60 Years Ago--No Spahn Sighting in Brooklyn

The Milwaukee Braves pulled into Brooklyn on July 22 in second place for what would be a make-or-break-the-season four-game date with the Dodgers. Having played 92 games to a less-than-impressive 50-42 record for a second-place team, the Braves had only 62 to go and trailed by 13½. Anything less than winning three of four would likely be the kiss of death to their season, but the Braves did not have Warren Spahn, their ace, slated to start any of those games. With good reason.

60 Years Ago—No Spahn Sighting in Brooklyn

Even if the Dodgers' 22-2 start to the season was a crippling blow to what was expected to be the breakthrough season for Milwaukee, 1955 had been monumentally disappointing for the Braves. The Braves had finished second (by 13 games to the Dodgers) in 1953 and third (8 games behind the Giants and 3 behind the Dodgers) in 1954—their first two years in Milwaukee after leaving the Red Sox to their lonesome in Boston—and were considered by some to be the favorite to win the National League in 1955.

By all accounts, they were expected to be in this thing till the end, win or lose. But the Brooklyn Dodgers, aging Boys of Summer though they might have been in 1955, had a 9½-game advantage after just 24 games and, refusing to relent, had widened their lead. The Braves were mostly a disappointing .500 team until mid-June when 10 wins in 12 games, including two of three from the visiting Dodgers, created some separation from the break-even mark, but notwithstanding a six-game winning streak right before the All-Star break, Milwaukee had returned to playing mostly .500 ball since then.

Ebbets Field was the last stop of a four-city eastern swing the Braves began after their home city, Milwaukee, hosted major league baseball's annual All-Star showcase. They began the break having reduced their deficit to the Dodgers from 14½ to 11½ games on the back of their aforementioned six-game winning streak. Unfortunately, it appears that the three days off broke their momentum. They split two games in Philadelphia, split four games at the Polo Grounds, and then lost two of three in Pittsburgh.

Both the Braves losses in Steel City were Pirate walk-offs, the first one in especially gut-wrenching fashion. It was with 19th inning. The Braves had scored in the top half of the inning to break a 2-2 tie on a single by Chuck Tanner—remembered, if remembered at all these days, for having managed the "We Are Fam-i-ly" Willie Stargell-led Pirates to the World Championship in 1979—only to lose the game in the bottom of the 19th on a double by Dale Long that tied the score and an error by Braves' catcher Del Crandall, who failed to hold onto the ball on a play at the plate as Long barreled home on a subsequent hit.

For what it's worth, Pirates starter Vern Law pitched the first 18 innings, facing 64 batters. There is no record of his pitch count. Braves starter Lew Burdette went eight and Ernie Johnson threw seven innings in relief, but all eight of Milwaukee's starting position players—including the surely exhausted Crandall—played the entire game. All four hours and forty-four minutes of it. It was a long day, not made any better the next day—July 20—when the Pirates won on a bases-loaded pinch-hit single that ended a 3-3 game in the bottom of the ninth. Crandall again caught the whole game.

The Braves had now lost for the fifth time in the first eight games of the road trip. Warren Spahn salvaged the final game in Pittsburgh with a 5-3 complete-game victory, but the Brooklyn-bound Milwaukee-ans had lost two games in the standings to the Dodgers, who began their post-break schedule with six wins in nine games.

Going into their most important series of the season, manager Charlie Grimm's rotation against the Dodgers called for Gene Conley, whose 11-6 record at the time was the best on the staff, to pitch on Friday; Bob Buhl, 7-7 with a 3.18 ERA, on Saturday; and in the Sunday doubleheader, Lew Burdette, disappointing so far in 1955 with a 7-5 record and 4.25 ERA (down from 6.65 at the end of May), and Ray Crone (4-4 / 3.54 mostly in relief). Having just pitched in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Spahn was not in line to pitch in this all-important series.

Say what? The Braves best pitcher and a historically-great pitcher in the middle of his best years in the 1950s not pitching in a series that meant . . . everything to Milwaukee? Seriously?

