Mom was right, afterall

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reprinted a copy of their paper from the day the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Yankees with the help of Bill Mazeroski's dramatic 9th inning homer.

The reprint was from Friday, October 14th, 1960. The Pirates clinched their World Series title on Thursday, October 13th, when Maz's home run cleared the fence at 3:36pm.

For years, my mom would tell me that she was in school when the dramatic event went down. I never believed her. You know how those mom-types are. They don't know much about sports.

Just the other day, we were talking and she referenced Bubby Brister, only she pronounced his last name, "Brewster."

And I, being the snobby sports guy that I am, always told her that it had to have been a Sunday because why would they play the 7th game of the World Series on a weekday afternoon? That's crazy talk. After all, the networks wanted to sell advertising, even back in 1960. How can you sell ads when people aren't home watching?

But, of course, the almighty television wasn't our god back in 1960. There weren't even that many tvs around. It didn't control society like it does now.

It certainly was a different world, that's for sure. I can't even remember the last time the 7th game of any major championship was played when the Sun was still out.

When was the last time any championship in any major sport was completed under the Sun? Maybe the softball championship of a beer league, but that's about it.

According to the many old tapes I have of the Super Bowls from the 70's, even those games were played in the daylight until at least the late 70's. How did people survive back then? What if they had to work?

Today, even the NFL playoff games are all slowly being moved to prime time. And there will be a time when the AFC championship game is played on one night and the NFC title game is played the next night, you mark my words. Chris Berman will host the "21 hour in-between games pre-game show."

It's practically happening now with the Bowl Championship Series in major college football. Not only are most of them played at night, but the really big ones are spread out so much, it's damn-near February by the time the BCS championship game is played and they hand out that silver football sponsored by Dr. Pepper.

Back to those seven game series. I can see a time, years from now, when World Series games are only played on Saturday and Sunday nights. They're practically doing that now in the NHL and NBA finals with two-day gaps in-between games. You can't have a dramatic event like an NBA final game played during the daylight. You have to have every single possible person available to sit in front of the tube so they can see it and see ads for Budweiser.

But they didn't care about stuff like that back in 1960.

I guess my mom knows what she's talking about. Maybe I should listen to her more.