While helping McHale and the crew make Captain Binghampton believe that he's in New York in 1950, Gruber holds up a newspaper and exclaims. "Those Bums (the Brooklyn Dodgers) blew another one!" In 1950, the Dodgers did, in fact, lose the National League Pennant to the "Whiz Kid" Philadelphia Phillies - one year before the New York Giants and Bobby Thompson beat them with the famous "Shot Heard Round the World".