Stu Kirshenbaum (Transcript)

Robby Incmikoski: So one thing I want to tell you about Stu is he gets angry if he scores anything over like a 15 on the Immaculate Grid, which angers the daylights out of me. Michael reports his daily scores, and he's as good as Tyler Kepner.

Stu Kirshenbaum: No one's as good as Tyler Kepner. Is he the undisputed GOAT?

Robby: If you're familiar with the Immaculate Grid, how would you describe your baseball fandom, Stu? Where did it start?

Stu: It didn't start till years past when most little boys became baseball fans. I was infatuated by the astronauts—I was in Texas in the 60s when this cool new thing was happening. My grandfather was a big baseball fan, a New York Giants fan who became a San Francisco Giants fan when his family moved to central Pennsylvania. It's through my father, not quite my grandfather, that I became a baseball fan. I started rooting for the Phillies, the local team, and I still do today.

Robby: Tell me how you ended up next to the mayor of Boston for the Bucky Dent game.

Stu: I was a student at Boston University, beginning my sophomore year in late September. Every September I went to as many Red Sox games as possible because back then you could sit in the bleachers for two dollars. It was amazing watching Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk, Burleson, and Remy for two dollars.

I went to a Saturday day game where the Red Sox were playing Toronto. That morning, I was eating breakfast in a coffee shop in Kenmore Square, reading the Boston Globe. There was a little blurb in the sports section that said if there's a chance for a game on Monday, tickets would go on sale immediately after Saturday's game at the Red Sox ticket office on Yawkey Way.

So I go to the game. The Red Sox handily defeat the Toronto Blue Jays, who I believe were in their second year as a franchise. Now the Red Sox are a game up with two to play. I go to the ticket office and they say, "I've got second row behind the Red Sox on-deck circle. Will that work for you?" Of course I took it.

I went back for the Sunday game, sitting in the bleachers. The Yankees were finishing their series in Cleveland. The coolest thing in the world—I'm sitting out there and here come Bill Lee and Fred Kendall of the Red Sox walking out to the bullpen wearing Cleveland Indians hats! Which would never fly nowadays. They were supporting Cleveland against the Yankees. The game happened, another easy win for the Red Sox. The Fenway scoreboard showed the Cleveland score and underneath it said "Thank You Rick Waits" after he shut down the Yankees. So now there's a game on Monday.

It was a 2:30 game on Monday afternoon. I'm pretty certain I was the very first person inside Fenway Park that day. I don't know what time I lined up to get in, but it was early. They opened the gates, these ancient Fenway Park gates, and I went running in. When I went down the runway to the box seats, there was no one there. I thought that was pretty cool. I went right down to the field.

The game was nationally televised on both Channel 11 in New York and Channel 38 in Boston. Don Drysdale was there to do color for the game, on the field talking to Tony Kubek. I thought, "Wow, I'm so close to these guys I can touch them." Drysdale had a cigarette cupped in his hand, and Kubek had one too, both trying to hide them. I thought what a human thing to do—these guys are idols of mine, doing something they know they shouldn't be doing, hiding it like kids so the teacher doesn't catch them.

I found my seat, and the governor of Massachusetts, Ed King, sat down right in front of me in the first row. About 15 minutes before the game, there's a commotion, and it's the mayor of Boston, Kevin White. He comes in and sits down right next to me. I introduced myself: "Mr. Mayor, my name is Stu Kirshenbaum. I'm a sophomore at BU." "Pleasure to meet you, Stu. How are you?" The consummate politician. We're just chatting throughout the entire game, like buddies watching baseball.

The memorable thing about sitting next to the mayor came in the eighth inning. The score was 4-2 Yankees, and Reggie Jackson led off with a home run to make it 5-2. The entire ballpark starts chanting "Reggie sucks, Reggie sucks." Now you have to remember this is 1978. "Sucks" was basically a curse word—not something you said in polite company.

