24. Vintage Baseball ... In A Wine Cellar

How a near-pristine black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series -- long believed to have been lost forever -- came to rest in the dry and cool wine cellar of Bing Crosby's home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him.

Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was too nervous to watch the series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.

....He knew he would want to watch the game later -- if his Pirates won -- so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby's home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.

Crosby, the singer and movie, radio and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.

....Three years ago, Major League Baseball acquired the rights to Yankees pitcher Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series -- leaving the finale of the 1960 World Series high on its wish list. The hunt for old games -- this one unseen on TV since its original broadcast -- is constant, subject to serendipity and often futile. Great games like Game 7 in 1960 are often recalled with just a few newsreel clips.

....After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening house in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.

They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby's TV specials for a DVD release -- part of the estate's goal of resurrecting his body of work.

He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled "1960 World Series." They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees' Mel Allen and the Pirates' Bob Prince -- the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD,

....The production is simple by today's production. NBC appeared to use about five cameras. The graphics were simple (the players' names and little else) and rarely used. There were no instant replays, no isolated cameras, no analysis, no dugout reporters and no sponsored trivia quizzes.

Viewers looked at the hand-operated Forbes Field scoreboard, which on that day (of 19 runs and 24 hits) got a vigorous workout. Occasionally they saw newsreel cameras atop the ballpark roof.

Prince and Allen rarely interacted, with Prince calling the first half and Allen the second. That put Allen on the air for Yogi Berra's three-run homer in the sixth inning (Allen first called it foul); Pirate catcher Hal Smith's eight-inning homer to put Pittsburgh on top, 9-7 ("That base hit will long be remembered," Allen said as the film showed Roberto Clemente ... bounding around the bases with joy); and Mazeroski's winning drive to left field ("And the fans go wild," Allen said).

The game included the play on which a ground ball hit by Bill Virdon to Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek kicked off the dirt and hit him in the Adam's apple. Kubek fell on his back, sat up within a minute looking dazed, stood up, then lobbied Manager Casey Stengel unsuccessfully to stay in.

It also included remarkable base running by Mickey Mantle with one out in the top of the ninth. The Yankees were trailing 9-8, with Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third. Berra hit a sharp grounder that was grabbed by first baseman Rocky Nelson, who quickly stepped on the bag for the second out. For a split second, Nelson seemed ready to throw home in time for a tag play on McDougald for the final out of the World Series.

But Nelson immediately became distracted by Mantle, who never took off for second when Berra hit the ball and was now standing just a few feet away. Nelson reached to tag Mantle, but Mantle made a feint and dived back safely into first. McDougald scored, and the score was tied, 9-9.

"How about that?" Allen said after Mantle's play. But just minutes later, Mazeroski stepped to the plate....

"In Bing Crosby's Wine Cellar, Vintage Baseball," Robert Sandomir
The New York Times, 23 September 2010

IMAGE: Pittsburgh's Bill Mazeroski mobbed at home plate after series-winning homer

23. Roger Kahn Reports on the '52 World Series (Part 5)

Small as he was, [Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher] Carl Erskine looked strong and confident. With one out in the first inning, Phil Rizzuto lined a fastball into left centerfield. Shotgun Shuba broke with the crack of the bat, stared through the smoke and the chiaroscuro light [of Yankee Stadium] and ran down the drive, a fine play....

An inning later Gene Woodling smacked another hard line drive, this one toward the seats in right field. Andy Pafko put his right hand on the box seat railing and launched himself toward the ball. He caught it at the top of his leap. What looked like a two-run homer died in the pocket of Pafko's glove. To cold-eyed observers, these two smashes suggested that Erskine was making mistakes. To the more mystical, the catches meant something else. This was Erskine's day. He could make mistakes and get away with them.

His curve was formidable. His fastball was good enough and his change of pace kept the big Yankee hitters off stride. Going into the fifth inning he was pitching a one-hitter and no Yankee had reached second base. The Dodgers chipped away at Ewell Blackwell and when [Duke] Snider homered in the top of the fifth inning, Brooklyn moved ahead 4-0.

Suddenly Erskine lost his touch. He walked Hank Bauer. [Billy] Martin singled. Irv Noren batted for Blackwell and singled home Bauer. Gil McDougald forced Noren, but Rizzuto singled and Martin scored. Mantle fouled out and when Johnny Mize came to bat, [sportswriter] Rud Rennie said, "The deuces are on the table." The Yankees had scored two runs. Two men were out. Two runners were on base.

Erskine got two strikes on Big John Mize. "Four of a kind," [sportswriter] Red Smith said. Erskine wasted a breaking ball. Then Mize hit a fastball deep into the lower stands in right. It was his third home run in three days, his third homer in three World Series games. He was having a rebirth at thirty-nine....

The Dodger lead and Erskine's mystique suddenly were history. [Charlie] Dressen marched mournfully toward the mound, right hand in the right back pocket of his uniform. Erskine's description of what happened next is splendid:

"I see Dressen coming and ... I think the numbers are against me. October fifth, it was. That was a wedding anniversary, my fifth. The fifth inning. I've given the Yankees five runs. Forget thirteen. Five must be my unlucky number.

