History of the World Series – 1956
While the Yanks had reason to wonder if their pitching would turn around, the Dodgers had reason to wonder how quickly they might be able to wrap up another Series. This from a team that only 12 months earlier finally had won its first fall classic. How quickly things change.
And how quickly they turn around.
After trotting out 11 pitchers in the first two games, 6-3 and 13-8 losses, the Yankees proceeded to get five consecutive complete-game performances. They received those efforts from five pitchers who combined to allow the Dodgers six runs and 21 hits in 45 2/3 innings.
The mound work that New York got in Game 5 shot the Yanks into the Series lead for the first time. And it shot the pitcher into the headlines for all time.
Don Larsen, a 27-year-old righthander who couldn’t get through the second inning in Game 2, was New York Manager Casey Stengel’s Game 5 pitching selection after 5-3 and 6-2 Yankee victories that deadlocked the Series. Larsen, 3-21 record for Baltimore in 1954, was 20-7 in two seasons with the Yankees after being obtained from the Orioles in the biggest trade (l7 players overall) in major-league history.
Larsen’s pitching opponent was 39-year-old Sal (The Barber) Maglie, the former New York Giants star who didn’t look quite right in Dodger blue. But Maglie, obtained on waivers from the Cleveland Indians in May, looked just like his old intimidating self when he took the mound for Brooklyn. He won 13 of 18 regular-season decisions for Manager Walter Alston’s team, including a heat-of-the-pennant-race no-hitter against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Maglie got off to a great start in Game 5 of the ’56 Series at Yankee Stadium. In fact, with two out in the Yankees’ fourth, he was pitching perfect baseball. Eleven Yankees up, 11 Yankees down. Surely this couldn’t continue. No one had ever thrown a Series no-hitter, let alone a perfect game (and the majors hadn’t seen a regular-season perfect game in 34 years). The 12th man to bat for the Yankees was Mickey Mantle, who was coming off a Triple Crown season (.353 batting average, 52 home runs and 130 runs batted in). And Mantle drilled a homer into the right-field stands near the foul pole.
No, this perfect-game pitching couldn’t and didn’t continue. For Maglie, that is. Incredibly, Larsen was matching the veteran righthander pitch for pitch — and then some. Through four innings, only one man had reached base on either side and that batter, Mantle, had touched all four of them.
While Larsen (employing a no-windup style) continued to set down the Dodgers 1-2-3 — helped by a great one-handed catch by Mantle of Gil Hodges’ long drive in the fifth — Maglie yielded a walk in the fifth and another run in the sixth on Andy Carey’s single, Larsen’s sacrifice and Hank Bauer’s hit. After six innings, the Yankees had two runs and four hits (Joe Collins followed Bauer’s blow with another single) and the Dodgers had no runs, no hits and no baserunners.
Larsen rolled right along, getting Jim Gilliam on a ground ball and Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider on fly balls in the seventh and Jackie Robinson on a grounder, Hodges on an infield liner and Sandy Amoros on a fly ball in the eighth. Twenty-four consecutive batters retired.
Maglie permitted a single to Billy Martin and a walk to Gil McDougald in the seventh but squirmed out of trouble. And, finishing with a flourish, he struck out the side in the Yankees’ eighth.
In the ninth, 64,519 fans at Yankee Stadium watched intently as Larsen prepared to face Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella and a pinch-hitter for Maglie. With the count at 1-and-2, Furillo fouled off two pitches, then flied to Bauer in right. Campanella fouled off one pitch before grounding out to second baseman Martin. Last up was Dale Mitchell, a.312 career hitter, batting for Maglie. Mitchell, purchased from Cleveland in late July, took a ball outside and a called strike. The lefthanded hitter swung and missed at the third pitch and fouled the fourth into the stands. Then came Larsen’s 97th pitch: strike three, called.
While Mitchell questioned the call of retirement-bound Babe Pinelli, umpiring for the last time behind the plate, the pitch on the outside edge of the plate sent catcher Yogi Berra leaping into Larsen’s arms and Larsen leaping into the record books. The first no-hitter — and perfect game — in World Series history had over.
Larsen’s seven-strikeout, 2-0 history-maker kept New York on a winning course. In Game 3, a three-run homer by late-August acquisition Enos Slaughter and eight-hit pitching by Whitey Ford had sparked the Yankees to victory, while Tom Sturdivant’s six-hitter and homers by Bauer and Mantle highlighted the American Leaguers’ triumph in Game 4.
The Yanks were halted in Game 6, however, when Dodgers relief ace Clem Labine was pressed into starting duty and responded with a l0-inning shutout, Brooklyn prevailed, 1-0, against Bob Turley when Yankee left fielder Slaughter misplayed Robinson’s bottom-of-the-l0th drive into a game-winning single.
Don Newcombe, ace of the Dodgers’ staff but never a postseason success, and second-year major leaguer Johnny Kucks were matched in the decisive Game 7. And Newcombe, winner of baseball’s first Cy Young Award after his 27-victory season in ’56, again took his lumps. He was rocked for a pair of two-run homers by Berra, who had blasted a bases-full shot off Newk in Game 2, and also yielded a bases-empty home run to Elston Howard. With Bill Skowron clubbing a seventh-inning grand slam off Brooklyn’s Roger Craig, Kucks coasted to a three-hit, 9-0 triumph that completed the revival of the New Yorkers’ pitching staff and returned the Yankees to the top of the baseball world.
The Dodgers had their moments, all right, starting with a complete-game victory by Maglie in Game 1, continuing with a memorable comeback from a 6-0 deficit in Game 2 and ending with Labine’s superlative effort in Game 6.
But one of the special moments in baseball history, as supplied by Larsen, belonged to the New York Yankees. And so did another World Series championship.