The mayor says, "What are they saying, Stu?" I said, "Mr. Mayor, I'm not really sure you want me to tell you." "No, you tell me, Stu. What are they saying?" "Sir, I don't know if I should tell you." "I must know! What are they saying?" "They're saying 'Reggie sucks.'" "My God, this is terrible! This is an embarrassment! The city is being embarrassed on national television!"

He starts grabbing these plainclothes guys who must have been his security. Kevin White is losing his mind: "You need to make this stop! We're being embarrassed! These people are chanting a vulgarity on national TV! How can our city recover? This is terrible! You have to stop this right now!" That's my most memorable moment from sitting next to the mayor of Boston at the Bucky Dent game.

Robby: What was it like afterward?

Stu: You have to remember the Red Sox came back and nearly won. Goose Gossage came into the game in the seventh inning—a whole new world back then, no relief pitchers getting a two and two-thirds inning save. He came in for Guidry, got through the seventh, gave up two runs in the 8th, and the Red Sox almost scored more.

They had another big chance in the 9th. Burleson got on with a walk, and Jerry Remy hit a frozen rope into right field. Lou Piniella couldn't see it—he lost the line drive in the sun and just stuck out his glove. Miraculously, the ball stuck in his glove, and Lou fired to third base as Burleson had to slam on the brakes. So it's first and second with one out, with the heart of the order coming up—Rice and then Yastrzemski.

Yaz made the final out on a foul pop to third base. When it went up, you could just hear the air go out of the entire stadium. The only noise was the Yankees celebrating. You couldn't hear anything else. After a few seconds, the organist started playing, and people turned to file out, but it was the strangest feeling—literally like a punch to the gut, all the air out of the place. People were absolutely stunned.

After a few minutes, I said my goodbyes to the mayor and governor. I turned to leave, walking up, and about 10-12 rows up, I saw Curt Gowdy. This is probably one of the most embarrassing things I've ever done. If there's anything I could take back and not have done, it would be this. There's Curt Gowdy, an icon of broadcasting, on the Mount Rushmore of baseball play-by-play announcers, the voice of NBC football. He started as the Red Sox play-by-play guy—that was his first big job. He looked like someone very close to him had just passed away, just the saddest person you can imagine.

And I'm 18 years old and really stupid—which I suppose is redundant. I just wanted an autograph. So I had my Red Sox program: "Mr. Gowdy, can I please have your autograph?" He had every reason to jump out of his seat and punch me in the face, and I would have deserved it. But he was very gracious, took my program, wrote his name, and said, "Here you are, son." I walked up the aisle, got about two steps, and thought, "That was really inappropriate." But that's what I remember from the game ending.

Robby: That's unbelievable. Stu, how long did you work for MLB Productions?

Stu: 14 years.

Robby: He used to do the end-of-year videos for teams: "Here's the story of the 1987 New York Yankees." Stu would produce those—that was his whole job, to follow the team and put those together.

Stu: Apart from that, I did a weekly show called "This Week in Baseball." That was kind of my day job during the season.

Robby: What made that show so great?

Stu: There was no SportsCenter for most of its run, certainly no social media. There was no way to really access highlights. If you wanted to see some great play that happened in the Mariners-Twins game, you basically had to wait till Saturday morning or afternoon to put on "This Week in Baseball" because your 11 o'clock news didn't have it. You might read about it in your local newspaper the next day, but there was no way to capture the essence of the great things that happened during the week.

The show was aptly named—it truly was "This Week in Baseball." It was highlights, milestones, bloopers, and our job was to sift through all that and compress it into a half-hour TV show, which as you know is about 22-22½ minutes. It was a true labor of love, and I got to work with Mel Allen, who is also on the Mount Rushmore of baseball play-by-play people. I told him my grandfather was who introduced me to baseball. Mel Allen became like my second grandfather—a wonderful man, a Jewish man from Alabama in the 1920s, which I imagine presented some unique challenges. He became this iconic voice of the Yankees and wrapped up his career doing "This Week in Baseball" with us.