Rusty's Carcass

The Doc and I were out to Ma Bell Park Monday for our first game of the season where we saw the Giants beat the Mets and our own Tom Glavine 6-2. The star of the game was Moises, with a 3 run jimmy-jack in the first and 5 Ribbies, but there was another star, one who isn’t 39 years old: Matt Cain.

Cain, the can’t-miss 21 year old pitching prospect, had a perfect game through 5. It went on long enough that people stopped talking about it. I scolded Beverly for saying he had gotten out 12 straight batters. I put my ticket in a safer place to protect it as a potential souvenir. It started to get exciting.

I’ve been to a perfecto. Father’s Day, 1964, Shea Stadium. It was the first game I ever went to that I personally purchased the tickets for. I was with my brother Noah and my two cousins, Ken and Neil, as Jim Bunning was clean through seven. I remember yelling “over the wall, Christopher” (that’s Joe Christopher, one of those lousy Met outfielders of the Casey Stengel era) in the eighth. By that time pretty much everyone else was pulling for the no-no.

When John Stephenson came up with two outs in the ninth to pinch-hit for the pitcher, the crowd was roaring and I knew Bunning had it in the bag. Stephenson was a 23 year old rookie who wasn’t even good enough to play regularly for the Mets. He hit .158 in 1964, the beginning of a 10 year major league career in which he would play for 4 teams (including the Giants), get 989 at bats, and have a career average of .216. Bunning struck him out as if he were a Little Leaguer, and became one of what is now only 4 pitchers to hurl no hitters in both leagues. For those interested, the other three were Cy Young, Nolan Ryan and most recently Hideo Nomo. Don’t forget, Nomo’s NL no-no was in Colorado!

Anyway, I was 11 years old, just about to celebrate birthday #12. In fact, it was one of those 30 days per year when my brother Noah and I were the same age. Noah and I were 11 months apart, so on his birthday, for one month, he “caught up” to me each year. Anyway, it’s been almost 42 years since that day, and hundreds of baseball games that I’ve attended, and in all that time, Cain came closer to pitching a no-hitter with me in attendance than anyone else.

It’s a rare, rare thing, and you don’t do anything to spook it. I have to admit, I did. I had arranged to meet Kenny 9 near Section 107 at the top of the sixth. So after the final out of the fifth, the Doc and I took a walk out of the field club seats and met Kenny 9 at the appointed place. When we got there, our old favorite Kaz Matsui was leading off the sixth for the Mets, and ended the suspense by bouncing one up the middle. My fault, I accept all of the blame. I shouldn’t have moved. I just hope I don’t have to wait another 42 years, because, I doubt I’ve got another 42 years.

Anyway, after the no-no and shutout were disposed of during the sixth, we started talking about all of the nice changes in the ballpark. They have finally remodeled the field club, just in time to raise our ticket prices by 75% next season. It looks great. And there are plasma TV’s all over the ballpark now, scores of them. I suspect as I look at other areas (like the AAA Club at today’s game) I’ll see more nice changes.

One of the big changes is the right field wall. Old Navy has been replaced by Levi’s Landing, and they’ve replaced the old mechanical splash hits counter with a modern electronic one also sponsored by Levi. We started talking about how nice the wall looks, and Kenny 9 told us about an interview he heard on the radio with Larry Baer about all of the changes. One caller said he sits out on the right field wall, and complained that parts of what used to be “Rusty” are still there and it blocks his view.

You all remember Rusty, don’t you? That’s Rusty, the huge mechanical right fielder that once a game would come out of his box on the right field line and extend out toward center field. It was one of those dopey, early ballpark ideas now long gone, like Father Guido Sarducci’s swimming, ball-retrieving dogs.

I liked Rusty, but apparently I was the only one who did. Anyway, Rusty’s box is gone, but parts of Rusty’s carcass are still out there. Larry kind of chuckled and admitted that they had a long list of improvements and they just didn’t have time to get around exhuming Rusty’s remains. I hope they never get around to it. I hope 1000 years from now when archeologists dig up Ma Bell Park and learn about the ancient sport of baseball, Rusty is still there to confuse them thoroughly.