May 10, 1955 (60 Years Ago): NL Race All But Over (Except for the Playing Out the Schedule Part)

The 1955 Dodgers' longest winning-streak of the season reached 11 games on May 10 when Don Newcombe shut out the Chicago Cubs, 3-0. It was only 24 games into the season, but the Dodgers already had a stunning 9-1/2-game lead with a 22-2 record. As it turned out, the NL pennant race was already over, because Brooklyn continued to play the best baseball in the league.

May 10, 1955: NL Race All But Over (Except for the Playing Out the Schedule Part)

The Brooklyn Dodgers were obviously not buying into the narrative that their failure to win the 1954 pennant after having won back-to-back in '52 and '53 was indicative of the "boys of summer"—as Roger Kahn would later christen them—being past their peak and on the down slide. When Newcombe took the mound at Wrigley Field on May 10, the Dodgers had lost only twice all year. 

Both losses were to the defending-champion New York Giants, who beat them 5-4 on April 22 and 11-10 in ten innings two days later. Those victories trimmed the Dodgers' lead on April 24 to 2-1/2 games over the second-place Milwaukee Braves. Since then, the Dodgers had won ten straight, the Braves were still second, but just one game over .500 at 12-11, and the Giants were in third, struggling to get untracked with an 11-11 record.

As hot as the Dodgers had been, Don Newcombe was still finding his footing in his second year back from two years as a US Army draft pick occasioned by the Korean War. Newcombe had an impressive 56-28 record and 3.39 career earned run average after three seasons when duty called, but struggled with a 9-8 record and 4.55 ERA in his first year back in 1954. Particularly with the Giants defending a championship and the Braves a fast-rising club, Brooklyn's prospects in 1955 were said to rest to a great extent on whether the power right-hander would recover his pre-military-draft excellence. 

So far, Newcombe had won two of his first three starts, which included a no-decision in the Dodgers' April 24 loss to the Giants, but he also had a less-than-ace-like 5.50 ERA. This was his first start since then, with his only appearance in the previous 15 days a victory in two innings out of the bullpen in an extra-inning game against the Phillies on May 6.

Newcombe was brilliant this day against the Cubs. Pitching his first shutout since the late September heat of the 1951 pennant race, Don Newcombe allowed the Cubs only one base runner while striking out six. Gene Baker's single up the middle in the fourth inning was the only hit Big Newk allowed. It was the second and last one-hitter of his career (he never pitched a no-no); Newcombe had one-hit the Pirates in June 1951, although—like in this one—there was no drama of flirting with a no-hitter because Ralph Kiner singled in the first inning. 

The Dodgers were an offensive juggernaut early in the 1955 season. Their three runs against the Cubs gave them 152 in the first 24 games—by far the most in the major leagues. Even with Newcombe not pitching at his Newcombesque-best, at least until this game, the Dodgers had given up the far fewest runs in the National League, only 83. 

It may have been only 24 games into the season—there were still 130 remaining on the schedule—and the Dodgers' .917 winning percentage was certainly unsustainable for much longer. Their winning streak came to an end the next day and the Dodgers lost six of their next nine, which shaved three games off their lead.

But still, a 9-1/2-game lead so early was a huge deficit for would-be competitors to make up. The Braves ultimately finished second with 85 wins. The Dodgers could have had a losing 64-66 record the rest of the way and still finished first. 

Brooklyn's hot start did in fact basically settle things, and even with 84 percent of the schedule yet to be played after May 10, there would be no drama of a National League pennant race. The Dodgers did not let up. While they could not match their torrid start to the season, the played as the best team in the National League the rest of the way, with a record 3-1/2 games better than any other NL team in games played after May 10. 

The closest any team came to the Dodgers after May 10 was Chicago pulling within 5-1/2 games of Brooklyn on the last day of May. But nobody considered the Cubs a legitimate contender, and they ended up sixth with a losing record. After that slump in the standings, the Dodgers put the pennant race away for real by winning 10 of their next 11 to take a 10-1/2-game lead with a 42-12 record on June 11. They were still on a pace, more than a third-of-the-way through the season, to pass the 1906 Chicago Cubs' major league record of 116 wins in a single season. In the remaining 100 games they had left after that, Milwaukee would be one-game better, but Brooklyn's lead was never less than those 10-1/2 games.

Meanwhile, over in the American League, as predicted, a three-team race was developing. The Indians went into Yankee Stadium for a two-game set on May 10, a week after the teams had split two games in Cleveland. The Indians won, 9-6, even though their ace Bob Lemon did not pitch well in running his record to 6-1. The next day, a three-run fourth proved decisive in the Indians' 4-3 win over the Yankees.

