Thank Copyright Infringers For Still Being Able To Hear Great Moments In World Series History

If you're a baseball fan, you know that the World Series is going on right now, between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers (with the Giants looking damn good so far). On the night they won the League Championship Series to advance to the World Series, I was actually out walking my dog, listening to the game on the radio (it was a pretty nerve-wracking finish), and was actually a bit disappointed that radio announcer Jon Miller didn't pull out the obvious "The Giants win the pennant!" line, even though they had, in fact, won the pennant. As you hopefully know, that line was the famous call -- considered one of the greatest broadcasting moments in history -- back in 1951, when the (then) NY Giants' Bobby Thomson hit a homerun off the (then) Brooklyn Dodgers' Ralph Branca to secure the National League championship:
Now, what you might not know is that the only reason we have that recording, is because someone recorded it at home. Reader Stephen points us to Joe Posnanski's absolutely awesome article on the best sports calls in history (which I'd actually read, but had missed this point), which notes that:

The man we all need to thank is someone named Larry Goldberg, a travel agent who had the good sense to ask his mother to tape Russ Hodges' call so he could listen to it after work. Because of Larry, we have the most joyous call in the history of sports to enjoy forever.

Yes, thanks to infringement, we have that moment in history.

And it's not the only one. Just about a month ago, the news came out that video tapes of the (previously lost) 1960 World Series had been found in the former wine cellar of Bing Crosby, who had been a part-owner of The Pirates. The final game of that series is considered one of the greatest games ever (well, less so if you're a Yankee fan...), but it had been lost... until last month. Crosby apparently couldn't bear to actually watch the game, he was so nervous (he went to Europe instead), but wanted to be able to watch it later, so he actually hired a film crew to record the official broadcast, and they were just recovered (actually, right outside of San Francisco...) last month.

So here we have two of the greatest moments in baseball that we only have the archive of the actual game recordings because of people technically infringing.

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101028/04234411628/thank-copyright-infringers-for-still-being-able-to-hear-great-moments-in-world-series-history.shtml

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