Perhaps the great Warren Spahn was not having the kind of season expected of a pitcher who was a 20-game winner in five of the past six seasons, including the Braves' first two in Milwaukee. His record was only 8-10 following his victory in Pittsburgh, and his ERA at 3.76. He had yet to win more than two consecutive starts and had done so only twice, and just once since starting the season 2-0. He had twice lost three starts in a row. But still, Spahn was the staff ace and a money pitcher.

Perhaps more remarkably—for those of us looking back 60 years with the knowledge that Warren Spahn won 363 games in his career, won 20 games 13 times, including six in a row from 1956 to 1961, and led the league in wins eight times—Spahn had not pitched in any of the Braves'  nine games against the Dodgers so far in 1955. And for good reason. The Brooklyn Dodgers owned Warren Spahn. And had for many years.

Spahn had not had a winning record against the Brooklyn Boys since the Braves' pennant-winning season of 1948, back when they were still in Boston and "Spahn and Sain, then pray for rain" was the prevailing mantra. He was 4-2 against them that year. Since then, he was only 6-17 in 26 starts against the the Dodgers. The Boys had so much his number that Spahn made only three starts against them in 1953, going 0-2, and did not start any games against Brooklyn in 1954 and pitched against them just once in relief. That was after losing all five of his decisions to the Dodgers in 1952. He had not beaten Brooklyn since 1951.

More specifically, since 1949 the Dodgers had a collective .276 batting average against Spahn. All the other teams were batting only .235 against the Braves' stellar southpaw. Brooklyn, of course, had formidable right-handed hitters—including Jackie Robinson (.351 with 7 home runs off Spahn since 1949), Pee Wee Reese (.347 against Spahn), Gil Hodges (.329 against Spahn with 4 home runs), and Roy Campanella (perhaps only .274 against Warren since 1949, but with 3 home runs and 13 RBIs).  

But it was even worse for Spahn at Ebbets Field. The last time he won a game before the Brooklyn faithful was way back in 1948. Since then he had made only 11 starts at Ebbets, had lost 9 games without a win at Ebbets, and had 47 earned runs in 85 innings in the Dodgers' lair. Just so there's no confusion on the point, that's an 0-9 / 4.98 record for Spahn at Ebbets Field since 1949, and he had made only two starts in Brooklyn's lion's den (for him) since 1952.

It turned out, in fact, that Warren Spahn would make only one more start against the Dodgers before they left Brooklyn for Los Angeles in 1958, and never again took the mound at Ebbets Field. He surely felt no nostalgia for the place when it finally met the wrecking ball in 1960.

As for that four-game series at Ebbets Field, the Braves won two, the Dodgers won two, and Milwaukee failed to make a dent on Brooklyn's 13½-game lead. With 96 down, the Braves now had just 58 games remaining on the schedule. Although their deficit was the same as the Giants famously faced with many fewer games left to play in 1951, the Braves certainly could not count on history repeating itself. The Dodgers weren't going to let that happen. Not again. 

60 Years Ago in 1955: Jackie's June Renaissance

In the bottom of the 10th at Ebbets Field on June 30, the Dodgers trailing the Giants 5-4 with one out and the tying run on third, Jackie Robinson caught the Manhattan team flatfooted with a bunt that not only tied the score but resulted in him reaching first base as the second baseman, covering first, botched the play. The Dodgers were excelling—they in fact were ahead of the pace the Chicago Cubs were on at the same point in the schedule when the Cubs won 116 games in 1906—but Jackie had been struggling. He was 36 years old, not exactly a favorite of manager Walter Alston  (nor Alston a favorite of his), and seemed near the end of his ground-breaking career. This is the eleventh article in a series on the 1955 season—sixty years ago. 

Jackie's June Renaissance

In his preview of the 1955 season for Sports Illustrated—SI's first ever, since the magazine was still less than a year old—Robert Creamer, making mention of "the sad decline of Jackie Robinson last season" and noting that "age is catching up with the whole team," predicted the Dodgers would "now run with the pack rather than with the leaders."