The loss kept the Yankees in third place. They were now four games behind with a 14-10 record, which would turn out to be their biggest deficit of the season. The Indians, at 19-7, now led by three games over the second-place White Sox, which would turn out to be their biggest lead of the season.

After May 11, it was 24 games down for the Yankees and 130 to go.

60 Years Ago, When the Wait for "Next Year" Finally Ended (First in a Series): 1955 Pre-Season Pennant Race Handicaps

"Wait Till Next Year." Sixty years ago, that was the mantra at Ebbets Field because the Dodgers had lost every World Series they had been in—1916, 1920, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, and 1953—not to mention having lost the first two playoffs ever for the National League pennant, in 1946 and 1951, and not being counted down and out for good until the final game of the 1950 season. Wait till Next Year. Well, sixty years ago, "next year" finally came when the Dodgers won their first—and, it turned out, only—World Series championship in Brooklyn. This is the first in a series throughout this season on the National League and American League pennant races sixty years ago, beginning with the first ever preseason forecasts by a new publication whose first issue was just the previous August, Sports Illustrated.

1955 Pre-Season Handicaps

The baseball world must have felt a bit off by what transpired in 1954. Surely it was strange that the New York Yankees did not play in the World Series. After all, they had won each of the five previous American League pennants, and each of the five previous World Series—an unprecedented achievement. Not only that, the 1954 Yankees won more games than any of the five-and-five-in-five championship teams between 1949 and 1953. Their 103 victories, however, were good for only second place, and not even a close second. The Cleveland Indians won 111 games, wound up eight games in front of the Yankees, and were the favorites to win the World Series until Willie Mays robbed Vic Wertz, Dusty Rhodes hit home runs coming off the bench to win Games 1 and 2, and the New York Giants swept the Indians four straight.

And surely it was equally strange in 1954 that for the first time since 1948 the Brooklyn Dodgers were not either the National League pennant-winner or still competing for the honor down to the very last game they played. Indeed, two dramatic, heart-rending losses were all that stood between the Dodgers and their matching the Yankees with five straight World Series appearances between 1949 and 1953. In 1950, the Dodgers had a chance to make history with a stirring comeback from 9 games down with only 16 left to play to force a playoff with the Phillies, whom the scheduling gods set them up to meet at home in the final game of the season, only to see the would-be game-winning run thrown out at the plate in the last of the ninth and the Phillies win the game and secure the pennant on a three-run home run in the tenth. And in 1951, well, you know... Ralph Branca... Bobby Thomson... enough said.

The Dodgers had finished second in 1954. They were last in first place, tied with the Giants, on June 13. Thereafter, although they stayed in second and were never far behind the Giants, the Dodgers never really made a serious play for first place either. They pulled to within half-a-game after sweeping the Giants at Ebbets Field in mid-August, but six days later were four games behind. The Dodgers basically spent all summer treading water. They ended up five games out.

Robert Creamer, previewing the 1955 season for Sports Illustrated, summed up the Dodgers as smooth and seasoned, but aging and with "notoriously undependable" pitching. He wrote that "young replacements" had yet to prove themselves, although this was an uncharitable assessment with regard to one young 'un he named—Jim Gilliam, entering his third year as the Dodgers' second baseman with a .280 batting average and .372 on base percentage in 297 big league games. Creamer did not count Brooklyn out, however. Noting that Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Don Newcombe all played below their established standards for excellence in 1954, Creamer predicted that if they returned to their past level of performance, "these three could bring the championship back to Flatbush."

One thing was obvious, wrote Creamer, and that was that the defending-champion Giants and the up-and-coming Milwaukee Braves were the "best-balanced" teams in the National League. "They are beautifully matched, these two teams," he wrote, concluding that "the Giants should win the pennant." "The difference between the clubs is spelled W-i-l-l-i-e- M-a-y-s-." 

Creamer's assessment of the American League ultimately came down to "how close the Indians come to winning 111 games again," indicating a slight nod to the Yankees, without coming out and saying so explicitly. The Yankees had depth, the best catcher in baseball (Yogi Berra), Mickey Mantle ("who threatens to grow from good to great"), and good pitching led by Whitey Ford. Their big question marks were how much "the once-great Yankee shortstop" Phil Rizzuto had left and who would replace Allie Reynolds, who had just retired. He did mention that the Yankees now had Bob Turley, who in 1954 was 14-15 for the seventh-place, 100-loss Orioles.