"Charlie says to give him the ball. You weren't allowed to talk when he came out. He was afraid you might argue him into leaving you in, and you had to wait on the mound for the next pitcher, so's you could wish him good luck. Now Charlie has the ball. I'm through. The fives have done me in. Suddenly Dressen says, 'Isn't this your anniversary? Are you gonna take Betty out and celebrate tonight?'

"I can't believe it. There's seventy thousand people watching, more than lived in Anderson [Indiana] where I grew up, and he's asking me what I'm doing that night. I tell him yes, I was planning on taking Betty someplace quiet.

"'Well,' Dressen says, 'then see if you can't get this game over before it gets dark.'"

Berra followed Mize and drove a fastball into deep right centerfield. Snider, Erskine's roommate, ran hard and leapt prodigiously and caught the ball.

....Johnny Sain relieved Blackwell in the sixth. Sain was Stengel's best reliever -- after the protean Reynolds -- and the Yankees, ahead 5-4, looked in healthy shape. Long John Sain's variety of curves had produced a remarkable career, although he did not become a winner in the major leagues until he was twenty-eight years old. Sain spent six seasons in the minors, then, as [Casey] Stengel knew, served as a Navy test pilot in World War II, learning aerodynamics, which he said deepened his grasp of pitching.. "The stitches on the ball," he said, "like the wings of an airplane, are an airfoil. They can provide lift. Hopping fastball. Or sideslip. Curve and slider."....

With Blackwell gone, Dressen benched Shuba, switched Pafko to left and sent Carl Furillo to play right field. Furillo celebrated with a lead-off double in the sixth, but Campanella and Pafko popped up and Hodges struck out. The big first baseman had come to bat twelve times without hitting safely. Erskine, recovered from The Curse of the Fives, retired the Yankees easily in the sixth. Snider tied the game at 5-all in the seventh, singling home Billy Cox. Then it was Sain and Erskine, the test pilot and the choir boy, matching magnificent efforts. Inning after inning, the Yankees went out in order and at the end of nine innings the teams were still tied.

Sain opened the bottom of the tenth with a grounder to Jackie Robinson's right. Robinson threw to the outfield side of first base. Hodges stretched and the umpire, Art Passarella, called Sain out. Bill Dickey, the first base coach, leaped in indignation. The call stood. Erskine then retired McDougald and Rizzuto.

Cox singled in the eleventh, [Pee Wee] Reese singled him to third. Snider's double to right center sent Cox home. Snider had driven in four runs. The Dodgers led, 6-5.

Mantle rolled back to Erskine. One out in the last of the eleventh. Here came Johnny Mize again. Mize drove another huge liner toward the right field seats. Furillo jumped as though striving for orbit. At the top of his extravagant leap he snared the ball. For the second time a Dodger outfielder had intercepted a home run. [Yogi] Berra stepped up, pumping two bats .... Erskine fanned Berra and broke into a shining smile. He had retired nineteen men in a row. He had beaten the Yankees, 6-5. The Dodgers were one game away from their grail.

A dramatic report reached the press box as the game ended. An Associated Press photograph showed that in the disputed tenth-inning play, Johnny Sain's left spiked shoe was creasing the first-base bag while Robinson's throw was still a yard away from Hodges. And reaching for the ball, Hodges appeared to have taken his foot off the base....

Discussion of the game and the call persisted past the Series, and the umpire, Art Passarella, announced at length that he was "resigning" from the American League staff.

"It turns out," [sportswriter] Dick Young said through a nasty smile, "that Erskine didn't really retire nineteen straight Yankees. He retired eighteen Yankees and one umpire."

Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc

University of Nebraska Press

IMAGE: Erskine congratulated by Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson

22. Stats: Managerial Records

Most Years as a Manager

AL: 50, Connie Mack, Philadelphia, 1901-1950

NL: 32, John McGraw, Baltimore, 1899, New York (Giants), 1902-1932

Most Games Won as Manager

AL: 3582, Connie Mack, Philadelphia

NL: 2690, John McGraw, Baltimore and New York

Most Pennants Won as Manager

AL: 10, Casey Stengel, New York (Yankees)

NL: 10, John McGraw, New York (Giants)

Most World Series Won as Manager

AL: 7, Joe McCarthy, New York & Casey Stengel, New York

NL: 4, Walter Alston, Brooklyn/Los Angeles

Most Consecutive Pennants Won as Manager

AL: 5, Casey Stengel, New York, 1949-53

NL: 4, John McGraw, New York, 1921-24

Most Clubs Managed to Pennants

3, Bill McKechnie, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati

3, Dick Williams, Boston, Oakland, San Diego

First Manager to Pilot Pennant Winners in Two Leagues since 1901

Joe McCarthy, Chicago (NL), 1929, New York (AL), 1932

Only Man to Win a Pennant in His Lone Season as a Manager

George Wright, Providence (NL), 1879

Highest Career Winning Percentage as Manager

.615, Joe McCarthy, 24 seasons, 2125 wins and 1333 losses

Great Baseball Feats, Facts, and Firsts, David Nemec

Copyright 1989 by David Nemec

Published by Signet Books (New York), 1989

IMAGE: John McGraw

21. Roger Kahn Reports on the '52 World Series (Part 4)

Allie Reynolds and the Yankees vs. Joe Black and the Dodgers. Yankee Stadium, October 4, 1952. A matchup for the ages, or at least this particular age, when the Yankees, Dodgers (and sometimes the New York Giants) ruled the world. With the Dodgers leading by two games to one, [Yankees Manager Casey] Stengel's choice of Reynolds was automatic....

