Carl Erskine led the pitching staff with 20 victories, Russ Meyer went 15-5 and Billy Loes 14-8. Preacher Roe posted an 11-3 record, boosting his three-year mark to 44-8. Clem Labine won 10 games in relief and 11 overall. And rookie pitchers Johnny Podres and Bob Milliken combined for a 17-8 mark.
So what was Brooklyn’s victory margin in the 1953 NL pennant race? A tidy 13 games over the Braves, who had just moved to Milwaukee. OK, by how many games did one of baseball’s finest teams win the 1953 World Series? Was it a sweep? A five-game Series? Six? Were the Dodgers extended to seven games? The Series, in fact, went six games.
Erskine strutted his stuff in Game 3, setting a Series record with 14 strikeouts. The 26-year-old righthander fanned Mickey Mantle four times. Campanella displayed his MVP wares in that game, stroking a tie-breaking home run in the eighth inning that lifted the Dodgers to a 3-2 victory. In Game 4, Snider smashed two doubles and a home run and drove in four runs and Gilliam whacked three doubles. Loes was a 7-3 winner.
For one of baseball’s top teams of all time, that was it. Two victories in the World Series.
The New York Yankees had done it again. And so, too, had the Brooklyn Dodgers. Casey Stengel’s Bronx Bombers had won the World Series for a record fifth consecutive time. The Dodgers had lost in the Series for the seventh time in seven chances.
Billy Martin, who foiled the Dodgers with his glove in the ’52 Series, killed them with his bat this time around with a .500 average and eight RBIs. He collected 12 hits, a record for a six-game fall classic, and No. 12 — coming in the bottom of the ninth of Game 6 — brought home the Series-winning run in a 4-3 triumph. Furillo had tied the game with a dramatic two-run homer in the top of the inning.
Martin not only capped matters for the Yankees, he got them rolling as well in the 50th World Series, which stood 33-17 in the American League’s favor. Martin, a combative second baseman, hit a three-run triple in the first inning of the Series opener and collected three hits in a 9-5 conquest. Yogi Berra and Joe Collins hit homers for the Yankees, and Gilliam, Hodges and George Shuba connected for the Dodgers. Shuba’s shot was the first pinch homer by a National Leaguer in World Series history.
In Game 2, Martin walloped a game-tying, bases-empty homer in the seventh inning and Mantle followed with a two-run drive an inning later as Eddie Lopat outpitched Roe 4-2. And in the fifth game, Martin homered with a man aboard as the Yankees won 11-7. The biggest blast in that game came from Mantle, who belted a bases-loaded home run off Meyer in the third inning. Gene Woodling and Gil McDougald also homered for New York in the 18-run, 25-hit game.
Incredibly, the World Series title was the Yanks’ 15th in their last 16 appearances in the fall classic. And, in light of the Yankees’ success against Brooklyn in 1947 and Cleveland’s victory over the Boston Braves in 1948, the Series championship was the seventh straight by an American League team.
The ’53 AL representative was a typical Yankees team — well-balanced and deep. New York had power in Berra and Mantle, who combined for 200 RBIs. It had solid contact hitters in Woodling (.306) and Bauer (.304). Plus, Berra batted .296, Mantle hit .295 and McDougald finished at .285. And the Yanks’ top five pitchers were 74-30, with young service returnee Whitey Ford heading the staff with 18 victories and veteran Lopat topping the league with a 2.43 ERA. And, of course, there was the wily Stengel at the helm.
Those Yankees must have been something in their own right. After all, they won the World Series against one of the greatest teams of all time. And they did it in six games.