The Indians, on the other hand, had probably "the worst-fielding infield to ever win a major league pennant," were slow and unimaginative on the bases, and despite "one of the most impressive pitching staffs in major league history," also an aging pitching staff. In fact, advanced fielding metrics that did not exist at the time indicate that Cleveland's infield defense was the second-best in the league (after the White Sox) up the middle, but quite problematic at the corners, including the worst in the league at third base, Al Rosen's position. As for the pitching, Bob Lemon and Early Wynn, who both won 23 for the '54 Indians, were in their mid-30s, Bob Feller was 36 (although he had made only 19 starts in 1954), and Creamer might also have mentioned that Mike Garcia, who was 19-8 with a league-leading 2.64 ERA in 1954, was 31. Joining the Cleveland staff, however, would be Herb Score, said to be "so good you can't believe it."

With the Yankees and Indians having split their season series in 1954, the difference in outcome for 1955 could well be the same as it was the previous year—whichever team had the better record against the rest of the American League.

Opening day would be April 11, 1955. More to come.

Thinking About That "Dynasty" Word

As soon as they won their third World Series in five years, the word "dynasty" was bandied about when considering this San Francisco Giants team's place in history. But what does that even mean? This Insight, one of occasional articles intended to be provocative in thinking about how we think about baseball, frames the "dynasty" issue in the context of great teams, great franchises and whether the modern 21st century game changes how we should think about dynasties.

Thinking About That "Dynasty" Word

No sooner did Pablo Sandoval squeeze the last out than Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight site proclaimed, "The San Francisco Giants are now a Dynasty," and used an algorithm developed by Bill James to substantiate the point. (http://fivethirtyeight.com/liveblog/world-series-game-7-live-blog/?#livepress-update-19763487) A Reuters release called the Giants "a different kind of Major League Baseball dynasty," the "best at juggling budget and talent" in an age of parity." (http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/10/30/sports/baseball/30reuters-baseball-worldseries-dynasty.html?ref=baseball)   World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner said at the Giants' victory parade back home in San Francisco, "Like they've been saying, this is a dynasty." Even before Game 6, New York Times national baseball writer Tyler Kepner titled a column, "Unconventional Dynasty in the Making" and asked "Are they really a dynasty?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/sports/baseball/world-series-2014-sf-giants-have-the-trappings-of-a-dynasty.html). Kepner goes on to say, "The term connotes a higher level of team achievement, but is open to interpretation." Let's take it from there.

Until arguably the mid-1990s with the advent of three divisions in each league, the introduction of a "wild card" team for post-season playoffs and the resulting two rounds of playoffs in each league to determine a pennant winner, a particular team's winning accomplishments seems a suitable baseline standard for beginning a discussion about dynasties. These can be measured in the number of first-place finishes--whether in the unitary league format that prevailed until the second-wave expansion to twelve teams in each league in 1969 or division titles since then--pennants and World Series won over a period of at least five years. While acknowledging that very few teams not named the Yankees would win even as many as three championships in any five-year period, I would suggest that for any team to be considered a "dynasty" based on this standard, it should not have had a losing season in any year of its five-year dynasty-qualifying run and in fact have been competitive all five years.

On top of that, the extent to which a team dominates its era, not merely in championship achievements but in overpowering the competition, should be factored into the "dynasty" equation. Some combination of number of years with 100 or more victories, winning pennant races by large margins, being among the top two teams in scoring or fewest runs allowed can be important considerations when considering which teams are dynasties. The 1906-10 Chicago Cubs with four pennants in five years, three won by decisive margins of at least ten games, four times winning at least 100 games (including in 1909, the one year they did not win the pennant); the 1936-42 Yankees from Joe DiMaggio's rookie season until he went off to war, averaging over 100 wins a year, with six pennants in seven years all won by at least nine games, and leading the league in scoring six times and in fewest runs allowed six times; and the 1972-76 Cincinnati Reds, with four division titles--three by margins of at least 10 games--three pennants and two championship rings are three of the best examples of team dynasties.

Each of these teams was also identifiable with a core group of players for all or most of their run: Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance and Three-Finger Brown (the Cubs); DiMaggio, Bill Dickey, Joe Gordon, Charlie Keller, Red Rolfe, Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez and Johnny Murphy (the Yankees); Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez (the Big Red Machine).

