60 Years Ago (1955): Indians in Weak Command

When the Indians swept the Senators in a doubleheader on September 13, 1955, they took a two-game lead in the American League over the Yankees. With their record now at 90-55, they had played 145 games and had just 9 to go. The Yankees had 11 games remaining. The two teams would face off no more in the 1955 season, meaning Stengel's boys were going to have to play very well for their part and count on the Senators (who the Indians would play once more), the Tigers (six games remaining against the Indians), and White Sox (two left against the Indians) to derail Cleveland.

Indians Look to be in Command

The two-game advantage Cleveland held after defeating the Senators 3-1 and 8-2 in the Sept. 13 doubleheader at Griffith Stadium was their biggest lead of the season since they were three up way back on May 11, their 26th game of the season. For most of the summer, the Indians ran third. They were as far back as 8 games on July 2, hardly looking like the team that set the American League record for wins with 111 the previous year. By the end of July, Cleveland was back in the thick of things.

They began their stretch drive by taking two of three from the Yankees in late August and three of four from the White Sox at the beginning of September, all of those games played in Cleveland. Their three wins against Chicago, one each by their trio of aces—Early Wynn, Bob Lemon, and Mike Garcia—knocked the White Sox out of first place into third, and put Cleveland at the top of the standings, by half-a-game over the Yankees on September 4. Including their doubleheader sweep, the Indians since then had won 8 of 10, including splitting a vital two-game set against the Yankee played as a Sunday doubleheader in New York on September 11. 

Chicago, meanwhile, had gone into a bit of a tailspin beginning when they lost the last three of their four-game series in Cleveland from September 2 to 4. That was the start of 8 losses in 13 games that now had the White Sox 4½ games out of first. Although not officially done, they had realistically faded from contention. Like the nearby Milwaukee Braves in the other league, the White Sox were an up-and-coming club that had been expected to contend but who were not quite ready for prime time.

The Yankees had not been in first place since August 28, but refused to go away. This had been a remarkable characteristic of the pinstripers ever since Stengel took over as their manager in 1949, testifying to both their resilience and relentlessness. With the exception of 1953, when the Yankees won the pennant by a blowout margin, and 1954, when the Indians returned the favor, the Yankees were in a dogfight for the pennant in every September since 1949, and their record in each of those Septembers was better than their winning percentage for the season. The same would be true in 1955.

As the season was now headed into its final 12 days, the Indians with a two-game lead controlled their own destiny. Although they had just one game remaining against a losing team—the Senators, whose record now stood at 50-91, the second-worst record in the big leagues—and the Yankees had three left against Washington, it was arguable which contender faced the more formidable opposition the rest of the way.

The Indians would return home for three against the fifth-place Tigers, who were 72-72 as of the 13th, followed by two in Chicago and their final three games in Detroit. The White Sox, of course, had been a true contender for most of the summer and had a formidable 85-59 record, and while faded from contention, they were still a dangerous team. In their series so far in 1955, Cleveland had done well against both teams, winning 10 of 16 against Detroit and 11 of 20 against Chicago.

The Yankees had one remaining with Detroit before taking on the Red Sox for three at Yankee Stadium, going to Washington for three, and finishing the season with four games at Fenway Park in Boston. With an 82-61 record as of September 13, the Red Sox had played much better than expected for a team that won just 69 games in 1954. In their series so far in 1955, the Yankees had beaten the Red Sox in 9 of 15 games and the Senators in 13 of 19. 

Trailing by two, with 143 games down and only 11 to go, the Yankees were surely regretting that they had lost 13 of the 22 times they had played Cleveland. It was the first time in the Stengel era, beginning in 1949, that the Yankees had lost a season-series to a pennant-race rival. Coming into the season, they had faced off against 9 teams in six years that won at least 90 games in the American League, winning six of those series and splitting three—including against Cleveland in both ’53 and ’54. 

Billy Pierce

Billy Pierce passed away on Friday. One of baseball's premier pitchers in the 1950s, the southpaw Pierce, along with his teammate Minnie Minoso, was among those players from major league baseball's "golden era" being considered for Cooperstown immortality last year by the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee. Neither player, nor anyone else on the list for that matter, was voted in. But Billy Pierce surely had much to commend him, even if his lifetime 211-169 (.555) record and 3.27 ERA are not on-the-surface Hall of Fame-impressive.

Billy Pierce

Acquired from Detroit in 1949 in what turned out to be a steal of a trade, Billy Pierce was the first piece in the Chicago White Sox building momentum towards ending their decades of baseball purgatory occasioned by the ignominy of the eight Black Sox who conspired with gamblers to lose the 1919 World Series. Just as Minnie Minoso's arrival in 1951 became the foundation of the "Go-Go" Sox, Pierce was the cornerstone of a first-rate pitching staff that was essential for the White Sox to compete with the Yankees and Cleveland Indians for the American League pennant.

