This October business simply wasn’t getting any easier for the National League, which this time would send out the New York Giants in an attempt to stem the tide. Fifth-place finishers in 1953, the Giants rode the superlative play of Army returnee Willie Mays and off-season acquisition Johnny Antonelli to a five-game triumph over Brooklyn in the ’54 NL pennant race.
Many “experts” shared an opinion that the World Series might end quickly. After all, the mighty Yankees had won more games in the ’54 season, 103, than in any year of their 1949-1953 domination, and the Yanks still couldn’t compete with a pitching-rich Cleveland team boasting a starting rotation that included Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and Mike Garcia. The Series did end quickly, although the scenario was astonishingly different than envisioned in most quarters.
In Game 1 at New York’s Polo Grounds, Mays made perhaps the greatest defensive play in Series history. With the Giants and Indians tied, 2-2, in the eighth inning and two Cleveland runners on base, Mays raced to deep center field and, with his back to the plate, made an over-the-shoulder catch of a 460-foot smash off the bat of the Indians’ Vic Wertz. Mays then whirled and thre back to the infield to keep Cleveland from tagging up and scoring. The Giants won, 5-2, when pinch-hitter Dusty Rhodes hit a three-run, 10th-inning home run off Indians starter and loser Lemon, the drive traveling all of 260 feet.
Rhodes, a .341 hitter in part-time duty for the Giants in ’54 and a pinch-hitter deluxe (as evidenced by his .333 off-the-bench batting mark that season), was up to his old tricks in Game 2. He delivered a game-tying pinch single in the fifth inning and, staying in the game, rifled a homer in the seventh. New York won, 3-1, with Cleveland notching its only run on a first-pitch-of-the-game homer by Al Smith. After yielding Smith’s smash, Antonelli pitched effectively the rest of the way for Manager Leo Durocher’s team.
When the scene shifted to Cleveland, Manager Al Lopez’s Indians hoped for a turnaround. Those hopes were quickly dashed. The Giants struck for a first-inning run in Game 3, then got three in the third as that man, Rhodes, came through with a two-run pinch single with the bases loaded. New York’s Ruben Gomez and Hoyt Wilhelm combined on a four-hitter, and the stunned Indians lost, 6-2.
Cleveland, in no way resembling the club that laid waste to AL opponents with a .721 winning percentage, was mercifully put out of its misery in Game 4. After 4 1/2 innings, the Giants led, 7-0. Hank Majeski gave the Cleveland throng of 78,000-plus something to cheer about in the fifth, slamming a three-run pinch homer off New York’s Don Liddle. But New York wound up a 7-4 winner and World Series champion, with 1 2/3 innings of hitless relief by Antonelli closing out the Tribe. The Giants had no need to call on Rhodes in the clinching victory.
Mays, who had missed most of the 1952 season and all of 1953 because of military service, was the Giants’ catalyst in ’54, batting an NL-leading .345, with 41 home runs and 110 runs knocked in. Antonelli, acquired in the trade that sent 1951 Giants hero Bobby Thomson to Milwaukee, won 21 games.
Combined with Rhodes, New York’s Mays and Antonelli were the key figures in a World Series that produced a not-wholly-unexpected sweep. Only thing is, the other guys were supposed to wield the broom.
