On a day in which Billy Williams would tie and pass Stan Musial in a doubleheader against Stan's old team, we've been treated over and over again with bits and pieces of beautiful WGN color video footage. While I have never been able to track down (through many attempts) how much of this footage WGN held on to, I'd like to mark the anniversary of Billy Williams Day by showing you footage that doesn't contain Billy Williams!
As I pointed out in this post nearly 2 years ago, Billy Williams Day featured one of the greatest of Wrigley treats: A Gibson/Jenkins duel. The two would both throw the entire game with Gibson giving up the lead in the bottom of the 8th.
After the jump, we get some of the 9th inning action.
I'm sure it is difficult for MLB Productions, from time to time, to put together their 'clips' shows for seasons prior to 1980. While they undoubtedly have more footage in their archives than any of know they have or will ever see, there are large gaps that they must try to fill with newsreel footage, broadcast news highlights and team highlight films. It is often times disappointing that they will chose color 'film' clips over broadcast footage when putting together these shows but is somewhat understandable.
When they use footage that isn't even from the time period they are showcasing, however, I feel it creates a 'false history'. That is exactly what happened in an episode of Baseball's Seasons focusing on the 1970 season.
When pointing out the contentious NL East race of 1970, they discussed the Cubs early season collapse and the assencion of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The problem is, they used footage from a late 1969 game between the two trying to punctuate the Cubs poor play. More about it with extra footage after the jump.