By 1955, the White Sox were ready to enter the fray in the pennant race. As readers of Baseball Historical Insight know, this year we are focused on that season—sixty years ago—but this article is not part of that series. It's a reminder of how good Billy Pierce really was. Suffice it to say, Pierce had one of the best years of his big-league career that year. He ended up the season with a record only 15-10, but he led the league with a 1.97 earned run average—far better than anyone else in the bigs—and was the best pitcher in the major leagues in 1955, at least according to the wins above replacement metric for pitchers. Pierce had back-to-back 20-win seasons each of the next two years. When the White Sox finally beat out the Yankees for the AL pennant in 1959, Pierce was only 14-15 with a 3.62 ERA, and did not get a start in the World Series, although he pitched in three of the six games in relief.

With all due respect to Whitey Ford, Billy Pierce was probably the best southpaw in the American League in the 1950s, if not the league's best pitcher, period. He stood only 5-10 and was slight of build, but Pierce was an agile and highly coordinated athlete whose compact motion enabled him to sizzle fastballs past batters. He led the league in strikeouts in 1953 and in strikeouts-per-nine-innings in both 1953 and 1954. The only two pitchers in major league baseball with more accumulated pitchers' wins above replacement in the 1950s were Warren Spahn and Robin Roberts, both in the other league.

If he had pitched for the Yankees, who dominated the American League in his years with the White Sox by winning pennants in all but two of them, Billy Pierce almost certainly would be in the Hall of Fame—joining his fellow small-stature lefty who did pitch for the Yankees, the aforementioned Mr. Ford. Let's pick up from 1953 and not include 1949, the year before Ford first wore pinstripes; 1950 when Ford did not arrive on the scene until July and pitched only 112 innings; and the two following years that Ford spent in the military as a draftee during the Korean War:

• From 1953 to 1961, with Pierce pitching for Chicago and Ford in New York, Whitey Ford's record was 149-62 and Billy Pierce was 137-95. That's a very big advantage for Ford.
• And Ford's .706 winning percentage relative to the Yankees' .625 for those nine years was appreciably better than Pierce's .591 winning percentage relative to the White Sox' .572. Notwithstanding that the Yankees were a much better team than the White Sox, that's another very big advantage for Whitey Ford.
• But with 33.4 pitcher's wins above replacement, Billy Pierce was by that advanced metric a more effective pitcher than Ford, whose pitcher's WAR was 29.8.
• And Pierce accumulated 2,044 innings pitched those nine years; Ford's total was slightly less at 1,925.

None of this is to say that Billy Pierce was even equally as deserving as Whitey Ford for Hall of Fame immortality based on their pitching performance in the 1950s, let alone more deserving. And the performance distance between the two widens when one considers Ford's excellence from 1962 to 1965, during which time Billy Pierce's career had come to an end after three years in San Francisco.

Pierce was 16-6 for the Giants in 1962, however, without which his new team would not have won their first pennant in San Francisco, which required winning a three-game playoff against the Dodgers. Surrendering only three hits, Pierce shut out the Dodgers in the opening game of the playoff showdown, beating Sandy Koufax. Two days later, he pitched a shutdown ninth inning after the Giants scored 4 runs in the top half of the inning at Dodger Stadium to take a 6-4 lead, sending San Francisco to the World Series. After losing Game 3 of the Series, giving up 2 runs in the seventh of what had been a scoreless game before being relieved, Pierce beat Whitey Ford in Game 6, surrendering just 3 hits, to force a decisive Game 7—the one that ended with Willie McCovey hitting that vicious line drive right at Bobby Richardson.

Again, none of this is to make an argument that Billy Pierce was even equally as deserving as Whitey Ford for Hall of Fame immortality based on their pitching performance in the 1950s . . . but had the White Sox been able to beat out the Yankees a time or two more for the pennant during those years, well       . . . Billy Pierce might well have been honored in Cooperstown last week—if he hadn't already been before.

60 Years Ago (1955)--White Sox Catch Up to the Yankees

After reliever Billy Pierce struck out Jerry Coleman in the bottom of the 9th at Yankee Stadium on July 28 with the bases loaded, the tying run at third, the winning run at second, and his team up by 3-2, the Yankees' lead that had been five games at the All-Star break, and as many as 6½ games going into July Fourth, was gone. The White Sox had pulled into a first-place tie with the Yankees. If the Dodgers were in no danger in the National League, there was now a full-fledged pennant race in the American League. This is the 14th article in a series on the 1955 season.

White Sox Catch Up to theYankees in 1955 Pennant Race

The Yankees went back to the baseball wars sluggish following the three-day All-Star break. On a western swing that took them to Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Kansas City they had lost 8 of 12 games. The Indians, playing at home, had won 8 of 12 to close to within a game of the Yankees on July 24.