But Stengel, as usual, drew up plans on many levels. His best-fielding first-baseman was Joe Collins, born Joseph Kollonige in Scranton, a cheerful, friendly man of twenty-nine, a solid .280 hitter in 1952, and a reliable glove. With Reynolds throwing fastballs to (and at) the Dodgers' righthand hitters, there figured to be a lot of action on the right side of the Yankee infield.

Stengel's other first-baseman, John Robert Mize of Demorest, Georgia, thick-armed, cat-eyed Big Jawn Mize, had hit 51 homers as a New York Giant five years earlier. But Mize was slow. He couldn't range to stab grounders and now, after his thirty-ninth birthday, his home-run power seemed buried in the past....

Except ... except he hit one yesterday, off the formidable Preacher Roe. Stengel saw something. Or sensed something. Whatever, he started geriatric Johnny Mize at first base ... and batted Mize cleanup, right between Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, quite a spot for a refugee from the rocking-chair and horseshoe-pitching set....

Reynolds started the first inning by blowing a fastball past Billy Cox. But [Pee Wee] Reese caught up with a fastball and singled to center. Reynolds threw a hard curve to Duke Snider who bounced the ball toward Billy Martin at second. Martin went down to gauge the hops, his spikes caught as he fielded the ball and trying to force Reese at second, he threw into left field and Reese sped to third. First and third for Brooklyn, none out and two tremendous hitters coming up. Both, as it happened, were black.

Reynolds brushed Jackie Robinson, then threw three strikes that Robinson took. Robinson batted aggressively. He struck out seldom. It was rare to see him called out and rarer still to see him called out with a runner on third. Something was happening.

[Roy] Campanella, squat, powerful, little sumo wrestler of a ballplayer, batted fifth. True to his theory, Reynolds threw the first pitch, a 100-mile-an-hour fastball directly at Campanella's head. Campanella lunged to earth. When he arose, Reynolds struck him out.

Black walked Mantle with two out in the first, then retired Mize. Gene Woodling doubled in the second. He did not advance. Reese, emerging star of the Series, singled with two out in the third inning. He had led the National League with 30 steals. Now when he broke for second, Berra threw him out.

The weather was mild and sunny and the Stadium was full, with 71,787 paying customers. Counting the six hundred reporters who looked on without paying, the attendance exceeded 72,000 .... As the game unfolded, the throng sat quietly. There was sometimes a sense at the Stadium that you were gathered with a corporate crowd, deal-makers out for a day in the sun, not ardently concerned with baseball. But this crowd was too vast for easy categorization. Probably the silence expressed the nature of the game -- very quiet and at the same time very tense.

In the fourth inning Black started Mize with a low, breaking ball. Then he threw a good fastball, up and in. The Dodger scouting report said that Mize had trouble connecting with high inside fastballs. As though expecting this particular pitch, Mize swung falling away with the plate, and cracked a blazing line drive into the twentieth row of the lower deck in right. He had hit a fine, rising fastball for his second home run in two games. Casey Stengel pumped a fist and shouted, "Yeah!" The Yankees and Casey Stengel and Allie Reynolds led, 1-0.

The Dodgers were not rattled. They were a dogged, contentious team. As the fifth inning began, the Brooklyn bench began cheering sarcastically when Reynolds threw fastballs for strikes. "Faster, Reynolds. Cut loose. Hey Big Chief, is that as hard as you can throw?" ... The idea was to goad Reynolds really to throw harder, even harder, until at length he threw his arm out, and the Dodgers knocked him out ....

Reynolds glowered. Andy Pafko lined a single. Gil Hodges, having a wretched Series at bat, worked Reynolds for a walk. The Dodger dugout grew louder ....

Carl Furillo, a relentless fastball hitter, drove an outside pitch deep into right centerfield, where Hank Bauer caught up with it. Pafko advanced to third.

The hitter was Joe Black, a fine all-around athlete. [Charles] Dressen, coaching at third, clutched his left shoulder. Black touched the blue bill of his cap. Sign dispatched. Sign acknowledged. Suicide squeeze. Reynolds reared back and fired overhand. Pafko, the tying run, broke for home plate. Black stabbed his bat at a low fastball and missed. Berra tagged out Pafko. Four innings remained, but the game was over.

The Dodger tactic of goading Reynolds to throw harder did half of what was intended. Reynolds did indeed throw harder, even harder. He struck out ten Dodgers, including Robinson three times, and Campanella twice. But he did not throw his arm out. Reynolds faced only fourteen batters over the last four innings. Dressen lifted Black for a pinch hitter in the eighth and the Yankees scored against the relief pitcher, Johnny Rutherford, a slight, skilled righthander, who soon afterwards quit baseball to practice medicine. Mantle hit a long triple off "Doc" Rutherford and scored when the relay from the outfield went wild. Throwing harder, even harder, Reynolds shut out the Dodgers, 2-0. The Series was tied for a second time.

Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc.
University of Nebraska Press

IMAGE: Allie Reynolds blanks the Dodgers

20. Three and Out

Tragic Angels

The disasters that began afflicting the [California Angels] in 1962 lent an air of spookiness to organization operations. In April of that year, outfielder [Ken] Hunt, who had walloped 25 homers in his rookie season the year before, stood flexing his back on the on-deck circle, snapped his collarbone, and never played a full schedule again. In August, veteran reliever Art Fowler was struck in the face by a line drive during batting practice and lost his vision in one eye. In 1964, a car accident put paid to the promise shown by lefty Ken McBride. That same season, the club paid out $300,000 signing bonuses to college stars Rich Reichardt and Tom Egan, only to have Reichardt's potential thwarted by the loss of a kidney and Egan's by a beanball that broke his jaw and cost him his vision in an eye. In 1965, rookie Dick Wantz pitched himself into the rotation in spring training, but was dead of a brain tumor four months later. In 1968, bullpen ace Minnie Rojas lost his wife and two children, and was himself permanently paralyzed, in an auto accident. Other road accidents killed infielder Chico Ruiz in 1972, reliever Bruce Heinbecher in 1974, and shortstop Mike Miley in 1977. In 1978, Lyman Bostock, one of the league's premier hitters, was shot to death as an innocent bystander. After surrendering a game-tying gopher pitch to Boston's Dave Henderson that eventually turned the tide in favor of the Red Sox in the 1986 LCS, relief specialist Donnie Moore suffered bouts of depression that ended in his suicide.
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Total Ballclubs, Donald Dewey & Nicholas Acocella

Copyright 2005 by SPORT Media Publishing, Inc.

Published by SPORT Media Publishing, Inc. (Toronto), 2005

It Takes A Thief

Baseball has had its share of unsavory characters, but the game's magnates have always been loath to take on players they know to have a criminal record. In the 1930s, the Washington Senators sent a shudder through the major league community when they scouted and signed a convict named Alabama Pitts. To the relief of most, Pitts proved unable to hit top-caliber pitching. Ron LeFlore recalled memories of Pitts when he joined the Detroit Tigers in 1974. A product of the Motor City ghetto, LeFlore came to the Tigers only after serving a prison stint for armed robbery that made him a persona non grata to most of the other teams in the majors. Tigers skipper Ralph Houk, though, swiftly recognized that the fleet LeFlore was the answer to the club's center field hole. In 1976, LeFlore's second full season, he led the club in hitting with a .316 batting average. Two years later he paced the American League in runs and stolen bases. Convicted of thievery, LeFlore spent nine years in the majors being paid for being a thief, swiping an average of 50 bases a season.
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1001 Fascinating Baseball Facts, David Nemec & Peter Palmer

Copyright 1993 by Publications International, Ltd.

Published by Longmeadow Press (Stanford, CT), 1994

The Death of Ray Chapman

On August 16, 1920, the Cleveland Indians were in first place, albeit by just a few percentage points, and making their third and final visit of the season to the Polo Grounds, then the cavernous home of both the New York Giants and the New York Yankees. Facing Cleveland on that day was Yankees ace Carl Mays. An ethereal fog that hung over the Polo Grounds had been complicated by a drizzle by the time shortstop Ray Chapman led off the fifth inning for Cleveland. Mays' best pitch was delivered with an underhand sweep. Down went his body and out shot his arm from the blur of white shirts and dark suits in the open bleachers in the deep background behind him. The pitch struck Chapman in the temple and killed him -- from all indications he never saw it. As a consequence of the only on-the-field fatality in major league history, dirty or scuffed balls thereafter were discarded immediately from play and patrons were no longer allowed to sit in the center field bleachers. Mays was quickly exonerated from any wrongdoing but the following season fell under suspicion of throwing the 1921 World Series. This, more than the Chapman incident, would haunt him the rest of his days.
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1001 Fascinating Baseball Facts, David Nemec & Peter Palmer

Copyright 1993 by Publications International, Ltd.

Published by Longmeadow Press (Stanford, CT), 1994

19. Roger Kahn Reports the 1952 World Series (Part 3)

After the two games in Brooklyn, the Series moved without interruption to Yankee Stadium, the most majestic and renowned baseball ballpark on earth. Three tiers of seats surrounded much of the playing field. The triple-tiered stands rose steeply and rather darkly. Ballplayers, trained to ignore their surroundings ... admitted feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the place. From the roof of the topmost deck, a filigreed facade -- trademark of an architectural style and the New York Yankees -- commanded the eye. Municipal Stadium in Cleveland held more fans. Fenway Park in Boston and Ebbets Field placed spectators closer to the action. But huge, idiosyncratic Yankee Stadium was the great Coliseum of Baseball, as the Yankees were the Imperial rulers of the game.

....Lefthanded pitching was the order of this Friday afternoon. [Yankees manager Casey] Stengel started Ed Lopat, born Edmund Lopatynski, nicknamed Steady Eddie, a stocky native New Yorker, once a movie usher, thirty-four years old, who threw off-speed stuff. Since seven Dodger regulars batted righthanded, Lopat was embarking on perilous seas. "But in our ballpark,"Stengel said, "them righthanders can hit them long flies to left center all day, and my excellent outfielders will run and catch them."

