Lost tape of greatest baseball game ever found in Bing Crosby's wine cellar

Lost tape of what is referred to as the greatest baseball games ever played has been found after 40 years, and that too in singer and a devout follower of the game—Bing Crosby's wine cellar

The decider of the 1960 World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees ended with Bill Mazeroski's electrifying home run which won the game 10-9 and clinched the series for the Pirates.

It was believed that a grainy 40-second clip was all that survived of the match as television networks erased the tape, as was routine up until the 1970s.
 
But a pristine copy of the entire two-and-a-half hour broadcast has been discovered, four decades on, in Crosby's wine cellar.

The entertainer, who died in 1977, was a baseball devotee and co-owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The World Series victory should have been his proudest moment, but he was not there to see it. Crosby was so superstitious that he refused to watch and went on holiday to Paris instead.

"I can't stay in the country. I'll jinx everybody," The Telegraph quoted him as telling his wife, Kathryn.

However, Crosby took the precaution of hiring a company to record the game by kinescope, a precursor to the videotape, giving himself the luxury of being able to watch the game afterwards in the knowledge that his team had won.

The five-reel, 16mm film was then stored in the cool surroundings of his cellar, which doubled as a vault.

It is the only known complete copy of the game and was discovered by Robert Bader, vice president of marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises, who stumbled across it while looking for footage of old television shows in the Crosby home in Hillsborough, California.

"I had to be the only person to have seen it in 50 years. It was just pure luck. It's a time capsule," said Bader.

Crosby's black and white film has been transferred to DVD and will be televised on the MLB Network in December.

It will also be made available for DVD release.

The footage demonstrates how much things have changed in 50 years.

The broadcast has no instant replays, no analysis and no reports in the dugout, and the game features a hand-operated scoreboard.