Aside from dynastic teams identifiable by a core group of players for a specific period of time, there are four franchises that were "dynasties" over a period of at least two decades by virtue of sustained success. Most obvious are the New York Yankees, beginning in 1921 (when they won the American League pennant for the first time) pretty much to the present day with really only two non-dynastic spells therein--from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s and from the early-1980s until the mid-1990s. The Yankee dynasty seamlessly transitioned from the Ruth and Gehrig, to the DiMaggio, to the Mantle eras famously winning 29 pennants and 20 World Series in 44 years between 1921 and 1964. The most recent iteration of the Yankee dynasty lasted from 1995 to at least 2007, bearing the names of Jeter, Posada, Pettitte and Rivera, with 13 consecutive postseason appearances. (The Yankees won nine consecutive AL East titles during these years.).

The three other franchise dynasties were the New York Giants with 10 pennants but only 3 World Series championships in 21 years from 1904 to 1924; the St. Louis Cardinals with 9 pennants and 6 World Series championships in 21 years between 1926 and 1946; and the Brooklyn-to-Los Angeles Dodgers with 13 pennants (6 in Brooklyn) but only 4 World Series triumphs (3 in L.A.) in 32 years between 1947 and 1978.

That 21-year Cardinal dynasty just mentioned is particularly interesting because they won with no team by itself worthy of being called a "dynasty" for any five-year period, with the possible exception of the 1942-46 Cards that won four pennants in five years, two of which however were when major league rosters were depleted because of ballplayers suiting up for Uncle Sam in the Second World War, which took a far greater toll on arch-rival Brooklyn than St. Louis. Even when St. Louis went to three World Series and won two in five years between 1930 and 1934, the Cardinals finished fifth and sixth in an eight-team league in the two years they did not win the pennant. Branch Rickey kept the Cardinals competitive with the vast number of minor league affiliates under St. Louis control and shrewd trading according to the principle of better to trade a star player approaching his career pivot point of decline a year too soon than a year too late.

With an additional round of playoffs, the wild card era should change how we think about dynasties. Division winners now have to navigate a five-game series and then a seven-game series to get to the World Series. Short series can be fickle, making winning division titles in long 162-game seasons a more true test of how good a team really is than the number of championship rings.

The Atlanta Braves from 1991 to 2005 won an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles that included six 100-win seasons, eight time finishing first by a blowout margin of at least 8 games, and nine times having the best record in the National League ... but those accomplishments seem somehow diminished because they went to only five World Series and won only one. It should be noted that two of their five pennants were before MLB's three-division / wild card structure came into being when they had only to survive a seven-game League Championship Series to compete in the World Series, and that they were eliminated in the five-game Division Series first round in five of their last six consecutive seasons as division champions. And this was a team that not only dominated the league, but included a significant number of historically great players--Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Chipper Jones and Andruw Jones--at the peak of their careers.

The New York Yankees from 1996 to 2001 are the only team in the current three divisions / wild card era that can claim a "dynasty" by the traditional dynastic standards of winning pennants and World Series. They survived two American League playoff rounds to make it to five World Series in six years (including four in a row from '98 to '01) and won four championships. Throw in 2003, and it's six pennants and four World Series triumphs in eight years. Since then, even the Jeter-Rivera variant of the Yankee dynasty, having been eliminated in the opening Division Series round in four of their last eight post-season appearances (although they did win it all in 2009), has been snakebit by the number of postseason series now required to be won for baseball's championship.

By winning their third Series in five years, the San Francisco Giants accomplished something not done by any team since the 1996-2001 Yankees. There is no question about that Yankee team being a dynasty, not to mention an extension in the nearing-a-century-long dynasty of the Yankee franchise. But the 2010-14 Giants won their division only twice in five years (remember, they were a wild card this year), only once by as many as eight games (in 2012); never won more than 94 games on the season; never had the best record in the league (they were second-best in 2010); followed their 2010 and 2012 championships with disappointing noncompetitive seasons; and have only the third best record in the National League (after the Cardinals and the Braves) over the last five years.

Whatever can and should be said about the Giants and their accomplishments, they have not dominated the National League in the way one would expect of a dynasty--not in any of the last five years. As has been noted by various experts, however, General Manager Brian Sabean's record in making high-impact trades (such as for Hunter Pence) and bringing in journeymen players to fill sudden holes has kept the Giants in the competitive mix, capable of recovering quickly from disappointing years. They maybe are not quite a dynasty given their actual record over the last five years--not yet, anyway, and certainly not by traditional definitions--but the way the game has evolved and the difficulty of sustaining a winning team, today's San Francisco Giants may be the team that redefines how we consider the concept of "dynasties."