Routine Moments in Baseball History: July 25, 1966

Welcome to Routine Moments in Baseball History, a running weekday feature that looks back at plays that have been ignored by the history books because history books only talk about things that are important or interesting. Today's installment is "Al Luplow Hits a Pop Fly to First."

There's something cheerfully pointless about baseball in late July. Especially back in the days when only two teams advanced to the postseason, most teams have no hope of winning the World Series by then, but still theysoldier on hitting and pitching and fielding, and fans go on watching. The July 25, 1966 contest between the New York Mets and the Houston Astros did not lead to anything, it did not advance any kind of narrative, it was just a bunch of guys playing a game. Nearly 19,000 people showed up to watch them, because a baseball game is a fine place to hang out and drink and yell down at the players on the field. Also, tickets usually cost a quarter. Also, there wasn't that much to do in 1966 Houston, I imagine—you might as well have gotten out of the heat for a bit and spent the day in an air-conditioned stadium.

If you did decide to go that day, you wouldn't have seen anything special. I really cannot emphasize this enough. The final score was 6-4 in favor of the visitors, but it wasn't even that close—the Mets led 2-1 after the fourth and never surrendered the lead, though there was a brief moment of drama in the sixth, when the Astros had runners on the corners with one out, but pitcher Dennis Ribant got Bob Aspromonte to hit into an inning-ending double play.

So even if you were at the game, you may not have noticed when Al Luplow hit a pop fly to first base in the first. Plenty of people showed up late, I imagine, or were getting a beer. If you were one of those people, don't worry, you didn't miss anything—a routine play by the first baseman Chuck Harrison, one he probably made a hundred times in his six-year career. If you took notice of the at-bat at all, it might have been to say, "Hey, that's Al Luplow! He made an incredible catch at Fenway Park a couple years ago!" But that catch wasn't captured on film, so you probably didn't see it, though you may have read about it and known that Luplow was a good fielder. Anyway, Luplow would have probably just been a name in the program to you, a .241 hitter to boot. It still would have been a good time.

This has been Routine Moments in Baseball History. Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.