Afternoon Baseball

Today, they were dominant. Mussina threw his second shutout of the year, 23rd of his career, and Matsui hit a homer, Giambi had a couple ribbies, and the Yanks regained a better overall record than....the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Much like their last meeting, the 1960 World Series, the Yankees won a shutout by huge margins (Whitey Ford had 2 in that series). It'll remain to see if the Pirates can summon the ghost of Roy Face and win some tight, low-scoring games.

By the way, in case you're looking for a reunion from the 1927 squads (the only other time these teams have played), Mark Koenig of the Yanks died in 1993 just shy of age 89, but several HOFers from that team died before 1950 (Ruth, Gehrig, Pennock, Shocker, Lazzeri). On the Pirates side, Dick Bartell died in 1995, also aged 88, but he only played one game that year, going 0-2 with 2 BB. Although he played 17 more solid years, he doesn't count.
Thus we have Carmen Hill, a 22-game winner that year, who died in 1990 at age 94. He had a bizarre career, pitching 20 times in the 1915-16, '18-19 seasons, then 8 times in 1922, then 6 times in 1926. Finally, at age 31 in 1927, he went 22-11 with 22 CG, 3 SV and a 3.24 ERA. He won 16 games in 1928, but was done after 1930, having gone 38-21 in 79 appearances in 1927-28, but only 11-12 in 68 appearances over 8 other seasons.