A Century of World Series
Selected high and low drama from fall classics throughout the past 100 years
Bygone baseball by C. Philip Francis – December 15, 2004
Part 4
By 1947 the war was over, the ballplayers had exchanged their uniforms from khaki to flannel, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis died after ruling baseball with absolute power for 24 years, and the game would see the first of many changes that would come soon and often.
Innovator and imaginative baseball executive Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, had meticulously and quietly prepared the entrance of the century’s first black player in 1947, 28-year-old Jackie Robinson. After Brooklyn’s manager, fiery and colorful Leo Durocher, was suspended the same season for “reputed association with gamblers”, unspectacular and calm Burt Shotton led “Those Bums” to a surprising pennant over the Cardinals.
The 1947 postseason games had almost everything. Yogi Berra hit the first pinch-hit home run in Series history, and with New York leading two games to one the Yankee’s Bill Bevens was one pitch from throwing the first Series no-hitter. With two out in the bottom of the ninth Cookie Lavagetto doubled off the right field wall scoring two runs and winning the game 3-2. Instead of behind 3 games to 1, the Dodgers tied the Yankees at 2-games all, but it was the Yanks who took baseball’s most coveted prize...
One of the most dramatic moments in baseball occurred in the sixth inning of Game 6 when Brooklyn’s part-time player Al Gionfriddo somehow made a crucial one-handed catch off Joe DiMaggio’s “sure” home run at the 415-foot wall sending the Series into the seventh game. While the Yankees drank champagne the following day, the Dodgers again said, “Wait ‘til next year”, and after the season ended, Series heroes Gionfriddo nor Bevens nor Lavagetto ever played another major league game.
In 1948 the Cleveland Indians captured the American League pennant after beating the Red Sox in a one-game playoff, and then went on to down the Boston Braves in the World Series 4 games to 2. Cleveland pitching ace Bob Lemon won two games, but the great Bob Feller who spent 18 years with the Indians and in his only World Series could not win a game while losing two. It was the Boston Braves’ last appearance in a World Series as they would soon become the Milwaukee Braves.
After the Philadelphia Phillies lost to the Boston Red Sox 4 games to 1 in the 1915 Series, they spent much of the next 35 years in the second division. Then in 1950 a combination of youngsters and veterans eked past Brooklyn to win the pennant by two games and the opportunity to meet the Yankees in the Championship Series. Philadelphia was called “The Whiz Kids”, but players Richie Asburn, Dick Sisler, and Robin Roberts could not match New York’s Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, and Phil Rizzuto. The Yankees dumped the Whiz Kids in four consecutive games.
After the 1954 Cleveland Indians won 111 games, one more game than the Yankees’ 1927 Murderer’s Row, they were expected to easily defeat the New York Giants in the World Series. Not only did the Indians have one of the best pitching staff in baseball – Bob Feller, Early Wynn, Mike Garcia, Art Houtteman along with two fine relievers, Don Mossi and Ray Narleski, they also had heavy hitters such as Vic Wertz, Larry Doby, and Al Rosen.
Leo Durocher, who had left Brooklyn to become the New York manager, now had young Willie Mays in center field, and a so-so substitute outfielder named Dusty Rhodes on the bench. In Game 1 with the score tied at 2-all Mays made what could be the greatest defensive play ever when he raced to deep center field to bring in Wertz’s 440-foot fly ball with two on. Rhodes, whom Durocher had been unable to trade before the season, won the game with a pinch homer in the 10th, and then continued to help the Giants sweep the Indians with two home runs and seven RBI’s.
From 1903, when major league baseball saw its first World Series, to 1954 the Dodgers won seven pennants, but had yet to fly a Championship flag over Ebbets Field. And in five of those postseason battles, the boys from Flatbush met and were defeated by the New York Yankees. The same teams played again in 1955, and after losing the first two games in Yankee Stadium Brooklyn fans were probably practicing their usual chorus after each WS loss, “Wait ‘til next year.” Surprisingly, however, next year was already here.
The Yanks were talking sweep when Game 3 moved to Brooklyn where 34,000 fans “roared a tremendous welcome to their defeated, but not yet conquered heroes.” Bob Turley was on the mound for New York while southpaw Johnny Podres who had a season record of 9-10 was chosen by manager Walt Alston. It may have been a hunch because it was Johnny’s 23rd birthday.
Podres not only stopped the Yanks 8-3, he then polished off the mighty Yankees with a 2-0 triumph in Game 7. With Duke Snider’s four home runs and seven RBI’s, a game-saving catch by Sandy Amoros in Game 7, and two victories by Podres, Brooklyn now had their first World Series.
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After Baltimore, later the Yankees, moved to New York prior to the 1903 season there were no franchise changes for the next 50 years, but the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee for the 1953 season, a year later the sad St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles, the Philadelphia A’s fled to Kansas City, the Washington Senators found happiness in Minnesota, and both the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants made the long trip to the promise lands of California.
The major league teams expanded from the long time sixteen teams to a total of thirty ball clubs, then came East and West divisions, the words wild card, designated hitter, and free agents entered baseball’s lexicon, and a second place team would and did win the World Series, and player salaries soared. Like all aspects of life, baseball had changed.