I thought it might be fun to take an old photograph off the Internet and try to identify details around the picture. I chose a baseball picture first because there is so much supporting data available on the internet around baseball. I landed on this tweet:
Kind of a non-descript shot of Stan Musial, but we do know a bunch of stuff right off the bat (so to speak).
- At the Polo Grounds.
- Against the Mets (you can read the pitcher’s uniform).
- Day game (clock reads twenty to three).
- Musial on deck with a left handed batter batting (sure looks like Bill White but let’s leave that).
- In the third inning (you can’t make out the numbers on the scoreboard but you can see where they are).
- Met’s starter is right handed (or the starter was knocked out early in the game).
We’re also armed with some institutional knowledge: it’s either 1962 (because that’s the first year the Mets existed) or 1963 (since Musial retired at the end of the 1963 season).
With that we can go through the Cardinals at Mets box scores for 1962 and 1963 and eliminate games when any of the above aren’t true.
That leaves us with three possible games / dates.
Excruciating detail on how we got down to these three games
- Search on baseball Cardinals 1962 game logs. (in 1962 there were also the football Cardinals).
- Select the Baseball-Reference.com choice.
- Click on Schedule and Results.
- Click on the boxscore for every “@ NYM” game. That will bring up the box score for that game.
- 1962 @NYM games:
- April 18th – possibility (meets all the requirements).
- April 19th – eliminated (batter before Musial was right handed).
- July 6th – eliminated (night game).
- July 7th (first game) – eliminated (Musial didn’t play).
- July 7th (second game) – eliminated (game would have started too late)
- July 8th – possibility.
- August 18th (first game) – possibility.
- August 18th (second game) – eliminated (night game).
- August 19th – eliminated (Musial didn’t play).
- Repeat the process for 1963.
- 1963 @ NYM games:
- April 9th – eliminated (batter before Musial was right handed).
- April 10th – eliminated (batter before Musial was right handed).
- June 7th – eliminated (night game).
- June 8th – eliminated (batter before Musial was right handed).
- June 9th (first game) – eliminated (batter before Musial was right handed).
- June 9th (second game) – eliminated (Musial didn’t play).
- August 6th – eliminated (night game).
- August 7th – eliminated (Musial pinch hit late in the game).
- August 8th – eliminated (Musial pinch hit late in the game).
- 1963 @ NYM games:
Next step?
Well, although you can’t really make out the numbers, the lineups on the score board – you can just make out when it’s a single digit as opposed to a two digit uniform number. For instance the Met’s leadoff hitter has a single digit number, as does the Cardinals cleanup hitter (presumably Musial himself). If we make one more pass, there is only one game left that meets all the criteria).
Excruciating detail on how we got down to one game
- Follow the path to the 1962 games logs. Go to the possible games and click on the leadoff and sixth batters. That link will also show you their uniform numbers for 1962.
- April 18th, 1962 – eliminated (Felix Mantilla led off, uniform number 18, not single digit).
- July 8th, 1962 –possibility.
- August 18th, 1962 – eliminated (Musial batted third, not fourth).
Whew! July 8th, 1962. Looking at the weather, it’s called “smoky” with a high of 96. The game started at two o’clock. The leadoff hitter for the Mets was Richie Ashburn, a future hall of famer plying his last days as a Met (when asked about his experience with the Mets, Ashburn said “I don’t know what this is, but I know I’ve never seen it before.”). On a side note, I was hoping the Mets’ catcher would be Choo Choo Coleman but, alas, it was Sammy Taylor. The hitter before Musial was indeed Bill White (future president of the National League).
So, in summary:
This picture was taken in the third inning of a July 8th, 1962 game between the Mets and the Cardinals at the Polo Grounds. It was a muggy Sunday afternoon. The Cardinals won 15-1, helped by four Met errors and three Stan Musial home runs (oldest player ever to hit three home runs in one game). Bob Gibson won his tenth game of the season and Jay Hook lost his ninth. The Cardinals would finish sixth in the National League in 1962 with a 84-78 record; the Mets, in their inaugural season, would finish last with a 40-120-1 record. (which led to the famous Casey Stengel quote “The Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I even knew existed.”)
