It was a good incentive for Rudd and a bad bet for Bavasi. By game time, more than thirty-five thousand fans were jammed into Ebbets Field (which officially had a seating capacity closer to thirty-four thousand). The highlight of the evening came in the fifth inning, when a 250-pound cake was rolled out to the infield. The lights were dimmed, and everyone was asked to light a match and sing happy birthday to the Dodger captain. “It was,” Carl Erskine remembered, “a tremendous outpouring of affection.”
The season had a fitting finale when Reese made the last play in the 1955 World Series for the Dodgers’ only championship—a ground ball from Yankee outfielder Elston Howard that Reese fielded and threw to Hodges at first. (In a chance encounter in a bar some years later, Don Hoak, who had played third base for the Dodgers at one point, needled Reese about the play, saying that the ball had bounced in the dirt before Hodges picked it up. It was a point of pride for Reese, who did believe—and wanted to believe—that the throw had been a good one and had not bounced in the dirt. Unable to reach agreement, the two former players picked up the phone at three o’clock in the morning and called Hodges, then in New York as the manager of the Mets. They put the question to Hodges. “It bounced,” he said, and hung up.)
The years had begun to catch up with Reese. In an interview with
Parade
magazine during the middle of the 1956 season, he explained the secret to longevity on the baseball field. “The best way to keep your body fit,” he said, “is to keep your legs fit. If they’re not strong, then you’re going to tire more easily.” It all sounded so logical, but no amount of exercise could stave off the inevitable. Reese played in 147 games that season—most at shortstop (but a few at third base)—and saw his productivity plummet: a .257 batting average (his lowest since 1942) and only thirty extra-base hits (the lowest number he had ever had in any complete season). After the Dodgers won the 1956 pennant, Reese acknowledged that “[t]his is the toughest one we ever won. We’re older.”
Pee Wee Reese shows no sign of aging as Enos Slaughter steps into the batter’s box to lead off the bottom of the fifth inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. Although Slaughter is a left-handed hitter, Reese knows that the Yankee left fielder can hit to all sides of the field. So there is a chance he could slap a ball to the left side of the infield at Reese. But Slaughter does not hit a ball to any of the Dodger fielders. Instead, he patiently waits out Maglie for the first walk of the game.
Billy Martin steps into the batter’s box. Jackie Robinson moves in a little closer to the plate from his position at third base, no doubt thinking that Martin may try a sacrifice bunt to move Slaughter into scoring position at second. Maglie recognizes that possibility as well. He wants to prevent Slaughter from taking a big lead and throws the ball over to Gil Hodges at first base before Martin sees a pitch. Slaughter moves back to the bag safely, and Maglie turns his attention to the Yankee second baseman.
Martin shows no sign of bunting and watches a curveball sail to the outside of the plate for a ball. He then steps out of the batter’s box and looks down to third-base coach Frank Crosetti to see if Stengel has given him the sign to bunt. In the meantime, Bob Wolff is reminding his audience that Martin is “always dangerous, particularly, so it appears, when the pressure is really on.”
Maglie looks over to Slaughter at first base and then throws a curve which comes in for a called strike. Martin again steps out of the box and looks down to Crosetti in another obvious effort to determine whether the bunt sign is on. Maglie again throws to first base to keep Slaughter close to the bag and then focuses his eyes on the signal from Roy Campanella. The pitch comes in, Martin turns to bunt, and he pushes the ball in front of the plate on the infield grass. Maglie rushes in, fields the ball cleanly, spins around, and throws it to Reese, who is covering second base on the play. But Maglie’s throw is high, and for a moment it appears that the ball will sail into center field. But the Dodger shortstop times a leap to catch the ball and force Slaughter out at second. “Pee Wee had to reach high in the air,” says Wolff, “and he hauled it in.”
Martin is now at first base with one out, and Gil McDougald comes to the plate in the seasonally warm afternoon sun. “Perfect baseball weather,” Wolff tells his listening audience. McDougald works the count to two balls and two strikes. Martin is off and running on the next pitch in an attempted steal or hit-and-run play, but McDougald fouls the ball off. Martin retreats to first base, and McDougald waits for the Barber’s next pitch.
