Surely 1955 would be the year, Brooklyn partisans reasoned. The Dodgers won 10 consecutive games to start the season, built a 22-2 record in the first four weeks and cruised to the National League pennant with a 13 1/2-game spread over the second-place Milwaukee Braves.
But despite the domination of their NL brethren, the Dodgers were, once again, up against a team that had made a habit of dominating them. The dreaded Yankees, after a one-year lapse, returned to the Series as American League champions. Of the Dodgers’ seven World Series setbacks, the last five had come at the hands of the Yanks.
Dodgers ace Don Newcombe, a 20-game winner in 1955, was called upon in Game 1, but big Newk, never a winner in Series play, yielded two home runs to Joe Collins and a third to Yankee rookie Elston Howard as Brooklyn went down to a 6-5 defeat. In Game 2, 35-year-old lefthander Tommy Byrne, a Yankee standout of yesteryear who had made it back to New York after winning 20 games in the minor leagues in 1954, stopped the Dodgers on five hits and posted a 4-2 triumph.
At this juncture, one could commiserate with Brooklyn fans whose thoughts undoubtedly were turning toward 1956. Down two games to none, the Dodgers hardly could be heartened by the pitching matchup for Game 3: Johnny Podres, who had struggled to a 9-10 record for Brooklyn, against 17-game winner Bob Turley of the Yankees.
Podres, working on his 23rd birthday, brought Brooklyn back to life by holding the Yankees to seven hits in an 8-3 triumph at Ebbets Field. One of those hits was a second-inning home run by Mickey Mantle, whose leg injury allowed him to play in only two other Series games (and one of those was as a pinch-hitter).
With Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges and Duke Snider slamming homers, the Dodgers tied the Series at 2-2 with an 8-5 victory in Game 4. Snider, who had homered in Game 1, drilled two more home runs in Game 5 in support of rookie pitcher Roger Craig, who worked six-plus innings in a 5-3 decision that produced his first Series triumph. Brooklyn had forged ahead, three games to two, but now the classic would return to the Bronx.
Buoyed by Craig’s performance, Dodgers Manager Walter Alston turned to another youngster, Karl Spooner, who had burst upon the major-league scene with 27 strikeouts in two games at the end of the 1954 season. Spooner retired only one Yankee, however, and was pounded for five runs — three coming on Bill Skowron’s homer. While relievers Russ Meyer and Ed Roebuck held the Yankees at bay, the damage had been done. New York prevailed, 5-1, as Whitey Ford tossed a four-hitter. The Series was deadlocked.
Alston, having started six different pitchers in six games, came back with Podres for Game 7 while Yankees Manager Casey Stengel opted for Byrne.
The game was scoreless until the fourth inning, when Campanella doubled and scored on a single by Hodges. In the sixth, Pee Wee Reese singled and Snider, attempting to sacrifice, reached base safely when he brushed the ball from Skowron’s glove while sprinting down the line. Campanella bunted the runners to second and third and Furillo was walked intentionally. Bob Grim relieved Byrne, and Hodges lofted a sacrifice fly. A walk to Don Hoak reloaded the bases, but Grim and the Yankees escaped when George Shuba, batting for Don Zimmer, grounded out. Nevertheless, Podres’ lead had grown to 2-0.
The departure of second baseman Zimmer from the game resulted in defensive changes that paid immediate — and crucial — dividends for the Dodgers. In the bottom of the sixth, Jim Gilliam moved from left field to second base, and reserve Sandy Amoros replaced Gilliam in left. The Yankees’ Billy Martin drew a leadoff walk in the sixth, and Gil McDougald followed with a bunt single. Yogi Berra sliced a fly ball just inside the left-field foul line at Yankee Stadium and Amoros, shaded toward center with a lefthanded power hitter at the plate, seemed to have little chance of getting to the ball. The fleet Amoros raced toward the line, however, and made a glovehanded grab. A relay from Amoros to Reese to Hodges doubled McDougald at first. Had Berra’s drive dropped safely, the game would have been tied (both runners were off with the crack of the bat) and Berra would have been in scoring position with no one out. For once, though, a “what if” situation had gone the Dodgers’ way.
Podres battled out of another jam — two on, one out — in the eighth, and entered the ninth clinging to the two-run lead. Having surrendered eight hits and two walks, the lefthander had kept Brooklyn fans on the edge of their seats all day. He also had kept them on the edge of their first Series championship.
Skowron started the Yankees’ ninth by bouncing back to Podres. Bob Cerv then flied to Amoros. Howard loomed as the final obstacle. Podres induced him to ground to shortstop Reese, whose throw to Hedges marked the end of the game and the beginning of bedlam in the Borough of Churches.
Brooklyn’s Series championship came none too soon. The Dodgers would play only two more seasons in the borough before relocating in Southern California. Dem Bums would win another pennant, in 1956, but the ’55 World Series title would stand not only as Brooklyn’s first Series crown, but as the borough’s only such achievement.
