Last Day 60 Years Ago, September 30, 1956

On Saturday, September 29, the Dodgers swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in a doubleheader at Ebbets Field while the Braves lost a 12-inning heartbreaker in St. Louis. That meant Brooklyn held a one-game lead over Milwaukee going into the final day of the regular season. Win with their ace, Don Newcombe, on the mound, and it wouldn't matter what the Braves did—the Dodgers would be back in the World Series with a chance to make it two championships in a row at the Yankees' expense. Lose, however, and a win by the Braves would mean the Dodgers would be in their third best-of-three playoff series for the National League pennant in eleven years. Only twice before in National League history was a playoff necessary after completion of the 154-game schedule to decide the pennant-winner, the Dodgers were in both, and the Dodgers lost on both previous occasions—to the Cardinals in 1946, and (most famously) to the Giants in 1951.

Last Day

(60 Years Ago, September 30, 1956)

The Dodgers trailed the Braves by half-a-game going into the final day of the season. It was 151 down for Brooklyn and three to go; for Milwaukee, 152 down and two to go. Making his first start since his no-hitter against Philadelphia four days before, Sal Maglie won the opener of Brooklyn's Saturday doubleheader, 6-2. The Pirates wasted no time breaking up any hope of Maglie having a Johnny Vander Meer moment and depriving him of a shutout in the 1st inning when Dale Long singled and Frank Thomas homered. But in the bottom of the 1st, Jackie Robinson drove in the first Dodgers run with a single and came home on Sandy Amoros's 14th home run of the season. Maglie shutout Pittsburgh the rest of the way. 

Indicative of how times were different back then, Dodgers' relief ace Clem Labine pitched a complete game 3-1 victory in the second game. It was only the third start Labine had made all year, all in September. Manager Walt Alston had been using Labine exclusively in relief as his bullpen ace until then. And Clem Labine was excellent in the role, appearing in 59 games with a 9-6 record, league-leading 19 saves, and a 3.34 ERA in 97 innings of relief. He had figured directly in 28 of the Dodgers' first 91 wins as a reliever, and his victory in Brooklyn's 153rd game meant he had now contributed directly to 29 of the Dodgers' 92 wins as they went into the final day.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, after the Braves' Bill Bruton smacked his 8th home run of the year as the second batter in the game, Milwaukee did not score in any of the next 11 innings, even if Hank Aaron did go 3-for-5. Fresh off his 20th win (on the same day Maglie pitched his no-hitter), Warren Spahn shut out the Cardinals through the first five innings before back-to-back doubles with two out in the 6th tied the score. Tied at 1-1 it remained after nine, ten, and eleven innings. 

Spahn was still on the mound in the 12th. Stan Musial, whose propensity to torture the Dodgers at Ebbets Field had long ago earned him the grudging sobriquet "Stan the Man" (as in, here comes "that man" again) from a frustrated Brooklyn resident, doubled with one out. Ken Boyer, having a terrific second season with 26 homers, 98 RBIs, and a .306 batting average, was intentionally walked, after which Rip Repulski touched Spahn for a game-winning walk-off double.

So the Dodgers started the last day of the 1956 schedule with a one-game lead over the Braves. Don Newcombe, taking a 26-7 record to the Ebbets mound, retired the Pirates in order in the 1st, and then happily watched Duke Snider hit his league-best 42nd homer with two runners on before Pittsburgh starter Vern Law had retired anyone. Roberto Clemente's 2-run single in the 3rd cut Brooklyn's lead to 3-2, but Jackie Robinson hit his 10th homer of the year, and the 137th and last regular-season home run of his career, in the bottom of the inning. Newcombe led off the 5th with a double and scored on a sacrifice fly, after which Snider increased his league-lead with another home run, giving him 43. A homer by Amoros in the 6th made it a 6-2 lead.

But four-run leads can be tenuous. Pittsburgh came back with 3 in the 7th, and after Lee Walls touched Newcombe for a homer with one out in the 8th to cut Brooklyn's lead to 7-6, Big Newk was given the rest of the day off. With Labine having pitched a complete game the day before, Alston could not call on his relief ace. Instead he went with second-year right-hander Don Bessent, who had already saved 8 games in 37 relief appearances. Bessent pitched the rest of the game to save Newcombe's 27th win of the 1956 season.

It didn't matter that the Braves beat the Cardinals in St. Louis on that same last day. With 154 games down and none to go, Milwaukee had run out of time. They came up one game short. The Brooklyn Dodgers had won their 9th National League pennant since 1901. It was time to . . . bring on the Yankees.

There were some warnings and minor rumblings, but little did the Brooklyn faithful expect 1956 would be the last time their borough would host a World Series.

  

Back Story to the Catch and Throw That Ended the "Wait Till Next Year"

On October 4, 1955—sixty years ago—Johnny Podres retired the Yankees in order in the last of the 9th at Yankee Stadium to complete an eight-hit 2-0 shutout in Game 7 that finally, after seven previous Brooklyn visitations to the Fall Classic, ended the "wait till next year." Podres, who also won Game 3 to prevent the Yankees from taking a three games-to-none lead in the '55 Series, was the World Series MVP. But it was an exquisite defensive play by Sandy Amoros that saved the day for the Flatbush Faithful, which might not have happened if not for the decision to pinch hit for Don Zimmer.

