Lost and Found

  
The baseball playoffs are now upon us, which brings mixed emotions for me.  Sadly, the Pittsburgh Pirates, my favorite team, once again were one of the worst teams in baseball.  For a change, however, the Texas Rangers, my second favorite team, made the playoffs for the first time in over 10 years and are down to a deciding Game 5 against the Tampa Bay Rays.  While I'll be rooting for the Rangers, I did also find a story that can hopefully comfort Pirates fans during the long offseason.
Perhaps the greatest moment in Pittsburgh Pirates history is a moment that is also one of the greatest moments in World Series history.  In Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-winning homerun against the New York Yankees that not only won the game, but won the World Series championship.  Talk about a dramatic ending to a game...it is the exact scenario that many boys practice in their backyards growing up: bottom of the ninth, tie ballgame, with a chance to win the championship and become a legend with one swing.  While Mazeroski's homerun is the only homerun to win a World Series Game 7, it was feared that the film footage of the game was forever lost, with only still photographs and a recording of the homerun preserved over the years.

However, an unlikely discovery was recently made, in which the Vice President of Bing Crosby Entertainment was searching through old Bing Crosby recordings in the cellar of Bing Crosby's longtime home and came across the complete NBC broadcasts of the 1960 World Series.  Turns out that Bing Crosby was an enormous Pirates fan, and that he was so anxious about the 1960 World Series that he left the country and had the series put on tape so that he could watch it later if they won.  What was feared to be lost is now found, and Pirates fans can finally watch the games once again, reliving the glory years that now seem so difficult to replicate!

To read more about the discovery of Bing Crosby's footage of the 1960 World Series, click here.