What Yankees Game Did Juror #7 Have Tickets to in 12 Angry Men (1957)?

Baseball season is upon us! Congrats to all those who celebrate. It’s still early, and your team is still in it. What a thrill.

In honor of baseball season, I want to discuss a very particular thing about one of my favorite baseball movies: 12 Angry Men. (Which is one of my favorite movies, period. It’s brilliant.)

Now, 12 Angry Men isn’t exactly what most people, or anyone, would call a “baseball movie.” There is no baseball being played. There are no baseball players present, aside from one confident amateur. But baseball is the only thing on the mind of one character: Juror #7, played by Jack Warden.

Juror #7 is a real asshat. I mean just an absolute clown. He’s not one of the most malicious jurors in the room, nor is he one of the last few guilty votes still standing, but his apathy—or rather, his desire to wrap things up quickly because he has tickets to a ballgame—shows how much he lacks in empathy.

He makes note of said ballgame before the jurors even vote. “Yanks and Cleveland,” he says. “We got this kid, Modjelewski.* Ooh, he’s a real bull, this kid.” But what game is it? The one that Juror #7 is so concerned about—tickets “burning a hole in his pocket,” as another juror says—that he is willing to forfeit a deliberation and send a man off to die?

The first thing we have to determine is what year it is in the film. We’re not given a timestamp of any sort, but we know that the film was released on April 10, 1957, just five days before the Opening Day matchup between the Washington Senators and the Baltimore Orioles.** Could the film take place in 1955 or 1956, when the script was being (re)written? Or in 1954, when the TV version originally aired? Perhaps. But the people of America watched this film during baseball season. I believe it’s written as the 1957 season.***

Now that we have a year, there are other clues to be gathered from the film. We already know who the Yankees are playing, which really narrows it down. We also know that the film takes place on a Friday because Henry Fonda questions another juror about what he did the first four nights of the week.

Perhaps our best clue, though, is one from the very beginning: It’s extremely hot. Juror #7 says himself that he spoke with the weather bureau and they told him it’s going to be the hottest day of the year. (We love a metaphor, folks.) In 1957, the hottest day of the year was July 22, when the temperature reached 101 degrees in New York City. Quite hot!

Now, the Yankees didn’t even play on July 22 in 1957. But if Rose was predicting the future here (not to mention the weather), he was probably making an educated guess that the hottest day would be near the middle of summer, around late July or early August.

With this in mind, we can narrow things down rather easily, given that Cleveland only played 11 games in New York City this season. One of them was in mid-May, three were in late June, and two others were in mid-September. And there was a stretch of five games in four days…in early August.

The final game of this series—a day game—happened on Monday, August 5. There was a double-header the Sunday before. And another day game on Saturday. The series opener was on Friday night, the only time Cleveland played in New York City on a Friday that season.

It was Friday, August 2, 1957. This was the ballgame Juror #7 had tickets to. (We get further confirmation of this from Henry Fonda, who says in the film that the Yankees game doesn’t start until 8:00.)

So what happened in that game? Was it a good one?

It was, in fact. The Yankees only scored three runs in a win, but Tom Sturdivant allowed just two runs through eight innings, and the legendary Mickey Mantle, coming off perhaps the best season of his life as the reigning MVP and triple-crown winner, hammered a home run to left field in the 7th inning, his 29th of the year in a season where he would repeat as the American League MVP. He added an outfield assist for good measure.

Was the game good enough to hastily send a potentially innocent man to death row? No. It was not. You monster.

Here’s the worst part of this whole situation: Juror #7, this selfish prick, probably still made it to the game! The last mention of a time of day in the film is 6:15, about 15 minutes before they wrap up and turn in their verdict. It’s reasonable to assume that all of the jurors were gone by 7:00, and wouldn’t you know it, Juror #7 is the first one out of the door at the end. He even checks his watch as he walks away.

Hope you enjoyed your ballgame, dick.

*Modjelewski was not a real player. However, there were two brothers, Dick and Ed Modzelewski, that played football for the Cleveland Browns, though only Ed was a Brown at the time.

**The Orioles get roasted for no reason in this film, and it is wonderful.

***Yes, this implies that screenwriter Reginald Rose was predicting the future with his script. But if you watch the film 64 years later, it’s pretty clear that that’s precisely what he was doing.

12 Angry Men is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Kanopy, and Tubi, and it is available for rent elsewhere.