Always the perfect shot

Al Mengert’s friends figured his picture would someday grace the hallowed pages of the New York Times.

And they were right. It finally did.

What they didn’t figure correctly, however, was why – which is understandable, considering Mengert’s legendary golf career that included appearances in a record 29 major events, including eight consecutive Masters and four PGA Championships, as a club professional.

“They always thought I’d be in there for something I did on the golf course,” explained the 79-year-old Mengert, a Spokane native and longtime icon on the local golf scene, who now lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., “and certainly not for holding up three tickets to a baseball game.”

Yet, in a Sunday edition of the Times published Dec. 9, 2007, there it was – a photograph of a much-younger Mengert, smiling broadly in front of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, holding up three tickets to Game 5 of the 1956 World Series between the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers.

The tickets were a gift from a member of Echo Lake (N.J.) Country Club, where Mengert was serving as head golf professional. Mengert and his wife, Donna, used them to treat Mengert’s late father, Otto, to his first major league game.

The couple also took along their 16mm movie camera to capture some personal memories, never once suspecting just how memorable that day would be … to an entire country.

It turned out Mengert was one of only two known fans among the 64,519 packed into Yankee Stadium to successfully record portions of Don Larsen’s perfect game – a pitching masterpiece that stands as the only perfect game in the 105-year history of the World Series.

And it was because of what Mengert caught on film on that brilliant late-autumn afternoon that his photograph became a part of a Times article chronicling his cinematic efforts.

Mengert’s film was in sharp, clear focus.

“If I’d have been Cecil B. DeMille, I don’t think I could have done a better job on it,” Mengert said of the 12 minutes of footage he recorded from his seat between home plate and third base. “I really only took the camera so my family would have a record of my dad being at the game, so I only had three magazines of 50 feet each in my pocket.”

Not realizing what was about to transpire, Mengert used some of his film to record pre-game activities outside Yankee Stadium. And once inside, he scanned the bleachers with his camera, focusing briefly on Larsen as he warmed up in the bullpen. He filmed the Yankees running onto the field and captured Larsen’s first pitch.

“That’s pretty historical in itself,” said Mengert, who used three different lenses to record the action, “because I also have the first two Dodger batters striking out, which kind of set the pattern for the game.”

It wasn’t until after filming a couple of Yankees batters in the bottom of the inning that Mengert decided to focus on some of the better-known stars, like Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson. He caught Mantle rounding the bases following his fourth-inning home run and captured Robinson arguing a called strike with the home-plate umpire. He also recorded the Yankees scoring their second and final run in the bottom of the sixth, before panning out to the scoreboard and getting his first real sense of the history Larsen was in the process of writing.

“I turned to my dad at the end of that inning and said, ‘Dad, he’s only nine outs away from a no-hitter – I’d better save some film in case he gets to the ninth inning and nothing else happens,’ ” Mengert recalled.

Mengert went on to shoot Larsen walking from the dugout to start the ninth inning and filmed all six of his pitches to the game’s final batter, pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell, who struck out, sending Yankees catcher Yogi Berra on a mad dash to the mound, where he leaped into Larsen’s arms – a scene Mengert also caught on film.

“I got the highlights of the game and never dreamed at the time that it might be the only (quality) film,” Mengert said. “I just happened to have a great camera that did all the fun stuff and was able, really, in just 12 minutes to capture the important stuff, because it was a pretty boring game.

“The guy sitting next to me was a Brooklyn fan, and he never got off his seat.”

Mengert eventually stored the film in his closet, not realizing its historical value. It stayed there for over 20 years before he watched it again, and it wasn’t until recently he decided to have a Scottsdale-based company enhance the footage and put it on a DVD.

Now he is looking to market his creation, without “getting into the business of selling DVDs.”

Instead, he would like to see his film shared with baseball fans, perhaps, in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Or as a gift from Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, once his team plays its final game at Yankee Stadium on Sunday and prepares to move into its new billion-dollar digs to start the 2009 season.

“If I was Steinbrenner, I’d be very interested in having it and, maybe, giving copies – once the new stadium opens – to all those people who are buying those super box seats,” Mengert suggested. “What would make a nicer gift, once it’s torn down, than a DVD of the greatest game ever pitched at Yankee Stadium?”

Mengert has already gotten some mileage out of his film, having been flown to New York – along with his daughter – earlier this summer to do interviews in conjunction with the pending closure of Yankee Stadium. He was very protective of his DVD, however, allowing a local television station to air only about a minute of its footage.

He did an interview for the station at the Yogi Berra Museum and had a chance to talk to the Yankees’ Hall of Fame catcher about Larsen’s perfect game. And a few years back, he had his brother, whose family still runs Crescent Machine Works, the business his father founded on Monroe Street in 1921, take a copy of the DVD to a book signing Larsen was doing in Spokane.

“He didn’t write anything specific about the game, itself,” Mengert said of Larsen, who lives in Hayden, “but he signed it and wished me the best.”

Mengert no longer spends much time with the sport he once dominated in becoming the No. 1 ranked amateur golfer in the nation in 1952. He shot his age when he was 64 and shot another 64 at the age of 70. He played his last complete round at the age of 72 and shot 66.

It was about then that his wife, who died in 2003, suffered a series of strokes.

“I hung up my spikes, and I haven’t come back,” Mengert said. “I still go out and hit balls now and then, but I don’t keep score anymore. I’m like an old opera singer – I remember how I used to sound. And at my age, 79, I’ll feel like I’m a hundred if I go out and can’t break 90.”

So Mengert spends much of his time living a “leisurely lifestyle” that includes a summer home at the Black Butte Ranch golf community in Oregon, where he pursues his hobbies of collecting Western art and reading.

And still marveling himself, no doubt, that it was baseball – not golf – that finally got his picture in the New York Times.