1956 – The Brooklyn Dodgers bounce back after Don Larsen’s perfect game to tie the World Series in Game 6. Clem Labine comes out of the bullpen to pitch a 1 – 0 victory over the Yankees in 10 innings.
August 1, 1956, At Ebbets Field, in the bottom of the 8th, Jackie Robinson Is safe at second after a single off Lew Burdette and a Bobby Thompson error allowed him to go to second. Robinson will score the go-ahead and winning a run on a Dale Mitchell pinch-hit single with 2 outs. Hank Aaron…
Brooklyn’s right fielder Carl Furillo is the first Dodger player to homer in Jersey City, as the Dodgers lose to the Redlegs, 2 – 1.
Pittsburgh’s right fielder Roberto Clemente hits Cubs reliever Jim Brosnan’s first pitch off the cage surrounding the base of Forbes Field’s left field light tower, just to the right of the scoreboard, then circles the bases just in time to become the first big league player in the post-Deadball Era to hit a walk-off, inside-the-park grand slam, turning a three-run 9th-inning deficit into a dramatic win. It is Clemente’s first career grand slam. Jack Hernon of the Post Gazette writes: “Brosnan made one pitch, high and inside. Clemente drove it against the light standard in left field. Jim King had backed up to make the catch but it was over his head. The ball bounced off the slanted side of the fencing and rolled along the cinder path to center field. Here came Hank Foiles, Bill Virdon and then Dick Cole, heading home and making it easily. Then came Clemente into third. Bobby Bragan had his hands upstretched to hold up his outfielder. The relay was coming in from Solly Drake. But around third came Clemente and down the home path. He made it just in front of the relay from Ernie Banks. He slid, missed the plate, then reached back to rest his hand on the rubber with the ninth run in a 9 – 8 victory as the crowd of 12,431 went goofy with excitement.”
Rookie Danny Kravitz will accumulate 10 home runs during his five-year major league career, but he’ll never top this, his first – a walk-off grand slam. It transforms a 3-run deficit into a 6 – 5 victory over Philly for Pittsburgh. It also launches the perennial cellar dwellers on a 16 and 6 tear that will land them, briefly, in first place before the bubble bursts and they revert to type, gradually wending their way back down to the cellar by season’s end.
Pirate hurler Vern Law pitches 18 innings in beating Milwaukee, 4 – 3, giving up just nine hits and fanning 12.
test On October 5, 1953, the New York Yankees win a record fifth consecutive World Championship. With a 4-3 win at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees claim the World Series in six games over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Billy Martin, the Series MVP, collects his twelfth hit of the Fall Classic, a single to centerfield which scores…
The Giants’ Whitey Lockman leads off the game with a home run for the second day in a row, as the Giants whip the Braves, 7 – 5.
On May 16, 1953, White Sox pitcher Tommy Byrne who was a decent hitting pitcher would be called upon by skipper Paul Richards to pinch hit in the 9th inning vs. the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium with the bases loaded and two out for Vern Stephens. The Sox were trailing 3-1. On a…
Stealing considerable thunder from Brooklyn’s victorious home opener, a 7 – 6, 12-inning triumph, Willie Mays makes the catch he’ll later call his greatest. The Associated Press reports: “Willie Mays, army-bound centerfielder of the New York Giants, astounded an opening day crowd of 31,032 fans at Ebbets Field with a sensational catch of a drive by Bobby Morgan in the 7th inning.” With two out, two on and the Dodgers down by one, “the sophomore star made a diving, sliding catch of a sinking liner near the left centerfield wall that robbed Morgan of a potential triple.” Unfortunately for Mays, Ebbets Field’s Little League dimensions afford little leeway for such hijinks. “I go and catch the ball in the air,” Mays recalls 45 years later. “I’m in the air, like this, parallel. I catch the ball, I hit the fence. Ebbets Field was so short that if you run anywhere you’re going to hit a fence. So I catch the fence, knock myself out.” “As he lay motionless,” reports the New York Times, “players of both sides rushed to his aid. All, that is, but the three Dodgers on the bases, who continued their wild dash for the plate, only to learn Willie had held on to the ball for the third out.” Willie’s impression is that the first player to reach his side has a somewhat less altruistic agenda. “The first guy that I saw – there were two guys – when I open my eyes, was Leo Durocher and Jackie Robinson. And I’m saying to myself, ‘Why is Jackie out here?’ Jackie came to see if I caught the ball, and Leo came to see about me.”
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