Bill
July 22, 2008
May 25, 1979 was one of the strangest games I ever attended. I was not quite 13 years old and attended the game with my older brother (by two years) and a slightly older friend who had just gotten his license to drive. Anyway we were there for the first time on our own. I seem to remember that the Mets had just installed a TV video screen in left field. I don't think it was the current DiamondVision. Our friend had gotten three tickets right over the Pirates dugout and we were excited to see ourselves on the board. (Hey, we were kids.)
Anyway, the game started out just fine. It was a little hazy but no big deal. By the 6th inning or so a strange fog or mist was visible above the light towers and the upper deck. The Pirates rallied and took the lead, 3-1 I think in the 8th inning. Nothing unusual for 1979. Right? Wrong! The Mets rallied in the 9th and tied it on a pop-up "single" by John Stearns that either Dave Parker or Bill Robinson (I can't quite remember which) lost in the fog. The Pirates were HOT arguing that the game should not have continued in those conditions. They played another couple of innings in even worse conditions before the game was stopped and not continued at least that night!
To this day it was the most bizarre weather conditions I have seen at Shea. You literally could not see anything in the air and the eerie spectacle of the scoreboard lights was amazing. I still have my ticket stubs in memory of that night.
Hot Foot
June 8, 2023
I think about this date, May 25th, 1979 a few times per year, even though I was only a year and a half old at the time.
To explain, on this site on April 20, 2012, Paul posted his memory of the cameras showing "one fan who was trying to blow away the fog by repeatedly opening and closing his umbrella," and when I read that, a flash of a possible memory flashed in my mind.
You see, somehow that image of a fan trying to blow the fog away with his umbrella would have generated a chuckle from my mom for sure, and since she was a Mets fan, there's a good chance she and my dad had the game on. I can just imagine my toddler brain hearing my mom laugh and then looking up at the TV and seeing a guy try to blow fog away with his umbrella. Since my "memory" basically comes from reading the previous posts, I can't say this is my first Mets memory, but this game really resonates with me.
By the way, it was Bill Robinson who lost the ball in the fog in the eleventh inning and led to Joel Youngblood being able to get to third base on a pop up, which led to the game being called a 3-3 tie.
Eerily, there are two other reasons besides the fog that makes this an infamous date in the history of New York City crime as well as a black day in the history of American aviation.
On the morning of this day, a young boy who lived in Soho named Etan Patz disappeared from his school bus stop, with his murder only being solved in the 2010s. On the same day as this infamous crime, American Airlines Flight 191 crashed in Chicago. As of 2023, that is still the deadliest aviation accident in this country's history.
The only other professional sports game I remember being played in fog was the 'Fog Bowl' played on December 31, 1988, ten days after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 (which is still the deadliest aviation disaster ever in the history of the UK).
1979 was a weird year during President Carter's "malaise" era, the height of disco and excess. This game was a tiny blip in the madness of that year, but considering what happened in Soho and Chicago earlier that day, maybe that fog had some supernatural significance. Looking back, it was definitely an omen.
To end on a positive note, the Society for American Baseball Research has an excellent article on this game alone. From reading it, I learned that on top of everything else, Steve Henderson hit a foul ball into the stands that hit a little girl in the face, eventually resulting in a lawsuit. Okay, maybe not so positive.
For those interested in a deeper dive into the weirdness of this game (without the supernatural elements), here is the entire article: https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/may-25-1979-flushing-fog-out-as-pirates-Mets-finish-in-tie/
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