[Dodgers manager Charlie] Dressen chose tall, angular Elwin Charles Roe, called Preacher, who was born in Ash Flat, Arkansas, the son of an Ozark doctor and who pretty much embodied the Arkansas country slicker. Roe mixed four or five pitches, including a spitball, which he spotted in clutch situations. He had shut out the Yankees in the 1949 World Series, baffling even the Bronx household god, Joe DiMaggio.

It came up chilly on Friday and both Roe and Lopat scrambled in the cold. The Yankees got a run in the second; the Dodgers tied the score in the third and went ahead with a run in the fifth. Fidgeting, concentrating on the mound, Roe reminded Red Smith of an underfed and underpaid country school teacher. Lopat, in contrast, "had the prosperous appearance that goes with chubby people, such a venal aldermen from the west side of Chicago."

[Jackie] Robinson opened the eighth with a looping single to center. [Roy] Campanella singled to left and Robinson slid into third ahead of Gene Woodling's throw. Andy Pafko's fly to left field scored Robinson. The Dodgers now led, 3-1; they were more than one home run ahead.

Not for long. [Yogi] Berra cracked a line drive into the lower deck in right, and Roe kicked a heel against the mound. He threw a fair number of home-run balls, but rarely when the game was close. In tight quarters Roe went with his humid fork ball. Dodger fans perspired in the chill.

[Pee Wee] Reese singled in the ninth for his third hit and when Robinson followed with another single, Stengel trudged to the mound, and summoned a rookie righthander named Tom Gorman. Lopat had yielded ten hits and four walks. Fifteen baserunners, but he had allowed only three runs. Not much style, but extraordinary grit.

Gorman got two strikes on Andy Pafko. He was concentrating on the batter and as he threw again, Reese broke from second base and Robinson broke from first. A double steal.

The pitch came in hard, low, inside, a sinker, a ball. It struck Berra on the top of the left index finger. Berra caught with that finger outside the glove. Berra blinked in pain, then couldn't find the baseball, which was rolling fifty feet away in foul territory. Reese and Robinson, the best baserunners in baseball, scored. The Dodger lead was comfortable, 5-2.

Johnny Mize pinch hit a home run in the last of the ninth, but the game had slipped out of the Yankees' reach. The Dodgers took a lead in the Series, two games to one, with this 5-3 victory.

In dressing rooms today, sizable areas remain off-limits to interviewers .... There were no such restrictions in baseball's golden days. All dressing rooms, winners' and losers', were opened within five minutes of a game's end, and inside there was no place to hide. If you were man enough to make the major leagues, you had to be man enough to talk to reporters, win or lose. I went to the Brooklyn dressing room first, giving the Yankees time to compose themselves.

I asked Charlie Dressen what prompted him to risk sending Reese and Robinson to steal in the ninth inning of a one-run Series game. "I didnt' get prompted," he said. "They did it on their own. The two of them, I let 'em run whenever they want. They know how to play."

In the Yankee dressing room, platoons of writers asked Berra what happened. He had collected three hits, half the Yankee total, smashed an eighth-inning homer and here he was, wearing goat's horns, because everyone was assuming that the two-run passed ball cost his team the game. "Without it," someone said, "Johnny Mize's homer ties the score."

"Mebbe not," said wise old Preacher Roe, back on the Brooklyn side. "See in that situation, with us ahead by three, I didn't care if Mize hit a homer. I wanted to get him out, sure, but mostly I don't want to walk the big feller. I want bases empty. I want to pitch out of my full windup. Now without that passed ball, say Pee Wee and Jack don't score. Then we got what. . .a one-run game? You've seen me work all year. You know I wouldn't be pitching the same to Mize if we only had a one-run lead."

It would have been time for the humid fork ball that no one hit well.

The Yankees, with their studied sense of style, established the press playpen -- hospitality headquarters -- in the Grand Ballroom of the fashionable Hotel Biltmore....

It would be [Allie] Reynolds against [Joe] Black again tomorrow. "This is the way the World Series is supposed to be, [Red] Smith said. "Uncertain and competitive."

I said, one thing did seem certain; we were going to look at a well-pitched game. But I was thinking about our dinner in the Biltmore, which would be free, and the baseball talk ahead, all in the service of my job, and I remembered the title John Lardner put on a collection of sports columns.

It Beats Working.


Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
Copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc.
University of Nebraska Press

18. The Return of Joe DiMaggio

It was 1949, a bright summer morning late in June, and in his room at the Edison Hotel in Manhattan, Joe DiMaggio rolled out of bed. When he gingerly lowered his right foot to the floor, the incessant, stabbing pain [from bone spurs] in his heel that had dogged him for the past couple of years had miraculously vanished in the night ....

An operation had been performed to correct the condition over the winter, and the doctors had told him the problem had been cured. Yet when he tried to practice during spring training, there were days when the heel pained him so badly that his lips flowed blood, he was biting them so hard. While his teammates were getting into shape for the coming season, he would sit for hours on the beach of his bungalow home on the Gulf of Mexico, staring at the horizon and at the lapping waves, wondering if and when the pain would ever go away. Before spring camp broke, he finally agreed to return to John Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore for another operation.

