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Bing Crosby's Wine Cellar

Nigel Tufnel

By Nigel Tufnel
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Nigel Tufnel Perennial All-Star

Nigel Tufnel

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A near-pristine copy of the TV broadcast of game 7 of the 1960 World Series was found in Bing Crosby's wine cellar. It will air on the MLB channel in December, with DVD sales to follow.

Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the Series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.

“He said, ‘I can’t stay in the country,’ ” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, said. “ ‘I’ll jinx everybody.’ ”

He knew he would want to watch the game later — if his Pirates won — so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby’s home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.

After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening room in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.

They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby’s TV specials for a DVD release — part of the estate’s goal of resurrecting his body of work.

He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled “1960 World Series.” They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees’ Mel Allen and the Pirates’ Bob Prince — the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD.

“I had to be the only person to have seen it in 50 years,” Bader said. “It was just pure luck.”

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Palmoripken

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I'd love to see that. The Pirates have always been the closest I have to a NL team that I like due to my great grandfather's friendship with Honus Wagner way back in the day. I actually wrote about this world series when I wrote a story for GMU's magazine covering the greater upset stroies in sports history. Included this, the Giants beating the Pats in the Super Bowl a few years ago, and the miracle on ice. Didn't know Bing left the country for the series out of superstition. We all have our superstitions I suppose. I look forward to watching the game. I hope MLB network airs more great games like this from the more distant past. I'd love to see Game Six of the '75 WS. Read a book about that this summer and wow what a game.

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Nigel Tufnel Perennial All-Star

Nigel Tufnel

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I also liked this part of the story:

Crosby was so superstitious about hexing his Pirates that he and Kathryn listened to the game with their friends Charles and Nonie de Limur in Paris.

“We were in this beautiful apartment, listening on shortwave, and when it got close Bing opened a bottle of Scotch and was tapping it against the mantel,” Kathryn Crosby said. “When Mazeroski hit the home run, he tapped it hard; the Scotch flew into the fireplace and started a conflagration. I was screaming and Nonie said, ‘It’s very nice to celebrate things, but couldn’t we be more restrained?’ ”

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