The Odd Couple

If Felix Unger called you up to talk to you about dinner, you would not only have missed the triple play in the game, you would have missed all of the appearances by the Mets. Honestly, unless you are watching it on a home movie theater, you probably could not tell who the players were unless you were told.

In the movie, it is the top of the ninth inning and the Mets cling to a one run lead over the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates have the bases loaded with no outs. The action is viewed from the Shea Stadium press box. Walter Matthau's character Oscar Madison is covering the game. His roommate Felix, played by Jack Lemon, calls him to discuss dinner arrangements. Oscar gets the phone and is speaking to Felix when Bill Mazeroski hits a ground ball to Ed Charles. Charles makes the put out at third before firing the ball to the second baseman who makes the put out at second. He then throws to Ed Kranepool to complete the triple play! (Or at least that was the play according to sportswriter Maury Allen who was their and briefly appeared in the movie.*)

Another interesting story that Allen relates is that Roberto Clemente was originally offered the role as the player who hits into the triple play but he declined. If true, this would be quite ironic since Clemente actually hit into two triple plays in his career. And Mazeroski? None!**

The scene was filmed on June 27th, 1967 before the start of the regularly scheduled game between the Mets and the Pirates. According to the Internet Movie Database in addition to Charles and Kranepool, Ken Boyer, Tommy Davis, Jack Fisher, Buddy Harrelson, and Cleon Jones were also in the film.***

Oh, in the actual game they played that night, the Mets beat the Pirates 5 - 2!****

The movie was written by Neil Simon and directed by Gene Saks.
*http://www.thecolumnists.com/allen/allen90.html
**http://tripleplays.sabr.org/tp_bat.htm
***http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063374/fullcredits#cast
****http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196706270.shtml

Seinfeld - The Boyfriend

This episode appeared in season three of Seinfeld. In the episode Jerry and George meet Keith Hernandez and Jerry and Keith become friends. Jerry soon learns that Kramer and Newman despise Hernandez because on an incident that happened after a Mets game in 1987. In the clip below, the incident is recounted in detail.

In the episode, the game in question happened on June 14h 1987 with the Mets supposedly losing to the Phillies on an error by Hernandez at Shea. In reality, according to Baseball-reference.com*, the Mets were in Pittsburgh beating the Pirates 7-3. Although Hernandez would have 10 errors that season (the most he made in any season as a Met) he did not commit one in that game. Hernandez did commit two errors five days earlier on June 9th in Chicago in a game the Cubs won 6-5.
 
Roger McDowell also appears in the episode. According to Keith Hernandez, in an interview that appears on the DVD, Darryl Strawberry was originally supposed to be in the episode.

The episode was written by Larry David and Larry Levin and directed by Tom Cherones.
* http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT198706140.shtml

Availability: season three is available on DVD.

Click here to see a clip of The Boyfriend!