DiMaggio, always a distant person, became morose and especially ill-tempered from the discomfort he was in .... When he moved to New York his whereabouts were kept from the public and the press .... DiMaggio disconnected his phone in the Edison Hotel and tried to hide.

In his hotel room he lay in bed and watched the Yankees on television, the new electronic marvel of the day, and he would umpire the pitches on the screen trying to retain his batting eye. But the angle of the camera was misleading and when DiMaggio saw he was consistently calling the pitches incorrectly, he began to fear that he was losing his batting eye ....

Through the months of April and May and much of June, DiMaggio remained in seclusion, waiting for the pain in his heel to subside as the doctors had promised it would. He really didn't believe them until the sunny morning in June when he arose to find that the pain had finally disappeared.

June 28 was a sunny afternoon in Boston, and though the heat had eased for the past couple of days, still there was no rain to bring relief to the parched Massachusetts Bay city. On street corners newsboys hawking the Herald and the Globe and the Record were announcing that Joe DiMaggio would be playing in the upcoming three-game series beginning here tonight, his initial appearance of the season after having missed the first sixty-five games....

There were bad feelings between the Yankees and the Red Sox, and more than thirty-six thousand people, the largest crowd ever to attend a night game in Fenway Park history, were crunched into the little antiquated Boston bandbox to see the matched skills of the two teams.

Inside the Yankee clubhouse, in the bowels of the park beneath the stands, there was an uncharacteristic revelry. DiMaggio, a man who rarely joined in the pranks or the joking, preferring instead to remain aloof, wrestled with Charlie Keller and clowned with Phil Rizzuto. He displayed an unconcealed joy just to be playing again, and his teammates could feel a lightening of their load by his mere presence. Without DiMaggio they would not have been able to survive over the long, protracted schedule, but with him back, they now had a real chance....

The Yankees jumped out to a quick three-nothing lead in the second inning on a home run. In the third inning Phil Rizzuto singled, and then DiMaggio, standing at the plate with his feet spread wide and parallel, his bat held back and stock still, snapped his wrists at a fast ball and pulled it on a high arc into the screen which tops the six-story high, left-field wall for two more runs. Rizzuto, on first, started jumping up and down as he raced around the bases, shouting, "Holy cow, holy cow," and after DiMaggio rounded third and loped toward the plate, the rest of the Yankees met him and escorted him back to the dugout....

DiMaggio had less dramatically demonstrated his leadership in other ways. Early in the game Johnny Pesky, the combative Red Sox second-baseman, raced from first to second base trying to break up a double play on a ground ball hit to second-baseman Coleman. Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto raced to second to take the pivot, fearlessly firing to first to complete the play. As he did, Pesky slid into him with a hard rolling block, tumbling the little shortstop to the ground, kneeing him in the face, and knocking him unconscious for several minutes. The shaken Rizzuto was able to continue, and by the eighth inning most of the specators had forgotten the incident when DiMaggio led off the inning for the Yankees with a walk. The next batter hit a ground ball to the infield, and Red Sox shortstop Vern Stephans glided over toward second to take the throw. As he did so DiMaggio threw a vicious block at Stephans, hurtling him to the ground and separating him from the ball and most of his senses. The Boston fans booed the play, but DiMaggio was only retaliating, giving notice to Pesky and any of the others that if there was going to be any funny business, they would have to answer to him personally.

Another large crowd arrived for the second contest of the series and there was much whooping and hollering when the Red Sox opened a 7-1 lead after only four innings. DiMaggio, who awoke stiff and swollen legged, was having a more difficult time .... In the fifth inning two men reached base before DiMaggio came to bat, and for the second time in two days he snapped a fast ball for a home run making the score 7-4 and drawing a nice hand from the Boston crowd. The Yankees scratched out three more runs to tie the score at 7-7. There were two outs in the eighth inning when DiMaggio dragged himself to the plate. After taking the first pitch, he pulled a high curve ball and lined [it] a good ten feet above the Fenway Park wall and screen for a third home run and the ball game. [Casey] Stengel bounded up the steps of the dugout at the crack of the bat, and as DiMaggio unemotionally glided around the bases, the Yankee manager raised his arms high and began bowing like a Moslem praising Allah. In the stands the deafening ovation for DiMaggio transcended all partisan lines ....

Afterward in the crowded, sweaty visitors' locker room, the reporters mobbed around DiMaggio's locker. Many of these men had predicted that DiMaggio would never play again, and they were staring at him in unprofessional awe. One asked, "Joe, you only had eight workouts before you came here. You've hit three home runs in two games. What's the secret?"

DiMaggio, exhausted, sitting back in his locker sipping beer, considered the question and somberly answered between sips, "You merely swing the bat and hit the ball."

