Opening Day

by Jonathan Eig

  The Brooklyn Eagle tethered an eight-column headline to the top of its front page that read: “We Aren’t Afraid.”

  It was a beautiful day, with pale blue skies and mild temperatures. Every seat was occupied, but Dodger fans were quieter than usual. Despite the Eagle’s proclamation, Dodger fans had begun to fear that the Yankees were simply too much for their team. For game three, both teams sent pitchers of uncertain ability to the mound. The Yankees tried Bobo Newsom, age forty, who had come up with the Dodgers in 1929 and subsequently pitched for the Cubs, Browns, Senators, Red Sox, Browns (again), Tigers, Senators (again), Dodgers (again), Browns (for the third time), Senators (for the third time), Athletics, Senators (for the fourth time), and now the Yankees. Newsom was a goofball, overweight and past his prime, but he’d been brilliant for the Tigers in the 1940 World Series and better than expected since joining the Yanks midseason. With a two-game lead, Harris could afford to take a chance. Shotton, however, could not. Unfortunately, every pitcher in the Dodger rotation represented a gamble. Shotton put his money on Joe Hatten, who won seventeen games in 1947, although all but one of the victories had come against teams with losing records. He was another one of those Dodgers, like Cookie Lavagetto or Eddie Miksis, who probably would have been stuck in the minors if he’d been part of the Yankee organization. He owed his career in large part to Branch Rickey’s bargain-hunting. This low-cost approach to team building worked fairly well most of the time—at least until the Dodgers had to face a powerhouse like the Yanks. Robinson admitted to feelings of gloom before the third game, but it helped to be back at Ebbets Field. In Brooklyn, the Dodgers believed, anything could happen.

  After Stanky grounded out to the pitcher in the first inning, Robinson woke the cautiously quiet crowd, scorching the first pitch he saw from Newsom on a line drive to center field. By now, Berra had been benched. Even with a two-game lead in the Series, Harris couldn’t stand watching Robinson humiliate his young catcher anymore. Sherm Lollar took over behind the plate, playing in only his fortieth big-league game. With Reiser batting, the count went to three balls and a strike before Robinson decided to test the new man behind the mask. He broke for second and slid in safely as Lollar’s throw bounced through Rizzuto’s legs. When Robinson saw the ball get away, he leaped to his feet and took a couple of steps toward third. Stirnweiss, backing up the play, grabbed the loose ball and flipped it to Rizzuto. Robinson tried to dive back to second, but Rizzuto dove, too, and tagged him out. When Reiser walked, he, too, tried to swipe second. This time Lollar rifled a perfect throw. Reiser was not only out, he tore a ligament in his ankle and eventually had to leave the game. The Dodgers were off to a rough start.

  In the second inning, however, the team’s offense exploded, and instantly changed the dynamic of the Series. After Walker grounded out, Hermanski walked, Edwards doubled, Reese singled, Jorgensen flied out to center, Hatten singled, and Stanky doubled. That was it for Newsom, who wasn’t fooling anyone with his slow curves. In came Vic Raschi, a rookie right-hander with a blistering fastball. Robinson greeted him with a sharp single to right, sending Stanky to third. Furillo, replacing Reiser, smacked a double to score Stanky and Robinson. Walker grounded out to end the inning, but by then the Dodgers had a 6–0 lead and Ebbets Field was buzzing with laughter and loud voices.

  Hatten took a 9–4 lead into the fifth inning, but when Lindell walked and DiMaggio homered to make it 9–6, Branca came on to pitch in relief. He escaped the fifth, but gave up a run on two doubles to open the sixth. Then he walked two batters to load the bases. Shotton decided to let Branca work his way out of the mess, and Branca did, getting Billy Johnson to pop to Stanky for the third out.