In a game this close, the Yankee shortstop knows that Maglie will not want to get behind the hitter on the count and risk another walk. So McDougald is ready as Maglie comes in with his pitch. As he no doubt expected, McDougald sees that the ball is in his hitting zone, and he slams a line drive that seems destined to fly over Reese’s head at short for another Yankee hit. But Reese again leaps high in the air and grabs the ball with the edge of his glove. As he comes down, the ball pops out of his glove, but, with his quick reflexes, Reese pulls it in and throws to first base to double-up Martin, who was off at the crack of the bat on the understandable assumption that the ball would never be caught. In describing the play for his listeners, Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully says, “It was like Pee Wee Reese was playing catch with himself.”
And so Sal Maglie walks off the diamond with the satisfaction that he has given up only one hit in five innings. There is still time to turn the game around.
11
Top of the Sixth: Yogi Berra
A
llie Reynolds went into his stretch on the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium, glanced over at Red Sox center fielder Dom DiMaggio at first base (the result of a walk), and then turned his attention to home plate. Reynolds was thirty-six years old, an advanced age for pitchers of his era, and should have been nearing the end of his career. But on this twenty-eighth day of September in 1951, the Oklahoma native was about to become the first American League pitcher to hurl two no-hitters in the same season (Johnny Vander Meer of the National League’s Cincinnati Reds having turned the trick in successive starts in 1938). There were two outs in the ninth inning, and only Ted Williams, now poised in the batter’s box, stood between the Yankee pitcher and that new record.
In other situations, Reynolds would have given the Boston slugger a pass. (“Usually,” Reynolds later told writer Peter Golenbock, “I tried to walk that damn Williams if I could because, I’ll tell you, I couldn’t pitch to him, and to me it was stupid to let the outstanding hitter get a hit and beat you.”) But the Yankees were winning by a score of 8-0, and there seemed little harm in pitching to Williams now. Reynolds threw the Splendid Splinter a fastball. Williams’ swing sent the ball into a high pop-up that began to drift into foul territory behind home plate.
Yogi Berra, now twenty-six years old, leaped from his squatting position behind the plate, flipped off his mask, and circled under the ball for what would hopefully be the final out and Reynolds’ new American League record. But the ball continued drifting toward the seats, and Reynolds saw that Berra might not make the catch. He rushed in from the pitcher’s mound as Berra backpedaled as fast as he could and reached out for the ball with his mitt. But it was too little, too late. The ball glanced off the tip of the mitt and hit the ground, and Berra fell facedown with his arms outstretched. Reynolds, in close pursuit, tried to avoid a collision but inadvertently stepped on his catcher’s throwing hand.
Over in a nearby New Jersey hospital, Yogi’s wife, Carmen, was was getting ready to give birth to their second son. Hearing a scream from Carmen’s room, the nurse rushed in, thinking that some medical catastrophe had befallen the pregnant woman. But when she burst through the door, the nurse saw that Mrs. Berra was listening to the radio. The patient looked up at the nurse and exclaimed, “My husband dropped the ball!” The nurse did not understand, but the thousands in attendance at Yankee Stadium certainly did.
With another teammate, Reynolds would have been irate—especially because he now had to throw the dreaded Williams another pitch. But there was no anger or resentment. Only compassion. “The pitcher, who could have been pardoned for slugging Yogi,” wrote one sportswriter at the scene, “carefully picked the squat man up, patted him on the fanny, and threw an arm around his shoulders—like a father comforting a small, unhappy boy.” “Don’t worry about it, Yogi,” said Reynolds. “We’ll get him again.”
The two players walked out to the pitcher’s mound, and Berra told Reynolds, “Let’s throw him the same pitch.” As Yogi resumed his place behind the plate, Ted Williams began to curse him out. “You really put me in a hell of a spot,” the Boston outfielder complained. “What am I supposed to do now? I get a base hit and I’m a bad guy.” There was nothing for Berra to say or do except wait for the next pitch. Williams swung and again sent a high pop-up into foul territory behind home plate. Berra again jumped to his feet, threw off the mask, and circled under the ball. He was obviously determined to catch this one, and, when he did, he was engulfed by teammates hugging and congratulating him as though he were the one who had pitched the no-hitter. In the clubhouse afterward, Yankee co-owner Del Webb approached Berra. “When I die,” said Webb, “I hope I get another chance like you.”