Dynasty: The New York Yankees, 1949-1964, Peter Golenbock

Copyright 1975 by Peter Golenbock

Published by Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1975

17. Roger Kahn Reports the '52 World Series (Part 2)

An autumn shower fell on Brooklyn Thursday morning, making puddles on the sidewalks along Sullivan Place and sending little rivers running down the cobbleston gutters of Bedford Avenue .... Around a gray tarpaulin unrolled across the infield, rain soaked the hallowed soil of Ebbets Field, where the Yankee and Dodgers were scheduled to meet again at one o' clock. The pitching would match Vic Raschi, thirty-three, a rugged veteran from West Springfield, Massachusetts, once called The Springfield Rifle, against Carl Erskine, an earnest Indiana son of the middle border, whom the Brooklyn comedian, Phil Foster, nicknamed Oisk.

...."Still raining, Doc?" Erskine asked the question of Dr. Harold Wendler, an osteopath who was the Dodgers' trainer. If the game was on, Wendler would work to loosen Erskine's tight right shoulder.


"I do believe it's let up," Wendler said. "I think we'll have a ballgame."


"I want to see for myself," Erskine said, and that was the beginning of a small disaster.


Windows in the trainer's room and the adjoining clubhouse at Ebbets Field were crescents of frosted glass placed near the ceiling. They provided ventilation and privacy. Fans milling about on Sullivan Place could hardly peer through windows nine feet above the sidewalk....


Erskine fetched a stepladder, climbed up and worked a window open. The rain had stopped....

As Erskine clambered down, his foot slipped and his right knee slammed against a metal radiator cover. Erskine had torn up the same knee playing high school basketball. Pain and nausea assaulted him he sat down on the nearest object, a black equipment trunk. His head sagged forward and he banged his forehead just over the right eye on the same metal edge that had pounded his knee...


Charlie Dressen came running from his office. "It's all right, dammit, Carl. You take another day. I'm going to warm up Loes." Billy Loes, a twenty-two-year-old righthander from Queens, had won thirteen games that season.


"I'm okay," Erskine said, a bit grimly. "I just need a few minutes. Anyway, my dad's come all the way from Indiana to see me pitch in the World Series. I'm not letting everybody down."


Shaken, determined, Erskine lasted into the sixth inning. In every one the Yankee lead-off man reached base. In four of the six, the Yankee number-two batter got on base as well. In the first inning Roy Campanella threw out Hank Bauer and then Phil Rizzuto, trying to steal. The Dodgers bunched three singles in the third inning -- one a push bunt by Duke Snider -- and Roy Campanella batted in Pee Wee Reese with the Brooklyn run. But Erskine was scrambling to throw strikes, and to focus past his aching knee. "He ain't pitching like Erskine," Dressen said after a while.


....Still, he was pitching with grand and gritty determination.


The Yankees tied the score in the fourth, went ahead by a run in the fifth and when they loaded the bases with nobody out in the sixth, Dressen bowed to the inevitable, told Erskine to ice his knee and summoned Billy Loes. A run scored when the Dodgers botched a double play. Then Billy Martin, the street kid from Oakland, stared down Billy Loes, the street kid from Queens, and hit a three-run homer into the left field seats. The Yankees won 7-1....


Rud Rennie, the Yankee beat writer, said from time to time, "The Dodgers aren't playing the Pirates today. They're playing like the Pirates." He was going to start off his piece...with an observation along that line. Harold Rosenthal ... commandeered Erskine and the radiator cover. What angle did that leave the youthful lead writer, myself, after a sloppy and finally one-sided game? I wrote:

The Yankees settled down at Ebbets Field yesterday and with a crushing 7-1 victory evened the World Series at one-game apiece. While the crowd of 33,792 fans watched gravely, Vic Raschi, the heavy-chested righthander, overpowered Brooklyn with a three-hitter, and Billy Martin, the skinny second baseman, buried the vestiges of Brooklyn's hope with a three-run homer in the sixth inning when the Yankees scored five times.

Martin, 24, a pinch runner in last year's Series, has matured rapidly. So has Mickey Mantle, who won't reach his twenty-first birthday for two more weeks. The Kid from Commerce, Oklahoma, slammed three of New York's ten hits.

What elixir has Casey Stengel been feeding his young warriors? Pure Flatbush water?

Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn

Copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc.

University of Nebraska Press

16. Roger Kahn Reports the '52 World Series (Part 1)

On game day the place looked different, rather grand for Brooklyn. I had been going to Ebbets Field since 1934, and I had never seen it so brightly groomed. Red, white, and blue bunting nung from the railings of the lower deck ... A military band tooted John Philip Sousa marches. The weather was mild, in the high sixties, and a fresh breeze stirred a dozen flags atop the roof.

[Dodgers starter Joe Black's first pitch] was a fastball, letter high, on the inside corner. Hank Bauer, the Yankees rugged right fielder, a powerful fellow with the merciless features of a bordello bouncer, took the hummer for a strike. No radar guns existed in the 1950s, but a complicated electric-eye device had measured Black's hard stuff at 95 miles an hour. You could see right away he had a good fastball this October day.

[Allie] Reynolds, the best pitcher on earth, was slightly off his game. In addition to hard stuff, Reynolds threw a nasty, sweeping curve, which he mixed in with an occasional 100-mile-an-hour knockdown. Batters earned their pay -- some said combat ribbons -- when Reynolds pitched. But this afternoon his curve broke wide and low. You can't spot knockdown pitches when you keep falling behind in the count....