  In the seventh, Berra, hitless so far in the Series, pinch hit for Lollar and creamed a fastball over the scoreboard in right, the first pinch-hit homer in World Series history. Just like that, the Yankees had pulled to within a run. A game that should have been a breeze suddenly turned tense. To protect his lead, Shotton went to one of the worst pitchers on his staff and yet the one he counted on most: big Hugh Casey. At last, Casey would get the chance to make amends for one of the game’s most ignominious moments. It had happened back in 1941—at about four-thirty in the afternoon on October 5, to be precise. The Yankees were ahead two games to one in the World Series, but the Dodgers were three outs away from tying it up. Going into the ninth inning, Brooklyn led by a run, 4–3. Casey, twenty-seven years old at the time, got two quick outs. One more and the Series would be even. Up to the plate stepped Tommy Henrich. Casey threw a ball, then two called strikes. Henrich fouled off the next pitch and watched two more balls float by. Full count. With all his pitches working beautifully that afternoon, Casey decided to throw a curve (or a spitball, as some have long contended). The pitch arrived low and inside, where it was almost impossible to hit and yet too good to lay off. Henrich swung and missed. For a glorious moment, it looked as if the game had ended, but the pitch was a little bit too low and inside for catcher Mickey Owen, who couldn’t get his mitt around it. As the ball rolled behind Owen’s right foot, Henrich ran to first, safe on a strikeout and a passed ball. The game continued, and Casey unraveled. DiMaggio singled, Charlie Keller doubled, and the Yankees piled on a couple of extra runs for good measure, winning the game 7–4, then taking the championship in five games. Owen and Casey never heard the end of it.

  Now, leading off the eighth, Casey stared in again at Henrich. Henrich walked, and Lindell singled, and Dodger fans moaned as DiMaggio strolled to the plate. Casey could have pitched around DiMaggio and gone after McQuinn, the next batter, but that wasn’t his style. Like the best of all bullpen stoppers, he was a gunslinger, and he remained a gunslinger despite his shaky start this day and despite his shaky history. DiMaggio looked “bored and contemptuous” as he waited for the first pitch, according to Red Smith, who further noted that Ebbets Field was so quiet “you could hear a pretzel drop away off in Casey’s saloon.”

  Casey bent a curve over the outside corner for strike one. He threw another curve wide for a ball. And then he zipped a fastball up and in. DiMaggio, expecting a curve, tried to check his swing but couldn’t do it. He grounded into a double play. From there, Casey cruised. It was the longest game in World Series history to that point, exhausting fans through three hours and five minutes, and it ended with a desperately needed 9–8 win for the Dodgers.

  • • •

  In the fourth game, on October 3, Brooklyn’s Harry Taylor pitched against the Yankees’ Bill Bevens at Ebbets Field. Each team by now had severely drained its supply of starters. Had there been a day off in the World Series schedule, it’s likely that neither of these men would have been given a chance. Taylor had a bum arm and Bevens had long-running difficulty throwing strikes. On a warm and lovely afternoon, fans settled in for what they expected to be another high-scoring contest.

  If Dodger fans had their doubts about Taylor, he moved quickly to confirm them. In the first inning he gave up two singles and a walk while getting nobody out. After eleven pitches, he was replaced by Hal Gregg, yet another pitcher of questionable talent. But baseball is a game of surprises, and Gregg supplied a nice one for Dodger fans. He pitched out of the jam created by Taylor, limiting the Yankees to one run in the first inning and another in the fourth.

  Bevens started almost as badly as Taylor. He walked two Dodger batters in the first, one in the second, one in the third, two in the fifth, one in the sixth, and one in the seventh. Yet every time he got into trouble, the Yankees rescued him with brilliant defense. In the first inning, Stirnweiss scampered deep in the hole behind second base to take a hit away from Reese. In the third, Lindell made a spectacular tumbling dive in foul ground to get Robinson. In the fourth, DiMaggio hauled in a long drive off the bat of Hermanski. In the fifth, the Dodgers did scratch out a run on two walks, a sacrifice, and a ground-out, but Bevens escaped further damage by striking out Robinson to end the inning. In the eighth, Henrich leaped high against the scoreboard in right to take extra b
ases away from Hermanski again. And in the top of the ninth, Lindell planted his rear end against the left-field fence to catch a long fly ball hit by Edwards. Somehow, amid all those walks and long flies, Bevens, owner of a miserable 7–13 record in 1947, had managed not to allow a single hit. The Yankees led by a score of 2–1. With two more outs, Floyd Clifford “Bill” Bevens would become the first man in history to pitch a World Series no-hitter. His approaching glory took fans by surprise. All afternoon he’d been on the brink of disaster. Now he was on the brink of immortality.

