Local author contributes to Library of Congress recognizing, preserving Bill Mazeroski's 1960 homer

For Pittsburgh Pirates fans, Bill Mazeroski’s home run to win Game 7 of the 1960 World Series has been immortalized for decades.

Now, on a national level, the Library of Congress has done that permanently.

In April, the Library of Congress inducted 25 recordings as part of the National Recording Registry. One of them was a recording of Chuck Thompson’s NBC Radio call of the win over the New York Yankees to secure the Pirates’ third World Series championship.

Other nominees that made the list include “Sweet Georgia Brown” by Brother Bones & His Shadows (1949), “Happy Trails” by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (1952), the 2015 original Broadway cast album of “Hamilton,” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” from Elton John (1973).

“It’s mostly a recognition of a recording’s importance in American cultural or artistic history,” Steve Leggett said Friday, on behalf of the Library of Congress. “There is a preservation component. But that is a longer time kind of thing. The initial part is to recognize its seminal importance.”

Leggett is the program coordinator of the National Recording Preservation Board. Nominations for recordings come up annually — sometimes over a thousand — from the public, as well as from 20 registry study groups of different genres. They are then advanced to the board, which makes recommendations to the Library of Congress.

With the overwhelming amount of recordings available, Leggett said picking just 25 per year can be a difficult task for the board and study groups. But he insists Maz’s homer belongs, as does the entire game itself.

“There are many thousands that are worthy. But 25 is manageable and something the public can grasp. Initially, it was 50, but we found that was too much for everyone — including the press — to absorb. You want every recording to get its moment in the sun,” Leggett said. “Game-ending home runs, especially to walk off a World Series championship, you really can’t get any more dramatic than that.”

Other sports recordings preserved by the LOC include Russ Hodges’ call of Bobby Thompson’s famous “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” homer in 1951, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game broadcast in 1962, Hank Aaron’s 715th Home Run in 1974, Roger Maris’ 61st home run in 1961, and the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight from 1938.

Earlier this month, the recordings were posted to the website along with accompanying essays telling the story of their historical significance. Donora native Wayne Stewart, who previously authored a book about the 1960 Pirates, wrote the essay.

“I’m a little surprised why they chose Chuck Thompson’s broadcast because he makes two glaring mistakes during Maz’s at-bat,” Stewart said during Tuesday’s “Breakfast With Benz” podcast.

As New York Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry threw the 1-0 pitch that Mazeroski hit over the wall at Forbes Field, Thompson referred to Terry as “Ditmar” because he had just previously mentioned that fellow pitcher Art Ditmar was warming up in the New York bullpen.

Then, in the aftermath of the call, Thompson accidentally said that Mazeroski’s homer had won the game 10-0. In reality, it had won the game 10-9.

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Legendary Pirates announcer Bob Prince was on the television call with fellow Hall of Famer Mel Allen. Stewart says Thompson was given a chance to re-tape the call sometime after the broadcast, but he refused.

“He said, ‘No. I made an honest mistake,’” Stewart said. “He owned up to it.”

More than two decades later, the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Co. aired a Budweiser television commercial that used Thompson’s call with Ditmar being improperly identified. Ditmar sued the brewer for $500,000. His claim was that the commercial “held him up to undeserved ridicule, humiliation and contempt.”

The case was eventually thrown out by a U.S. district judge.

Also, in the podcast, Stewart and I discuss the legacy of Mazeroski’s homer, the importance of archiving it, Donora’s baseball history and his role in chronicling the 1960 team.