Reporters ringed [Casey] Stengel in a dugout and tried to draw him into comments on the umpiring. No chance. Except when posed by star journalists, questions never interested Stengel. He would listen, then say what he wanted, questions be damned. "If you was watching," Stengel said, "you musta noticed they won the game for Brooklyn."
"Pardon, Casey," Red Smith said. "Who is 'they'?"
"Them outfielders is what I mean, Red. You can't get away from that. They make those border-line catches and they beat you and you can't kick on that. He [Charlie Dressen] had to have that outfield to win, but maybe if it's another day, they don't win that way."
Arthur Daley of the New York Times asked Stengel to be "a little more specific." Some of us laughed, but Stengel took his Times coverage very seriously.
"On some other days," he said, "the people out there in right aren't so quiet. An outfielder from the other side goes up to make a catch, they grab his shirt, they go for his arm. They grab the glove. They twist his fingers. They get the ball."
"You mean the fans?" asked Daley.
"It was our ballpark, wasn't it, Arthur? Those people were supposed to be our fans. Raschi today. He will pitch good. My men are ready." So also was the magical Stengel brain.
Billy Loes flung six commanding innings at Stengel's men and when [Duke] Snider drove a fastball over the screen, the Dodgers took a 1-0 lead. Then, nine outs away from the World Series victory, the World Series victory, Loes came unraveled.
[Yogi] Berra led off the seventh with a home run, much like Snider's drive. Gene Woodling singled up the middle.
"Time for Joe Black right now," I said to Smith. "Billy the Kid is losing it."
"And if the Dodgers lose the ball game, Skipper, who pitches tomorrow?"
"Preacher Roe and the rest of the staff. They can rest all winter."
It is simple to manage from behind a typewriter. All power and no responsibility. Dressen, with so much at stake, elected to stay with a twenty-two-year-old rookie. Or maybe Dressen simply froze.
Loes threw a ball and a strike to Irv Noren. Then, as he stretched to deliver his third pitch, the baseball fell out of his right hand. The ball bounced behind the mound. The umpires called a balk. Woodling advanced to second base.
Loes steadied and struck out Noren. Billy Martin popped out. Stengel, with several pinch hitters available, let Raschi bat for himself. The big pitcher smacked a bounder to Loes's right. Afternoon sun slanted through the arches that supported the upper deck on the left side of Ebbets Field. Loes looked for the ball but the sun got in his eyes. The baseball bounced off his left knee and caromed past Hodges. A pool-table single to right. The Yankees got the lead run in scoring position when the pitcher dropped the ball. They scored him when the pitcher lost a grounder in the sun.
Reynolds threw a fastball at Campanela's head. Then he threw two hard strikes. He threw an outside breaking ball. Campanella swung and missed. As the ball socked into Berra's mitt, Campanella's bat went spinning out across the infield. Reynolds literally had taken the bat out of Brooklyn's hands.
My lead, spread across three columns on the front page, expressed a degree of wonderment.
By using his two best pitcher, Casey Stengel got his
Yankees even again yesterday and beat the Dodgers, 3-2,
at Ebbets Field. Vic Raschi, the 33-year-old righthander
started and Allie Reynolds, the 37-year-old righthander,
finished, and the Yankees forced the World Series into a
seventh game....
If the Yankees are to win their fourteenth World Championship.
they wll have to beat Joe Black, Brooklyn's best pitcher.
Casey Stengel has no idea who will start today because
Reynolds, his original choice, worked yesterday.
So the Yankee manager will select Mr. X after a full night's
thought and considerably less sleep.
Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
Copyright 1997, Hook Slide, Inc.
Published by University of Nebraska Press
Image: Mickey Mantle at the plate in Game 6
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