  The next batter, Carl Furillo, drew a walk, the ninth of the day for the Dodgers. Al Gionfriddo ran for him. Gionfriddo was the extra man tossed into the deal on May 3 when Branch Rickey sent Kirby Higbe and four bit players to Pittsburgh for cash. At the time, the joke was that Gionfriddo, who worked as a firefighter in the off-season, was included only because Rickey wanted someone to carry his money from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn. He’d seen little action all year, but he hustled out to first base representing the potential tying run.

  Bevens got Jorgenson to foul out. One out to go.

  With pitcher Hugh Casey due to hit next, Shotton looked down his bench and spotted Reiser in uniform. Before the game, Reiser’s foot hurt so badly he hadn’t even taken batting practice. He’d spent much of the game in the whirlpool. Now he said he was ready to go. “All right, Pete,” Shotton said.

  The count to Reiser was three balls and a strike when Shotton took a huge gamble, signaling for Gionfriddo to try to steal second. Gionfriddo took off, but he stumbled and got a bad jump. As he dove headfirst for the bag, he expected the tag to hit him at any moment. But luckily for Gionfriddo and the Dodgers, Berra was catching again. His throw was horrible—too high and much too late. A good throw—even a mediocre one—probably would have had Gionfriddo. It would have sewn up not just the no-hitter but also, for all practical purposes, the World Series. Instead, the Dodgers survived. And now they had the tying run on second base.

  Harris made the next move: He ordered Bevens to walk Reiser intentionally. By putting the winning run on base he violated one of baseball’s fundamental commandments, but Harris thought his pitcher would have better luck with Stanky. Also, with a man on first, the Yankee infielders would be able to step on first, second, or third for the force play on a grounder.

  Shotton countered by sending Eddie Miksis to run for the gimpy Reiser. Then he called Stanky back to the dugout, sending in the little-used Cookie Lavagetto as a pinch hitter. It was only the second time all year Shotton had sent in a pinch hitter for Stanky, and even some of the men in the Dodger dugout were taken aback. Earlier in the season, Stanky had broken up Ewell Blackwell’s bid for a second consecutive no-hitter. Though he didn’t have any power, he almost always made pitchers work hard to get him out, and given Bevens’s wildness all day, Stanky at the very least seemed like a good bet to draw a walk. Lavagetto was a decent hitter, but he had managed only eighteen hits all season. It seemed incomprehensible that he would be Shotton’s choice with so much on the line. And yet up walked Lavagetto, underweight and gimpy, bothered by chronic charley horses and a torn Achilles tendon.

  The Yankees figured he could no longer catch up with fastballs, even ninth-inning fastballs from an exhausted man who had thrown 134 pitches on the afternoon. Bevens made up his mind he would pound him with nothing but hard stuff.

  As he stepped to the plate, Lavagetto assumed one of the least-daunting stances in all of baseball, his body curved like a question mark, his head tilting listlessly toward home plate. Robinson stood in the dugout, waiting to see if he would have a chance to hit. In the stands, women clasped and unclasped their hands. Men edged forward in their seats, crossing and uncrossing their legs. Bevens threw a fastball up and in. Lavagetto swung and missed. The crowd released a collective sigh and went through the clasping and unclasping, the edging forward, the crossing and uncrossing all over again. Lavagetto collected himself. Robinson watched. Lavagetto knew that Bevens was going to throw nothing but fastballs, and he knew the pitcher would probably try to bust him up and in again, because that’s where he always had the most trouble. Bevens inhaled, checked the runner at second, turned quickly back to the plate, and fired. It was another fastball, out over the plate. Lavagetto grimaced and swung. The shot flew high and far to right field. Henrich went back to the wall but couldn’t get it. The ball bounded off the sign for Gem Single-Edged Razor Blades and ricocheted back onto the field. Henrich chased after it, bobbled, and threw . . . too late. Gionfriddo ran home. Miksis ran home. Lavagetto went to second. Robinson was among the first out of the dugout, hugging Lavagetto and punching him playfully on the side of the head. Then cops, ushers, hot dog vendors, and fans cascaded onto the field and mobbed him. With one hit, the Dodgers had a 3–2 win. Call it efficient or call it ugly; it didn’t matter. The Series was tied.

  “MIRACLE’ STRIKES FLATBUSH,” declared the Brooklyn Eagle.

  “Out of the mockery and ridicule of ‘the worst World Series in history,’ ” Dick Young wrote, “the greatest ball game ever played was born yesterday.”