As he takes warm-up pitches from Don Larsen in the top of the sixth inning in the fifth game of the 1956 World Series, Yogi Berra knows that there may not be another chance for the Yankees if they lose this game. Still, he has been in seven other World Series and is not overwhelmed by the pressures of the moment. “Except for my first World Series,” he later explained, “I had the utmost confidence in myself.”
Yogi Berra’s faith in himself is hardly surprising. It may have been a product of heredity. Or perhaps the environment in which he grew up. But those who knew Larry Berra from his early days on the Hill—the close-knit Italian neighborhood of small bungalows and family shops in southwestern St. Louis—had a sense that he was someone special. “I think,” said his lifelong friend Joe Garagiola, a major-league player who parlayed his wit into a successful broadcasting career, “he could have been a success at anything he put his mind to.”
Larry was not the biggest kid in the neighborhood. (Although he would carry about 195 pounds on his frame as a major-league player, Berra never stood taller than five feet, eight inches.) And he certainly was not the best-looking. (In the early days with the Yankees, Berra withstood unmerciful teasing from his teammates and the press about his homely looks. “If I couldn’t take anything said about me, cruel or otherwise,” he later said, “I figured I wouldn’t be in baseball long.” And so Berra would brush off repeated comments that he was ugly, saying, “All you’ve got to do is hit the ball, and I never saw anyone hit one with his face.”)
The St. Louis native’s perspective did not go unnoticed by his teammates. “Yogi Berra is one of the most secure individuals I have ever known,” said Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto. Years later, Dave Kaplan, director of the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in Montclair, New Jersey, would pay tribute to that same quality, saying of Yogi, “He is totally comfortable in his own skin.”
Whatever one could say about his appearance, there was no dispute that the youngster who roamed the Hill with his friends in those Depression years had a great talent for sports. “I remember him,” said Garagiola, “as the best baseball player in the neighborhood, the best football player, the best hockey player—and the best organizer.” Organization was critical, because there was no Little League to field teams, provide equipment, and establish schedules. Individual initiative thus became key to the neighborhood kids’ enjoyment. During the weekends, the summer, and other times when there was no school, Larry would be up early and go down to a vacant lot or the garbage dump to lay claim to the location for his friends (and, if it were baseball to be played at the dump, Berra remembered, “we used an old car to be the dugout”).
However much they wanted to play sports, Larry and his friends could not avoid attendance at St. Ambrose Church on Sunday. Not that Larry was unhappy with that obligation. “When you were at St. Ambrose,” he later remembered, “you felt the importance of helping each other, working hard, and doing the right thing. When you were there, you would forget there was a Depression going on.” It was a memory not easily forgotten. Throughout his life, attendance at church remained an integral part of Yogi Berra’s weekly routine.
But nothing was more important to that young boy on the Hill than his parents. Paulina and Pietro, two immigrants from the small Italian town of Malvaglio near Milan, were devoted to Larry and the rest of their family, which included three older sons and a younger daughter. Pietro had been a tenant farmer in Italy but saw a better life in America for himself and his family (which then included only the two older sons). He ultimately secured a steady job at a factory in St. Louis, and when the factory whistle blew at four thirty in the afternoon to signal the end of the workday, Larry knew that he had to stop whatever he was doing, run to the neighborhood saloon, get his father a tureen of beer, and make sure it was on the kitchen table when his father walked in the door.
Punctuality was equally important if Larry or his siblings wanted to attend a party or other social event in the evenings outside the family’s small frame house on Elizabeth Avenue. Before they left, there would always be the question from their father: “What time will you be home?” Never could the children ignore that chosen deadline with impunity. “We didn’t have a telephone to call if we were late,” Yogi later explained, “so you’d better be home.” Excuses were not well received by Pietro. “I didn’t make the time,” he would tell his children. “You did.”
It was a disciplined approach to family life that suited the young athlete and would shape his perspective in later years as well. (“I get pretty ticked if someone doesn’t live up to his word,” he would say. “You say you’re going to be there at five o’clock, you better be there at five o’clock no matter what time it is.”) Although he was not always willing to do what his parents asked, Larry’s reverence for them never faded. “Wanting to make my folks happy and proud was important to me,” he later said, “and it was important until the day they died.” He therefore used his first World Series check in 1947 to buy them the car they never had. And when people asked him about his parents—even when he was well into his sixties—Yogi would pull out photographs of each of them that he carried in his wallet.