I finally found the article I KNEW I had read and that I KNEW stated that MLB had acquired 2 complete broadcasts from the 1967 Series.
Well, here is the quote:
"We know what we have in our archive. But as recently as seven years ago when MLB Productions was brought in-house, we were opening boxes that we didn't know what was in them," Scott said. "Talk about a treasure hunt for archivists. We know what we've got now. But occasionally we will discover that someone else has something that we don't."
The search for more content is a never-ending process. MLB just acquired a couple of complete games from the 1967 World Series.
The article was written for BaseballAmerica.com by Elizabeth Scott, Major League Baseball Productions vice president of programming and business affairs.
This article is from .
- So I tried contacting J.J. Cooper on 3 different occasions to no response.
With that avenue closed, I tried contacting MLB.
- MLB did respond saying they knew of no such acquisition but that they were intrigued by the claim in the article and would looking into it further.
The frustrating thing for me is that all the footage used in the Baseball Seasons 1967 was saved. Most of it probably came from TV News footage but it is, in fact, clips of broadcast footage. Not ONE single frame of TV broadcast footage from the 1967 World Series was saved? Not in a news clipping, not on an old kinescope, not by a home collector in the greater Boston area.
Part of this could be rooted in the fact that the Red Sox had fallen so out of favor with the locals in the years before that many were disinterested in saving footage. Likewise, with the Red Sox going down in defeat in a Game 7 blowout, local producers and collectors may have believed the games weren't worth saving.
The game I'm extremely surprised does not exist is Game 2. In Game 2, Jim Lonborg threw a 1 hitter and Yaz hit 2 HRs at home in Fenway Park. If ever a game was going to be saved (besides a Game 7 clincher) it would have been this one.
I'm certainly not going to give up searching and certainly hope to hear back again from MLB, but for now it appears that if this series DOES exist, it exists in the hands of private collectors.
1) I very recently emailed Jon O’Sheal of the MLB Network about whether any complete-game broadcasts of the ’67 Series had been found in the archives. He wrote this:
ReplyDeleteWe haven’t discovered any games, but we have recently discovered/acquired some footage from the area that will inevitably make its way into our shows like Baseball’s Seasons, Prime 9, This Week in Baseball and more.
Good news as far as it goes, but it’s looking more and more like we’ll need a miracle for any complete-game broadcasts.
2) I, too, saw that Baseball America article referencing two ’67 Series games, but I’ve been told/am now convinced it’s not true. It was an unfortunate mistake or typo, which may be why the ‘‘reporter’’ isn’t answering you back.
3) I agree, it’s hard to believe some Red Sox fan didn’t record at least one of the Series games, but we are very lucky to have the penultimate game of the regular season, and in color to boot.
But what about some Cardinals fan who may have it squirreled away? Or someone with CBC kinescopes the likes of those that were made during other Series of that era? Or a serviceman who may have kept a copy sent to the troops?
Along those lines I’d like to repeat: If ANYBODY is sitting on anything, I’m offering major cash for purchase, or for conversion to DVD.
I've learned that there is no 'Cardinals collector' with anything squirreled away. If you look at the Cardinals footage available, it is practically non-existent other than thanks to CBC footage up until the time of videotape.
ReplyDeleteAs far as talking to Jon O'Sheal, how recently was 'very recently'? Was it prior to the release of Baseball Seasons 1967 earlier this year (2010)?
I talked to him this week, actually.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to see "Baseball Seasons 1967". Is there anything on there that I might not have seen before?
Unfortunately, I think we're down to our last out on any surviving complete-game broadcasts of the '67 Series.
I was talking to Doak Ewing once a while ago, and he agreed there's probably not much chance. He said that one of the long shots would be if Fidel Castro, noted baseball fan, recorded them. If we're relying on old Fidel, I think we're screwed!
I received a reply to my email today and the reply was nothing more than a stock email.
ReplyDeleteBasically, it was said that there are no 1967 World Series full broadcasts but I can buy the World Series film on Amazon.com.
That kind of 'talking past' you response is extremely disappointing.
The question wasn't answered as to why the writer would put that in there, which makes me believe that this had been bumped down to someone who didn't know much about the archives.
Anyways, yeah...it is all up to some collector sitting on broadcast footage at this point. It is somewhat disappointing that there seems to be no Cardinals collectors from the era. From Opening Day 1961 to Opening Day 1978, only the 7 World Series games from 1968 exist.
As far as Cuba, would they have even been able to reach a NBC affiliate for games? HA!
Well, I guess all we can do is keep the faith, keep our eyes open, and keep looking at KinescopeStealsHome in case anyone finds anything.
ReplyDeleteI just discovered that somebody named ‘‘Fenway’’ posted this in 2008 on a White Sox Interactive board:
ReplyDelete‘‘I do volunteer work for the New England Sports Museum and it is frustrating that so little game footage exists from any sport before 1970 when cheaper video tape became available.
For example only 40 seconds of the 1967 World Series survived and only because the clip was shown on the Huntley-Brinkley newscast. NBC erased 99 percent of what they had to reuse the tape.’’
On another matter:
‘‘The big mystery is why game 161 [of the 1967 season] was saved but not game 162, but it is possible we haven’t found it yet. Nothing is labled and it is just very time consuming to transfer all these old tapes to digital media.
The Sports Museum has an ancient AMPEX 1200 2 inch machine which we keep alive thanks to some MIT people who make the spare parts.’’
----
If the person who posted this recognizes him or herself and still does volunteer work for the Sports Museum, maybe he or she could tell us if they’ve found Game No. 162. Or if they’re still even looking.
One final note.
ReplyDeleteJust to make sure I didn't leave any stone unturned, I just this week checked with the Hall of Fame, the Library of Congress in Washington, the CBC program archives in Toronto, and the national Canadian archives in Ottawa, and came up with zilch.
And from the way it sounds, anything that IS discovered would be on two-inch tape, which has to be converted via machines that aren't around any longer.
So it's gonna take a miracle, but I won't give up hope! If anybody does have anything, please contact me via this thread. Thanks!
As far as can be determined, 1967 is the last World Series for which no broadcast footage (much less complete games) has been found.
ReplyDeleteThere are recordings of the audio only from the TV broadcasts for Games 2 through 7, even though the video remains lost.
ReplyDelete