The year 1964 when I was 7 years old, was a landmark for me. In February of that year, I saw the Beatles for the first time on my grandmother’s 13″ black and white television; a set so full of vacuum tubes and other hardware that it weighed as much as our big screen TV does now. In September, I became smitten for the very first time, over twins, actually. I always kind of liked Joanne Pokorny more than Vicki Pokorny and on one morning in December before class started, I knew what it was like to have someone like me, too. Joanne walked up to my desk and, without a word, placed a “Gino Marchetti Day” button in front of me, turned, and left without saying a word. She knew that the one-day Hall of Famer was my favorite Colt.<\/p>\n
In between the two winters of 1964, there was Wally Bunker.<\/p>\n
Bunker was one year out of high school and all of 19 when he recorded a victory for every year of his life against only 5 losses that season, and he led the Baltimore Orioles to within 2 games of their first pennant. Bunker was to Baltimore baseball that year what Stephen Strasburg was to Washington baseball last year, only without the advanced hype. So taken were Oriole fans with their young phenom that prior to the June 17th game, that is to say 47 years ago tonight, the pitching mound was renamed “Baltimore’s Bunker Hill” and christened with dirt from the actual Bunker Hill in Boston.<\/p>\n
The 1964 Rookie Pitcher of the Year hurt his arm towards the end of that season. He would win only 41 more games over the next 6 1\/2 years before calling it quits at age 26.<\/p>\n
Bunker had one more moment of glory in him and I was there to witness it. In game three of the 1966 World Series, he threw a 6-hit shutout against the Dodgers. Bunker was 21. The Oriole hurler who had shutout Los Angeles the previous game was all of 20. That was Jim Palmer. Dave McNally, who would throw a third consecutive shutout for the four game sweep was the old man of the group at 24.<\/p>\n
Those three guys looked as young as they actually were on their baseball cards, unlike some players of the day who were 30 and looked to be about the same age as my great uncle. I just figured that I would become 19 or 20 soon enough and I would join Wally Bunker, who would still be 19, and the rest of the Orioles and we would have fun and win pennants forever. . . .Wally Bunker, a grandfather now at age 66 is indeed happy, an artist living in South Carolina according to Mike Klingaman’s report<\/a> in a Sunpaper<\/em>‘s article from 2009.<\/p>\n I suppose that the moment when adulthood truly begins is not when we comprehend our own mortality, but that moment of sudden awareness when we realize that nothing stays the same. I became aware of the world in 1964, but it would take a few more years before I would learn that Wally Bunker was not going to pitch forever.<\/p>\n Sometime after that, however, I learned that while yesterday is over, it is never gone. Somewhere inside me, (for who knows where the heart stores its memories?) the Beatles are new, first love is fresh, and Wally Bunker is still throwing sinkers under the bats of American League hitters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The year 1964 when I was 7 years old, was a landmark for me. In February of that year, I saw the Beatles for the first time on my grandmother’s 13″ black and white television; a set so full of vacuum tubes and other hardware that it weighed as much as our big screen TV […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":779,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,9],"tags":[1764,14933,14936,14931,5992,3680,14929,565,1766,14939,14934,14930,558,685,14935,7919,14938,362,14937,14932],"class_list":["post-14529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-general","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-black-and-white-television","tag-bunker-hill","tag-consecutive-shutout","tag-dave-mcnally","tag-game-sweep","tag-gino-marchetti","tag-hurler","tag-jim-palmer","tag-joanne","tag-moment-of-glory","tag-oriole-fans","tag-pennant","tag-phenom","tag-pokorny","tag-rookie-pitcher","tag-screen-tv","tag-strasburg","tag-three-guys","tag-vacuum-tubes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}