Before the lights came on: Baseball's sunlit past

Even though the calendar tells us that today is the first day of November, there could be a World Series game tonight — if the Blue Jays and Dodgers are even-steven at three wins each to force a Game Seven.

If that game is indeed played tonight, it won’t end before 11 p.m. — a mite late for my 8-year-old grandson Nolan to sit up and enjoy the game with his dad and me.

And yet I can remember watching World Series games with my own Old Man at that age — watching on a black and white television that was sometimes hard to see due to the October afternoon sunlight flooding our living room.

Saturday, Oct. 9, 1971, was a dark day in American history and in the saga of our enduring national pastime — baseball.

It was on that date that the Evil Powers That Be (probably headed by then-President Richard Milhous Nixon) decreed that a World Series game was going to be played at night for the very first time ever.

The setting was Three Rivers Stadium in downtown Pittsburgh, so named because the circle of concrete sat on the peninsula where the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River come together to form the Ohio.

The hometown Pirates defeated the visiting Orioles from Baltimore that night in a game that began at 8:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time and ended at 11:03 p.m., long after righteous, God-fearing, gun-loving Americans should have been in bed.

Keep a man up til the disgraceful hour of 11 p.m. and there’s no way he’ll be able to stagger to Sunday School on time the following morning (unless his wife yells at him to get up and do just that).

The Powers That Be regained their senses and their sanity, albeit briefly, for the World Series of 1972. All seven games of that classic matchup between the rowdy Oakland A’s and the Big Red Machine of Cincinnati were played under the glorious sunshine of October afternoons.

The return to normalcy, or, I should say, the return to the natural laws of the universe, was short-lived. From 1973 to 1986, the Series featured a mix of day and night games, with the mix growing increasingly more night heavy.

Life, and baseball, as we knew them ended forever with the advent of the 1987 World Series. Each game of that series between the Twins and the Cardinals started at after 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

Do the math and you’ll soon realize that no one born in the last 45 years has any memory of a time when the World Series was played under clean October sunshine, the outfielders often battling high skies and slanting light.

No one younger than 45 remembers the days when millions of men would sneak off from their jobs to catch an inning or two of Sandy Koufax when the left-hander was at his absolute best.

No one younger than 45 remembers the cool teachers who in the days before unannounced evaluations, would roll a TV into the classroom and the afternoon lesson would focus on a key element of American history — baseball.

No one younger than 45 remembers the days when, if your teacher wasn’t cool, you hid a transistor radio somewhere upon your person, snaked the cord under your shirt, and hoped the teacher wouldn’t see the earphone in your ear.

No one under 45 remembers the days when even an extra-inning series game was over by 6 p.m., leaving plenty of time for dinner, homework, and a shower before a decent bedtime.

And no one under 45 remembers the days when kids, honest to God kids like my grandson, ages 6-14, could enjoy a full series game and not be up until somewhere between 11 p.m. and midnight to do so.

The last time I watched every inning of a World Series was back in 1991, when my beloved Atlanta Braves, who had been so very bad for so very long, went from worst to first, won the Western Division, defeated the Pirates to capture the National League pennant, and then faced the Twins.

Between the seven-game battle which the Braves and the Pirates waged for the pennant, followed by another seven-game matchup between the Bravos and the Twins, my sleep habits were put to ruin for nearly three weeks.

Was it worth it? You betcha! I was 36 years old and the Braves had not been to the World Series since 1957 when I was all of 2 years old.

Have I lost any sleep over the Dodgers and Blue Jays? Nope. Not a wink.

But would I love to see championship baseball once again played in the sunshine as it should be?

Absolutely!