Seagulls in the Outfield

Mined from the notebooks and adapted from the Twitter feed, Thursday, July 18, 2019. Posted Saturday morning, July 18, 2020.

"Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner works against the Mets during the first inning July 18, 2019, in San Francisco  (AP Photo/Ben Margot) Via CBS 5 KPIX.)"

On this date in baseball history, we found out what one of Keith Hernandez's all-time favorite movies is, and, oh yeah, the Mets lost a tough one. Another note from the Department of In Search of Lost Time, July 18, 2019:

Mets and the Giants went 16 innings tonight, 11 of them locked in a 1-1 tie. For the first 3 ½ the Mets were ahead 1-0. Mets had 11 hits, the Giants 14, but spread out over 16 innings that’s not a lot of action. At one point a flock of seagulls settled in the outfield. That’s probably a regular sight there in the Giants’ ballpark, situated as it is right on China Bay, but from the way Mets announcer Gary Cohen talked about it, I got the impression this was somehow different, that the gulls were in closer and were staying put longer than usual. But maybe Cohen was just trying to liven up what he was worried we fans at home might be writing off as a boring game and was hoping to stop us for reaching for the remote by rousing a story or an insight out of his broadcasting partner Keith Hernandez who had grown almost morosely silent. It took some prompting on Cohen’s part, but he finally engaged Hernandez’s interest. Cohen might have expected Keith to talk about what it was like growing up in the Bay area and if the gulls were a problem when he played baseball as a kid. Or maybe he thought Keith might have compared playing in Oracle Park today to visiting Candlestick in his playing days with the Cardinals and Mets. But knowing Hernandez as well as he does, he probably wasn’t surprised and was maybe even happier when Keith’s first comment wasn’t about baseball, it was about---movies.

“Where’s Tippi Hedren?” Keith asked.

This led to a brief discussion of Hitchcock and “The Birds” and to Keith’s confessing that it was the brunette Suzanne Pleshette and not Hitchcock’s favorite golden blonde of the moment Tippi Hedren who caught his young eye. He had a lifelong crush on Suzanne Pleshette that started with seeing her in “The Birds”.

There’s another point of affinity between Keith and me, along with an interest in history, although I’m a few years younger than he is, and my crush on Suzanne Pleshette began with seeing her in “Blackbeard’s Ghost”.

One thing leading to another, Cohen wound his way round to asking Keith what his favorite movie was when he was a kid. Hernandez didn’t hesitate.

“Horatio Hornblower” starring Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo.

(That would be “Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.”.)

He didn’t say whether a crush on Mayo had an influence on his affection for the film, but it would be understandable if it had.

For the record, the Mets first baseman Pete Alonso, on his way to hitting 53 home runs and being named National League Rookie of the year, clobbered one in the top of the 16th to put New York up 2-1, but what was at that point in the season true to form, the Mets let the game get away. The Giants went ahead on back to back doubles and a single and won it 3-2. By that time the only fans left in the stadium might have been the seagulls.

San Francisco Giants' Donovan Solano (7) celebrates with San Francisco Giants' Pablo Sandoval (48) after hitting the game winning walk-off single in the 16th inning of their MLB game at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, July 18, 2019. The San Francisco Giants defeated the New York Mets 3-2 in the 16th inning. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group) Via the Mercury News.

Bumgarner didn’t get the win, of course. He was long gone from the game. But he did get several standing ovations while he was on the mound. There was speculation that he was going to be traded soon, with the trade deadline coming up and the Giants in need of some power hitting, and his being a free-agent at the end of the season. The expectation was this was Bumgarner’s final home start as a Giant and fans were determined to give him a rousing send-off. As it turned out, he finished the season with the team. If there’s anything of a season this year, he’ll be pitching for the Diamondbacks.

Comments

[Mutaman]

None of this holds a candle to the fact that on

"July 2, 1963. Facing the San Francisco Giants, the 42-year-old Spahn became locked into a storied pitchers' duel with 25-year-old Juan Marichal. The score was still 0–0 after more than four hours when Willie Mays hit a game-winning solo home run off Spahn with one out in the bottom of the 16th inning.[16] Marichal's manager, Alvin Dark, visited the mound in the 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, and 14th innings, and was talked out of removing Marichal each time. During the 14th-inning visit, Marichal told Dark, "Do you see that man pitching for the other side? Do you know that man is 42 years old? I'm only 25. If that man is on the mound, nobody is going to take me out of here."[17] Marichal ended up throwing 227 pitches in the complete game 1–0 win, while Spahn threw 201 in the loss, allowing nine hits and one walk. Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell, who was in attendance that night, said of Spahn, "He ought to will his body to medical science."