn't died in a plane crash in 1972? (The champion of that series in this regard, though, was in the opposing bullpen: Yankee relief pitcher Bobby Shantz, alive as of this writing at the age of one hundred. He would play for the Pirates in 1961.)

Remember that Mazeroski's home run came during what was still the Eisenhower administration; JFK's triumph over Nixon that November, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dealey Plaza, all of that still lay ahead. They say that life is short, and sometimes it really is (and tragically so), but at the same time it's astonishing to contemplate all that can happen in the span of a single life.