Flashback: Here’s where the Royals were the moment man landed on the moon in 1969
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- July 20, 1969: Game halted as Apollo 11's landing coincided with the matchup.
- Comiskey Park’s exploding scoreboard was synced to the moon landing and fired sparks.
- Royals won 8-6; White Sox's Walter Williams' single sparked a rally.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and Cleveland Guardians were on the field at Dodger Stadium when the Artemis II began its historic moon mission last week.
As players warmed up, the stadium’s scoreboard broadcast the launch. Standing in the outfield, several players stopped and watched as the rocket’s massive boosters, in all their fiery glory, roared on the huge screen.
Artemis II, which ends its 10-day trip around the moon Friday, has reignited our collective interest in heading to infinity and beyond.
And from the moment man first landed on the moon, Major League Baseball and space exploration have been entwined.
On the afternoon of Sunday, July 20, 1969, the world held its breath and nervously waited as Apollo 11’s lunar module, Eagle, prepared to land man on the moon for the first time.
Everything stopped. Even in ballparks.
That afternoon in Chicago, the White Sox and a new expansion team called the Kansas City Royals, playing their inaugural MLB season, were on the field in the first game of a weekend doubleheader.
Chicago TV reporter Hugh Hill was at Comiskey Park, too, along with 16,000 baseball fans waiting for news of the history about to happen 238,000 miles away.
Fans could look up on that sunny day and see the moon, a ghostly pale disc in the late-afternoon sky.
Hill checked his watch during his report, which has lived on YouTube for several years.
“The game is in the seventh inning, Kansas City against Chicago. In Chicago the time is 3:17,” he said. “The astronauts are just about to land on the moon.
“And the 16,000 fans here at the ballpark are preparing to do what nearly every other American will do at this moment, celebrate and applaud the space achievement by Americans.”
A Dixieland band hyped up the crowd playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.
And then, during play, came the moment.
Five words flashed on the scoreboard.
“They are on the moon.”
Fireworks shot up behind the outfield.
And the ballpark asked for a moment of silence for astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
Heads bowed.
“Let us pray for the continued safety of the three astronauts and the successful completion of the Apollo 11 mission,” the ballpark’s announcer directed.
“The reaction by 16,000 fans at the Sunday afternoon ballgame, an unusual but this time very welcome interruption,” Hill reported.
The moon landing became lore for several major-league teams.
The Chicago Cubs were in the second game of a doubleheader in Philadelphia. When the astronauts landed, play stopped and both teams lined up on the field for a moment of silence. Kate Smith’s version of “God Bless America” rang out in Connie Mack Stadium.
The Yankees were playing the Washington Senators in front of 34,000 fans in the Bronx.
Score tied, 2-2, in the top of the eighth. Stadium announcer Bob Sheppard got on the P.A.
Umpires halted the game.
“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please,” Sheppard said. “You will be happy to know that the Apollo 11 has landed safely on the moon.”
Forty-five seconds of deafening cheering ensued.
As in Chicago, the scoreboard flashed: “They’re on the moon.”
And as in Chicago, Sheppard led the stadium in a moment of silent prayer.
“You didn’t hear a sound,” Yankees manager Ralph Houk later marveled to reporters.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s recording of “America the Beautiful” played and fans sang along.
“What I remember was the community atmosphere,” one Yankees fan would recall decades later.
“You’re over there at the ballpark and you’re there to watch a sporting event and to root on your heroes, and yet, when that happened, it wasn’t a baseball game anymore.
“You go ahead and high-five complete strangers. Everybody in that stadium was amazed. We were all equals at that point. … All Americans were in amazement at what had been achieved by our country and the astronauts.”
The day of the moon landing is also forever tied to a famous quote about pitcher Gaylord Perry, attributed to Alvin Dark, who managed the San Francisco Giants from 1961 to 1964.
Mocking the batting abilities of his talented pitcher — later a Hall of Famer — Dark allegedly said: “There’ll be a man on the moon before he hits a home run.”
He was right. Barely.
Within an hour after Apollo landed on the moon, Perry hit his first big-league homer in Candlestick Park.
In 2009 Perry told MLB.com that “over the loudspeaker, they were telling everybody to stand and give a moment of silent thanks for the astronauts who landed on the moon. And I’d say 30 minutes later, Claude Osteen grooved me a fastball, and I hit it out of the park.”
MLB celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 2019 by launching “Apollo at the Park,” a league-wide celebration co-hosted by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The celebration sent replica statues of Armstrong’s spacesuit to 15 stadiums.
White Sox history will forever tell how the moon landing coincided with player Walter Williams hitting a single against the Royals.
The park had an “exploding scoreboard,” the first in baseball, that flashed lights and launched fireworks whenever a player hit a home run.
“Comiskey Park’s exploding scoreboard must have given Walter Williams a fright when it belched sparks and noise to salute his infield single in the bottom of the seventh inning of yesterday’s first game between the White Sox and Kansas City Royals,” the Chicago Tribune wrote the next day.
“Actually, it had been synchronized to the moment of the moon landing, and Walter, who seems to be in the right place at the right time, at least as often as any of his teammates, was merely doing his part to trigger a two-run rally against the Royals.
“The Chicago White Sox lost 6 to 8.”
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