Back Story to the Catch and Throw That Ended the "Wait Till Next Year"

When the late, great Yogi Berra, then managing the 1973 New York Mets, said in the midst of a pennant race in which his team was lagging in August, "It's not over 'til it's over," he most assuredly was not thinking about the 6th inning of Game 7 in the 1955 World Series. 

That’s when, with Yankee runners on first and second and nobody out, Sandy Amoros made a great catch at the left field fence after a long run to rob him of an extra-base hit that would have tied the score at 2-2. Savvy veteran Gil McDougald, the runner on first, was so certain Berra's drive would be a hit and so determined to score, that he failed to consider it might actually be caught. But catch it Amoros did. He immediately fired a strike to cut-off man Pee Wee Reese, whose throw to first doubled off McDougald before he could scramble back.

And thus was the game and the World Series over before it was over, regardless of any philosophical musings to the contrary by Mr. Berra.

A key part of the lore and majesty of that moment is that Amoros had just entered the game to play left field. This has usually been described as a prescient move by Dodgers manager Walt Alston. 

But Amoros was put into the game at that precise moment, just in time to make the most important defensive play of the World Series, less because Alston had an inclination to upgrade his defense than because he had just pinch hit for starting second baseman Don Zimmer with the bases loaded, two out, and the Dodgers ahead 2-0, in the top half of the inning in a bid to put the game away. Stengel had relieved left-handed starter Tommy Byrne with right-handed Bob Grim two batters earlier, and Alston judged the left-handed George Shuba as the better bet to break the game open than the weaker-hitting, right-handed Zimmer. 

Shuba, in his last at bat in a major league game, made out, after which Alston moved Jim Gilliam from left to replace Zimmer at second, and put Amoros in to play left. Gilliam was the Dodgers' Mr. Versatility. He had replaced Jackie Robinson at second base in 1953, with Jackie moving to play third and occasionally left field, and had started the '55 season playing second, but Alston used him increasingly in the outfield as the season drew to a close when Amoros, who had started the year in left field, was mostly sidelined because of his struggles at the plate.

These moves were consistent with the 1950s baseball renaissance in platooning and substituting for position players based on the game situation that was brought back into prominence by Alston's rival in the Yankee dugout—one Mr. Casey Stengel. (The heyday of both practices, particularly platooning, had been in the 1920s.) 

Alston, however, then in his second year as Dodgers manager, was not yet anywhere near Stengel’s zip code when it came to substituting for position players in his starting line-up. Stengel made 211 position-player substitutions during the regular season (much fewer than the record-setting 286 he made in 1954), while Alston made only 106, which was also below the National League average of 127. That might be because the Dodgers’ faced only 55 left-handed pitchers all season.

The Dodgers also faced only 11 southpaw starting pitchers in 154 National League games, so Alston had little opportunity to platoon even if that was something he was inclined to do. But two of the Yankees’ top starting pitchers, Whitey Ford and Byrne, were left-handed, causing Alston to bench the left-handed-batting Amoros, who was now being platooned, in favor of right-handed infielder Zimmer in the eighth spot of his batting order in three of the four games Stengel started his southpaws. Gilliam, the Dodgers' lead-off batter, was in the starting line-up for every game of the Fall Classic, in left field when Zimmer played and second base when Amoros played. 

Until Game 7, Alston had substituted for a position player just once in the Series, in the sixth game. But that was a move made necessary when Duke Snider twisted his ankle on a sprinkler head making a catch in center field in the third inning. Those darned Yankee Stadium outfield sprinklers . . . let us not forget Mickey Mantle was maimed by one during the 1951 World Series. Snider was back in the line-up for the Series finale, although the sprained ankle may have contributed to his 0-for-3 day.

Anyway, with Stengel starting Byrne in the finale, the right-handed-batting Zimmer was in Alston's Game 7 starting line-up, and the left-handed-batting Amoros not. And after Stengel changed pitchers, Alston pinch hit for Zimmer the first chance he had, necessitating a defensive replacement, which meant Gilliam moving to second and Amoros replacing Gilliam in left field.

That series of moves came just in time to save the game for the Dodgers, helping them to secure their first World Series triumph, which turned out to be their only World Series championship in Brooklyn.

Postscript: Neither Zimmer nor Amoros had the career they or the Dodgers envisioned. 

Sandy Amoros was a brilliant prospect who led the International League in batting with a .353 average in 1953, when he played for Brooklyn's top Triple-A team in Montreal. In the majors, however, Amoros had difficulty hitting lefties. Playing in only 517 major league games, mostly between 1954 and 1957, Amoros was almost exclusively a platoon-player against right-handed pitching, starting just six games against southpaws in his career—three of them, plus Game 6, in 1955—and had only 92 plate appearances against lefties. 

Zimmer had difficulty hitting anybody, perhaps because of a horrific beaning in 1953, when he was a hot prospect with the Dodgers' Triple-A team in St. Paul, that left him unconscious for 10 days with a fractured skull. Don Zimmer was never a star player, but went on to become a cherished baseball figure as a manager and, ultimately, as the wise confidant to Joe Torre when Torre was building his Hall of Fame managerial credentials in the Yankee dugout.