Opening the second inning of a scoreless game Jackie Robinson cracked a fastball into the lower left-field grandstand for a Dodger run. The Brooklyn crowd applauded sedately, as though fearful noise would enrage the Yankees. Reynolds walked around the pitching rubber in a tight, angry circle. He believed profoundly that knockdown pitches subdued black batters....

Very quickly, in the top of the third, Gil McDougald, the Yankees' twenty-four-year-old third baseman, pulled a home run to left and tied the score....

Suddenly the game felt tense at Ebbets Field. The Yankees' number-seven hitter had tied the score with nobody out. Now came Billy Martin, the raucous banana-nose from Berkeley, who took over second base  after quiet, gentlemanly Jerry Coleman was called back into the Air Force to fly fighter missions over Korea.

Blake looked fidgety. He threw three straight balls to Martin. He wiped his forehead with a white uniform sleeve. Then he struck out Martin, and Reynolds, on a full count, and rough Hank Bauer with a curve at the knees. He had fanned the side. The rookie was not getting rattled....

Phil Rizzuto and Mickey Mantle singled in the Yankee fourth. Then Joe Collins, the Yankees' first baseman, drove a hard liner toward right center. Rizzuto tagged up wit the run that would put the Yankees ahead. [Carl] Furillo, the greatest arm on earth, caught the Collins line drive and threw home. His throw looked even harder than the liner. Rizzuto, a shrewd baserunner, stopped in his tracks and slid back to third. A ground out to Robinson ended the threat.

With two out in the sixth inning, Pee Wee Reese lined an outside fastball safely to right. Duke Snider was the batter, a batter at last coming into his own. In his first World Series, three years earlier, Snider found himself outmatched by Yankee pitching and struck out eight times in five games. Now, at twenty-six, he had learned to lay off bad pitches. Reynolds tried to tempt Snider with a wide curve. Snider looked. The ball bounced into the dirt and spun away from Yogi Berra. Reese ran to second. Reynolds walked another tight circle. The count went to two balls and one strike. Reynolds came in with a fastball and Snider lifted a long drive, high over the scoreboard in right centerfield. The baseball bounced on the cobblestones of Bedford Avenue, where reckless children pursued it among honking Plymouths and Chevrolets. This was Snider's first World Series home run. (He had ten more on an eventful journey to the Hall of Fame.) The Dodgers led by a score of 3-1.

The Yankees charged yet again in the seventh. Irv Noren walked. Gil McDougald slapped a grounder into the hole on the left side. Billy Cox, the best third baseman of his time, lunged and speared the ball and started a snappy double play. Jackie Robinson at second was the unshakable pivot man. Billy Martin lashed a hard drive up the line. Cox wore a cheap, black, shabby glove. Shabby and magical. He stabbed backhand and trapped the drive between his black glove and the brown infield earth. Martin strained toward first, hoping to beat out a hit. Cox waited and looked at the baseball. It was signed by Warren Giles. Hope swelled in Martin's breast. Cox gunned down the young Yankee by half a step.

Things brightened for the Yankees in the eighth. Gene Woodling, a solid .300 hitter, batted for Reynolds and cracked a high smash against the screen in right-center field. The carom eluded Carl Furillo and kicked past Snider. Woodling, a squat, barrel-chested character, rumbled into third. Bauer flied to center and Woodling scored easily when Snider's throw sailed up the first-base line. Black retired Rizzuto, but it was a one-run game again, a one-run game in a small ballpark. With two shaky outfield plays, the great Dodger defense seemed to be wavering.

Ray Scarborough relieved Reynolds and got two quick outs. Then Reese lined a fastball into the lower stands in left. He had hit a homer in the Dodgers' disappointing 1949 Series and now, with this crucial eighth-inning Drive, Reese became the first Dodger ever to have walloped two World Series home runs .... You had to concede that Brooklyn's recurrent autumn disasters amounted to more than wretched luck. The element of powder-puff hitting persisted.

History aside, the 1952 Dodgers had regained their two-run margin. In the ninth inning ... Snider ran down Yogi Berra's long fly to right center. Robinson moved smartly toward second and threw out Joe Collins. Black dug deep and struck out Irv Noren. That gave the Dodgers the victory, 4-2. In five previous World Series, no Brooklyn team had ever won the opening game. The big relief pitcher walked off the mound in a careful, businesslike manner and extended his hand to Roy Campanella.

....Grasping the key factor in a complex game, and doing it quickly, is not as simple as it may appear. The best of baseball writers, the two Lardners, Smith, Cannon, and the Dick Young of the 1950s understood baseball from their marrow. The poetry or noise they made proceeded first from deep understanding. My job in the Ebbets Field press box after the Dodgers' great victory on October 1, 1952, was to find the right angle and -- just about as important -- get the score in the first paragraph....

My story on the first game began: "Home runs and Joe Black, the combination that brought the Dodgers the opening decision in their quest for their first World Series championship yesterday. Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, and Pee Wee Reese slammed in all the Brooklyn runs with homers. Black made the hitting stand up with good speed and great control and while a record Ebbets Field crowd of 24,861 watched quietly, the Dodgers whipped the Yankees, 4-2."

Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
Copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc.
University of Nebraska Press