  Said Robinson in the locker room, apparently with a straight face: “We had it all the way. We just wanted to give ’em a thrill.”

  The Dodgers had looked horrible in the first four games; their inning-long offensive outburst in game three and Lavagetto’s game-four lightning bolt were the only brief exceptions. Yet they stood now, incomprehensibly, perhaps even undeservedly, just two games from the championship.

  In game five, they looked awful again, managing just four hits and one run against Spec Shea. Aaron Robinson, who had been in his manager’s doghouse for reasons unclear, replaced Berra as catcher, and the Dodgers never attempted a stolen base. Though their offense was anemic, the Dodgers kept the score close, and went into the bottom of the ninth trailing just 2–1. Then, when Bruce Edwards singled to open the frame, the crowd began to stomp and stir and buzz, much as it had the day before. Lombardi, running for Edwards, went to second on a sacrifice by Furillo. Jorgenson flew out to right.

  The Dodgers were down to their last out when Shotton once more looked down the bench and called Lavagetto’s name. The day before, Lavagetto had felt no nervousness against Bevens. But now, having tasted success, having celebrated his stardom with his wife by long-distance telephone, and having distributed cigars in the press box this afternoon, the butterflies were kicking up a storm in his stomach as he walked to the plate. “You got one yesterday,” he told himself. “Get one today.”

  Shea threw a slider. Lavagetto was looking for a slider but swung and missed anyway. The next three pitches were balls, and then came another slider, down and away. He fouled it off to run the count full. The final pitch from Shea to Lavagetto was eminently hittable, a slow curve over the heart of the plate. Lavagetto leaped from his slouched crouch and took a mean hack, gritting his teeth just as he had a day ago. This time, though, he whiffed. For years, every time he would so fondly recall the double that won game four, he would also remember the strikeout that ended game five.

  Robinson, aggressive all year, played more aggressively than ever throughout the World Series, always looking for trouble, and finding it with great frequency. Though he was too shrewd to say so, he had established himself at the season’s climax as a leader, perhaps even the leader of this overachieving and ever-surprising team. Though Reese was often described as the unofficial captain of the Dodgers, Walker as the club’s best hitter, and Stanky its toughest thug, Robinson could see that none of those players—and certainly none of the team’s pitchers—was in a position to upset the natural order of the Yankee hegemony the way he could.

  In a long playoff series like this one, with two teams squaring off perhaps seven times in seven days, personalities matter more than in the regular season. Certain players start to get on the opposition’s nerves. A pitcher who has one dominating performance can so thoroughly worry opponents that the mound on which he stands seems to grow taller each time he throws. A slugger who gets hot
can discombobulate an entire staff of pitchers, forcing them to hand out walks or make bad pitches even when lesser men are at bat. Robinson through five games was tied with Walker for the team lead in hits with five. He had two walks, two stolen bases, two runs scored, and two driven in. Given how little the Dodgers were hitting, he was arguably the most important offensive force they had. But the things that hadn’t shown up in box scores were the things rankling the Yankees most. There was the balk by Shea, the extra base earned by Reiser during the rundown, and the damage done to Berra’s self-confidence.

  Robinson was making his presence felt among his teammates, as well. He shouted encouragement to Dodger pitchers. He slapped his teammates’ backs and rubbed their heads when they made good plays. Most important perhaps, given the general state of insecurity among the Dodgers, he refused to show fear. Among teammates who had wondered before meeting Robinson whether black players had the mental toughness for the game, all doubt had been removed this October. “He was our best player,” Bobby Bragan said years later. The question faced now by his teammates was whether they could match his determination and ferocity.

  The Yankees always managed to emit an image of refinement, but up close they could be nasty, and during the Series they’d been hurling some of the foulest racial epithets Robinson had heard all year. “They got no class,” Robinson told one black reporter. “They hide in the dugout and shout at me. If they weren’t yellow, they’d come out in the open and say something. What are they hollering? All kinds of filth, and race remarks. I wish I knew who they are. Nobody says anything when they get on base or out on the field. If they think they can upset my playing, they’re crazy.” The white press made no mention of the Yankee bench jockeys, but Wendell Smith wrote that the Yankees were indeed cruel. Only Ben Chapman and the Phillies had been crueler, he reported. Robinson never responded verbally to the catcalls. Once again, he channeled his anger.