This is the greatest play in baseball history that you’ve never seen

Working in journalism, I spend a lot of time on social media. It’s often a total cesspool, but it has its perks every once in a while.

One of my favorite things that I see on social media is old sports footage that people dig out of the archives.

And one of my favorite accounts is the NY Yankees Throwbacks account, which presents Yankees clips as mundane as Austin Kearns hitting a solo home run during a 2010 regular season game and as exciting as a fight between Pudge Rodriguez and Torii Hunter during a 2008 regular season game. (Until I saw that, I forgot Pudge ever played for the Yankees.)

But the best throwback video I’ve seen is this play that Mickey Mantle made to tie Game 7 of the 1960 World Series in the top of the ninth inning.

We all know what happened in the bottom of the ninth inning of that game, but I had no idea that there wouldn’t have even been a bottom of the ninth if not for Mantle’s heroics.

The Mickey Mantle slide

You can watch it for yourself by clicking the link a couple paragraphs ago (I can’t embed videos into these newsletters), but I’ll summarize as quickly as possible.

With Gil McDougald on third and Mantle on first, and one out, Yogi Berra hit a hard grounder up the first base line. Pirates first baseman Rocky Nelson fielded the ball and stepped on first, rather than throwing to second to start a double play. This happened so quickly that Mantle was still pretty close to first base. With Berra already out at first, Mantle acrobatically dived back to first base, eluding Nelson’s tag. While this was happening, MacDougald scored from third to tie the game.

The New York Times wrote a detailed story about this play back in 2010 on the 50th anniversary of that epic Game 7. In the article, the great Keith Hernandez watches the play and tries to break down exactly what happened.

Why didn’t Nelson throw to second? Or even throw home? And how on earth did Mantle have the presence of mind to realize that quickly that the force was off and he could get back to first base?

I have to imagine this play would have gone down in baseball lore, shown over and over again, had the Yankees gone on to win the game. And that’s not all. Nelson‘s name would have lived on as the guy who cost the Pirates the World Series. And Bill Mazeroski never would have hit his famous home run, which many people believe is the only reason he got inducted to the Hall of Fame.

This was an insane game, by the way. Before the ninth inning, there had been three lead changes. The Pirates led 4–0 after two innings, the Yankees scored four runs in the sixth to take a 5–4 lead and the Pirates scored five runs in the bottom of the eighth to take a 9–7 lead. Imagine this game in the Twitter era.

What other great plays are lost to history?

Watching and reading about Mantle’s slide got me thinking about what other great plays — in all sports — are lost to history because that team didn’t end up winning the game.

The first one I thought of was this off-balance 3-pointer by UNC’s Marcus Paige to tie up the 2016 national championship game with 4.7 seconds left. It’s largely forgotten because of the ensuing Kris Jenkins buzzer-beater that won the title for Villanova.

I also thought of Josh Hamilton’s home run in the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, which would have won the Rangers the title if not for Lance Berkman and David Freese.

And, of course, the Alfonso Soriano homer to put the Yankees ahead in the eighth inning of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. Thanks for ruining that one, Luis Gonzalez.

I’m sure there are so many more that I don’t know about. Please share the ones that stand out in your memory, I’d love to hear them.

By the way: If you enjoy reading about crazy baseball plays, you’ll also enjoy this article I wrote back in 2014 about an insane play I witnessed during a Boston College-Villanova game played in Florida. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Thanks so much for reading! Hope you enjoyed this newsletter. If you have thoughts and feedback, I’d love to hear from you. Every newsletter will be posted to this website, so you can comment there. You can also email me directly at this address.

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