The White Sox, starting the second half of the season in third place, 6 games behind, but playing at home, cut that down to a game-and-half with six straight wins (including two doubleheader sweeps) against the Orioles and Senators—both bad teams—in their first four days back in action. Temporarily knocked back by consecutive losses, they beat the Yankees twice at home and then the Red Sox to reach the top of the AL standings, along with New York, on July 22nd. Boston, however, won two of the next three games in their series.

So now the White Sox were off to take on the Yankees again . . . in New York . . . having won 10 of 14 since the break . . . down one game in the standings . . . tied with the Indians.

Starting pitching was one of the Chisox' strengths singled out in SI's 1955 pre-season preview, although Robert Creamer identified the staff's depth—"once you get past the big men"—as "thin." The key "rookie hope," wrote Creamer, was Dick Donovan, "a veteran minor leaguer," who in fact was having quite the rookie season. Well, technically he wasn't a rookie, having pitched 62 innings in the big leagues for the Braves and the Tigers over parts of four seasons prior to this one. Anyway, Donovan's 10-2 record and 2.38 ERA at the break was good enough to get him named to the AL All-Star team. 

Donovan was the first Chicago pitcher to take the mound when the White Sox showed up at Yankee Stadium on July 26 for a three-game series. He was now 13-3 on the year, but had won his last seven starts, including winning all three of his starts against the Yankees since June. After limiting the Yankees to 9 hits and 4 runs in 17 innings in his first two victories, the Yankees roughed him up a tad in their last meeting, scoring 5 runs on 9 hits off him in 6.1 innings just six days before at Comiskey Park—a game the White Sox won anyway, 8-6. It was Donovan's 13th win, and this was his first start since that game.

This time, Donovan was superb. He pitched a complete game, giving up only one run, but Yankee starter Tommy Byrne (8-2 coming into the start) was nearly unhittable, although he did have his usual control issues, walking five while striking out three. Yogi Berra smacked Donovan for his 17th home run of the year in the sixth inning . . . and that was all the scoring to be had that day.

The White Sox were now two games back, though still in second place, but might have been forgiven after such a tough loss for thinking that maybe the Yankees were about to take off again, especially since they would be facing Eddie Lopat (who may have been 4-7 and was in his last year but had quite the reputation of big-game pitcher in recent years to fall back on) and Bob Turley.

Pitching for Chicago against Lopat was Harry Byrd, whose most notable black ink in baseball record books was leading the AL in losses when he went down in defeat 20 times for the 1953 Athletics. Notwithstanding his winning 5-4 record coming into the game, Byrd had neither Lopat's credentials and his  4.47 ERA at the time was almost exactly a full run higher than Eddie's 3.49 earned runs per nine innings. It was Lopat, however, who failed to survive the third inning, henpecked by five singles—including four in a row to knock him out of the game—that gave Chicago a lead they would not surrender, and Byrd who pitched into the eighth inning for the win. They now trailed by one.

Even so, Connie Johnson, who started the season in the minor leagues but who had pitched well in five starts (2-1) since being called to Chicago at the beginning of July, against Turley (one of the Yankees' aces with an 11-8 record at the time) for the final game of the series seemed a mismatch to New York's advantage. This time an unearned run in the first and a two-run home run by Walt Dropo in the third gave the White Sox a 3-0 lead that Johnson held until the ninth. 

Dropo, whose 33 home runs, league-leading 144 RBIs, and .322 batting average with Boston in 1950 not only made him AL Rookie of the Year but seemed to presage a great career, never lived up to expectations and had become a journeyman player, being traded by the Red Sox to the Tigers and now to the White Sox. SI's pre-season analysis considered his acquisition an important one for the Chisox chances since he had a power bat that the speed-based White Sox desperately needed. This was his 14th home run of the season, and Dropo wound up leading the team with 19.

Anyway, back to the game, the White Sox leading 3-0 on the back of Dropo's blast. A single by Berra and Mantle's 22nd home run to start the last of the ninth was a reminder of just how dangerous the Yankees could be. After the next batter reached on an error, manager Marty Marion brought in his best pitcher—Billy Pierce—to get the final two outs. It took some work, but after two walks (one intentional after a sac bunt) that loaded the bases, Pierce finally did. And the White Sox were back in a practical tie for first place, although statistically they were .002 percentage points in front.

With a 59-38 record, it was 97 games down for Chicago with 57 to go; for the Yankees at 60-39, 'twas 99 down and 55 to go; and the 59-40 Indians were only one game behind, also with 55 to go.

As for Dick Donovan, two days later he wound up hospitalized when his appendix flared. He did not make another start until August 21, but picked up where he left off, with a complete-game victory against the Tigers giving up just two runs, only one earned, to run his record to 14-4. Whether the appendicitis had taken too much of a physical toll, or perhaps he came back too soon, Donovan pitched poorly in losing his next five starts before shutting out Kansas City in his final start of the year. It was Chicago's next-to-last game of the season, by which time their third place destiny was sealed.