1977-Jun-23 - NYY/NYM - New York Yankees vs New York Mets - Exhibition Mayors Trophy Game - Classic Baseball Radio Broadcast
The Mayor's Trophy Game was a charity exhibition born out of civic pride and old-fashioned New York baseball rivalry — a way to let the city's teams settle bragging rights in a low-stakes summer game while funneling gate proceeds into sandlot baseball for city kids. It started in 1946 as a Yankees-Giants series for a trophy named after Mayor William O'Dwyer, with the Dodgers joining in occasionally, and it carried real stakes for fans even if teams often didn't send their best arms (rosters were frequently padded with Triple-A call-ups to spare the real staffs). The series died when the Giants and Dodgers left for California after 1957, had a quiet interlude of occasional Yankees exhibitions against out-of-town clubs, then found new life in 1963 once the Mets arrived to become New York's "other" team. It ran with real regularity through 1979, went dark for two years when the two clubs just wrote checks to charity instead, came back briefly in 1982-83, and then died for good — a casualty of dwindling attendance and, fittingly, a 1983 finale so troubled that regular umpires refused to work it and college umps had to fill in. Throughout, the game's charm was its low-stakes, oddball nature: rain delays that pushed dates around, home run derbies as a preliminary event, players who'd have brief and otherwise forgettable careers becoming the story of the day, and moments of real civic sentiment (the 1948 game paused for news of Babe Ruth's death; the 1960 Dodgers-Yankees game benefited an injured Roy Campanella). The 1977 game specifically: Played at Shea Stadium on June 23 (rescheduled from a rained-out May 9 date), it drew just 15,510 fans — by far the smallest crowd since the Mets-Yankees version of the series resumed in 1963, a sign of how much air had gone out of the event by the late '70s. The Mets won 6-4, with home runs from Joel Youngblood and Ron Hodges providing the offense. Fittingly for a series that often saved its regulars, both pitchers of record were Triple-A farmhands rather than established major leaguers: Tom Makowski took the win for the Mets, and Roger Slagle took the loss for the Yankees — a small, forgettable footnote of a game that nonetheless captured exactly what the series had become by then: a charity obligation more than a real rivalry showcase.
