May 04 2015 11:44 AM
I do remember when Bob Watson scored the One Millionth run, but I recall it as a fun fact; I don't remember any of the fuss that's mentioned in this article. The race between Watson and Concepcion, in two different ballparks, is cool, as is the reward of one million Tootsie Rolls. (I wonder how much space one million Tootsie Rolls would take up?)
It also makes sense that the two millionth run isn't that far off; the second million would come in about half the time as the first because the number of teams has nearly doubled, and there was no "dead ball" era to get through.
I find myself hoping that whoever it is who becomes the 1000th Met ends up scoring the 2,000,000th run.
Bob Watson and the story of Major League Baseball's One Millionth Run BY Anthony Mccarron NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, May 4, 2015, 1:10 AM The whole thing started with a baseball junkie counting runs on his new $80 electronic calculator, which had eaten up about a week’s take-home pay from his job as a radio newscaster in Connecticut. It gained steam and became a big-deal promotion for Major League Baseball, with luminaries Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial and Ernie Banks talking it up. There was a countdown in every ballpark, a command center in Rockefeller Center and spotters on the telephone from every game, vital in the days before instant messaging and Twitter. Companies such as Tootsie Roll and Seiko were sponsors. And it ended in a home run sprint — yep, you read that right — with the run counter in every active ballpark sitting on 1. Houston’s Bob Watson stepped into quirky baseball history when he touched home plate at Candlestick Park. Forty years ago today, on May 4, 1975, Watson scored what was then counted as the millionth run in baseball history, running in from second base on a three-run homer hit by Milt May, 99 years and 12 days after a fella named Wes Fisler of Philadelphia’s National League club scored the first one in the history of the majors. Halfway across the country, only a few moments after May swung, Davey Concepcion of the Reds homered and dashed around the bases at Riverfront Stadium. “I got to third base and our bullpen was right behind third and the guys were saying, ‘Run, run, run!’” recalls Watson, who had worked a walk against John Montefusco. “I think I beat Concepcion by like a second and a half.” “I was the million and one,” Concepcion says, laughing. “I was flying around the bases, but I didn’t have time to score before Bob. I think I missed by eight yards.” Still, Concepcion originally thought he had done it and, he says, he and the Reds celebrated at the plate. “Then somebody said I came up short,” he laments now. Just before those home run trots turned into sprints, both Chris Chambliss of the Yankees and the Twins’ Rod Carew had a chance to score the millionth run, according to news reports. But both were thrown out at the plate. There was much at stake besides just a slice of oddball lore — publicity, a Seiko watch worth $1,000, a million Tootsie Rolls and a million pennies that would go to a baseball charity. There was even a contest for fans to predict who would score and when; the winner would get the candy and the pennies, too. Folks were curious, recalls Ellen Gordon, now the chairman and CEO of Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc., and the promotion generated lots of television and print coverage. “We got a lot of attention out of it and it just seemed to fit in with Tootsie Roll,” Gordon says now. DiMaggio drummed up support for Tootsie Roll’s backing by uttering this much-reported phrase when someone wondered why the candy company was involved: “I ate my first Tootsie Roll when I was six.” And teams wanted one of their own to score the fateful run, too, says Marty Appel, the baseball author who was the Yankees’ media relations director at the time. “We were hoping it was us,” Appel says. “We weren’t winning pennants then and it would’ve been a nice moment. “I think there was a higher level of interest in it than you might expect. It somehow got people’s interest.” There was, for instance, a countdown in the Daily News and stories speculating on how it’d be scored. One particular story in The News wondered whether players would try to steal home to do it. It was headlined: “Will Million Be a Steal?” Little did a 23-year-old recent grad of Emerson College know what he got going. A few years earlier, Mark Sackler, who worked at WMMM in Westport, Conn., had used the Baseball Encyclopedia to tally how many runs had been scored in big-league history, just for nerdy fun. When he bought his first calculator in 1974 — “I just had to have it,” Sackler recalls now — he revisited the project because he knew the game must be nearing one million runs. One of his father’s work colleagues knew someone in the promotions business, so a few connections later, Ted Worner Associates was involved and Sackler was part of a growing event. “It took a year to get it going,” he says. At one point, Sackler, who eventually left broadcasting to work in the pharmaceutical industry, was asked to project the day it would happen. “I came up with May 4,” he said. Watson, who would go on to hit .324 and make his second All-Star team in 1975, might not have had a chance at the milestone if not for a May 3 rainout that forced a Sunday doubleheader and an early start. Or if May hadn’t seen the counter drop to 1 and decided, “I’m swinging.” “I was not a power hitter,” says May, now the hitting coach for the Orioles’ Gulf Coast League team who hit 77 homers in his 15-year career. “Maybe I should’ve had that approach more often.” The Baseball Hall of Fame collected the Candlestick plate and the spikes Watson scored with. Neither artifact is currently on display, a Hall spokesman said. One drawback, Watson recalls: he had just gotten his Kangaroo brand spikes properly broken in, something he says wasn’t as easy to do then as it is now. Watson did not accept the Tootsie Rolls, instead directing them to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. He did not want his 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter to have that much candy. But the watch, solid platinum, is still a prized souvenir of his terrific 19-year career. “It’s still in my safety deposit box,” Watson says. “I’ve never worn it. It came in a nice wooden box with a plaque on it. I would never sell it — it’s one of a kind. As far as I’m concerned, when I leave the planet, my son or daughter, whichever wants it, I hope they keep it.” Watson, now 69, went on to a long career in the game, including a stint as Yankees’ GM when he became the first African-American GM to win a World Series title in 1996. He’s now the vice president of the Baseball Assistance Team, the charity that helps former players. Those involved in the millionth run can’t help but be curious about the next million — MLB estimates it is approaching the 1.9 million mark and could reach 2 million in 2020. But plenty of people still bring up the millionth run, Watson says. “I’ll hear, ‘Hey, you won me a pitcher of beer’ because someone stumped their friends,” he says. “It wasn’t one of my goals as a player. It’s just something along the way that is a unique happening. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”  |