....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
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