The Law of Privacy . . .
            Art Ditmar, Pitcher, New York Yankees

    Art Ditmar pitched for the Yankees in the 1960 World Series, facing the Pittsburgh Pirates. He started the first and fifth games of the Series, both of which the Pirates won. In the two games, Ditmar yielded six hits and four runs in 12 innings. In baseball, as in other areas of life, however, statistics can be misleading. "There was nothing wrong with starting Ditmar or with his pitching," Yankee manager Casey Stengel said after game five. "The Pirates didn't overpower or overwhelm him. They were bouncing balls through holes and over heads, and our fielders didn't field too good behind him, either." Yankee pitching coach Eddie Lopat took a similar view. "There is no substitute for experience and stuff," Lopat said, "and Ditmar had both. But he didn't have any luck...." Game 5 ended Art Ditmar's appearances in the 1960 World Series. It did not, however, end his bad luck. In the seventh game, future Hall-of-Famer Bill Mazeroski unloaded a ninth-inning, game-winning home run off Yankee pitcher Ralph Terry. On radio, play-by-play announcer Chuck Thompson told a different story. As Mazeroski's hit cleared the left field fence, Thompson reported the score as 10-0 instead of 10-9. He also told the listening audience that the homer had been hit off Art Ditmar, not Ralph Terry. Years later, Thompson explained, "I think I had just seen Ditmar warming up in the bullpen." For Thompson, "it was easily the most embarrassing moment of my career behind the microphone." After the Series, the Pirates offered Thompson an opportunity to correct his play-by-play for use in a souvenir record they were producing. He declined. According to Thompson, "I figured it had gone on the air that way, so it wouldn't be honest to change it." Thompson's decision to live with his mistake meant that Art Ditmar would have to live with it as well. Thompson's error might have eased gracefully into the shadows of World Series history if Budweiser Beer had not selected Thompson's play-by-play as the backdrop for a television commercial during the 1985 World Series. The commercial showed young boys outside a barbershop listening to the radio as Thompson described Mazeroski's dramatic home run. The Budweiser commercial ran for the first two games of the 1985 Series. After publication of a newspaper article pointing out Thompson's erroneous reference to Ditmar, Budweiser took the commercial off the air for the third, fourth and fifth games. Inexplicably, however, Budweiser aired the commercial again during games six and seven. Budweiser Beer had nothing to do with Chuck Thompson's error. However, it compounded the error by using the replay on nationwide TV. Budweiser's commercial came twenty-five years after the original broadcast and more than twenty years after Ditmar had retired from the game, when he was well out of the public gaze. Did the Budweiser commercial invade the former pitcher's privacy? There is a reasonable basis to conclude that Budweiser displayed a careless, indeed, an obvious, disregard for the truth. Ditmar sued Budweiser for damages in an Ohio court. The judge assigned to the case demonstrated little understanding of the significance that Mazeroski's home run holds in baseball lore. Ditmar lost his lawsuit. However, if the case had been brought in New York, where the Mazeroski home run remains a source of irritation to many, the outcome might have been different. Reference: Ditmar v. Needham, Harper, Worldwide, Inc., et al., No. C 86-662 (U.S. Dist. Ct., N.D. Ohio) (1986).