"And a big 3-2 pitch coming here from Eckersley. Gibson swings, and a fly ball to deep right field. This is gonna be a home run! Unbelievable! A home run for Gibson! And the Dodgers have won the game 5-4! I don't believe what I just saw!" — Jack Buck
It's one of the most classic calls in sports history to go along with one of sports' greatest moments. The Dodgers were down 4-3 with two outs and a man on first in the ninth inning of Game One of the 1988 World Series. Dennis Eckersley, the premier closer in the game at the time, was pitching for the opposing Athletics. And up to the plate stepped Kirk Gibson, the league MVP who didn't start the game because of two bad legs. The man could barely walk; it was home run or bust. And it's pretty clear from the call what happened next.
Thankfully, because this moment is now over 20 years old, Major League Baseball no longer holds copyright over it, and the video is finally available on YouTube.com and across the Internet.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of other amazing plays from the past 20 years that are not. Aaron Boone's walk-off home run in Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS, Luis Gonzalez's single off of Mariano Rivera in Game Seven of the 2001 World Series, Joe Carter's World Series walk-off blast in 1993 — the list goes on. If you didn't see them live, your only hope is ESPN Classic.
And those are just some of the game's most timeless moments. Over the course of a 162-game regular season, a countless number of plays occur in baseball that make you look twice. But again, you won't find any of them on YouTube.
That's because of Major League Baseball's own Web site, MLB.com. There, MLB archives plays in its own video player, and anyone can watch them free of charge.
So what's the problem?
Sadly, there are several. First, YouTube is a vastly more popular site than MLB.com — if you want to get your game exposure, you should put the videos where people will actually see them. Second, MLB.com and its video archive have only existed since 2005, meaning anything that happened before that is not available on the Internet.
Finally — and most importantly — the MLB.com video archives, quite frankly, stink. They mostly include home runs of a non-dramatic nature ("Oh my God, did you see Ty Wigginton's solo shot in the fifth inning of the Orioles-Royals game when the O's were down 7-1? I have to go look that one up on MLB.com!), and the site often fails to document the excellent fielding and baserunning plays that are actually exciting.
Earlier this year, I saw Nick Swisher attempting to stretch a single into a double, when the ball easily beat him to second base. Mid-slide, Swisher sprung up, jumped over the tag and landed safely with his hand on the bag. It was a ridiculous play — something that Willie Mays Hayes would try to pull in "Major League." A couple of months later, I spent two hours trying to find this play on MLB.com for my friend. It was impossible. Maybe the play wasn't on there at all, or maybe the search engine is just that bad. Either way, MLB.com failed me as a fan.
When a great play happens in the NBA, the league is quick to cut it, slap a "Where amazing happens" tag on it and throw it on YouTube as soon as the game is over. Baseball is nowhere near as exciting to watch as basketball, yet MLB refuses to promote itself as much as the NBA does.
This is an age of YouTube. Anyone can be famous — all it takes is a stupid dance down a wedding aisle or an anesthetized toddler. If MLB were smart, it would start showcasing itself on what is quite possibly the world's biggest stage.
Who knows, maybe some of their videos would even be as popular as "David After Dentist."
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David Heck is a senior majoring in philosophy. He can be reached at David.Heck@tufts.edu.