As to the first part of Creamer's prediction, "sad" may have been perhaps too strong of a word. Plagued by the assorted ailments that suddenly seem to swamp even elite athletes once they reach a certain age, Robinson played in only 124 games and had just 465 plate appearances in 1954. But he did hit over .300 for the sixth consecutive year. That said . . . his was a weak .311 batting average. For the first time in his career, Jackie fell well short of 100 runs scored, crossing the plate only 62 times—well shy of his previous low of 99 runs scored in 1950—and his 59 RBIs were far less than the his typical totals in the mid-80s.

Robinson had started the year batting fourth, his place in the order when Charlie Dressen last graced the top step of the Ebbets dugout, but wound up near the tail end of rookie-manager Alston's 1954 line-up. Indeed, Jackie's relationship with the stolid Walter Alston had been tense and fraught with misunderstandings from the very beginning because his new manager was inclined to believe that age had indeed caught up with Mr. Robinson.

Perhaps most disconcerting to Dodger watchers, the 1954 Jackie Robinson seemed tired and less aggressive than before, not playing the assertive game that was associated with his name. After averaging 24 steals in his first seven years, Robinson swiped just seven bases in 1954. Allan Roth, the Dodgers' statistical guru whose data analysis went beyond the numbers on the back of bubblegum cards, thought that, despite his .311 average, Robinson was no longer an impact player. "He failed to deliver in clutch situations," he said.

But as to the second part of Creamer's pre-season prognostication, about the Dodgers running back in the pack, well . . . Brooklyn was proving him not only wrong, but way wrong:

Even though they had just been shut out by the Braves on June 26, the Dodgers were in absolute command of the 1955 NL pennant race with a 50-18 record when they returned to Ebbets Field to take on the Giants for a three-game set beginning on June 28. Their lead of 12½ games actually seemed bigger than that because the Cubs were hanging in second—as were their Chicago counterparts in the other league, behind the Yankees—and nobody expected the Cubs to stay there for long. The Dodgers' real challengers were the Braves, 13 behind in third, and the defending-World Series-champion Giants were a colossal disappointment at 33-36, 17 games behind in fourth place.

But the Dodgers were having their season of potentially-epic proportions without much contribution from Jackie Robinson. He had gotten off to a good start batting as high as .308 at the end of April, but on May 22 his average was down to .227. His place in the batting order had gone from sixth, to seventh, to eighth by the end of May. Despite all that, however, Robinson had remained in the starting line-up as the Dodger third baseman, having started all but 12 of Brooklyn's first 68 games (although one of his starts was in left field). Neither Don Hoak, who started at third in 12 games, nor Don Zimmer, the starting third baseman in one game, had given much reason for Alston to swap out Robinson.

Creamer had written that Hoak and Zimmer, among the Dodgers' young guns, were going to have to come through to make up for the declining performance of Brooklyn's aging veterans if the Ebbets faithful expected to see their team in a pennant race. Hoak had hit .245 in his rookie year of 1954, but so far in 1955 his batting average was a less-than-inspiring .224, brought low by a .214 month of May . . . and he was under .200 for the month of June. Zimmer had just 7 hits in 18 games, only one of which had come since April.

The Dodgers won the opening game of their series with the arch-rival Giants on June 28, with Robinson going 2-for-3. His home run off Giants' ace Sal Maglie in the second put Brooklyn on the Ebbets scoreboard, tying the score. Robinson went 1-for-3 the next day against Ruben Gomez, the Giants winning, and 2-for-4 on June 30, not including his unexpected bunt that brought home the tying run. The Dodgers won the next inning, and . . .

. . . it was now 71 down and 83 games to go for the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers. Their record was now 52-19. Their lead over Milwaukee remained at 13 games.

Jackie Robinson was batting .286 as June turned to July and had played in all but 11 of the Dodgers' games, including once as a left fielder and once as a pinch hitter. Assorted aches and pains, however, limited him to playing in only 45 games with just 33 starts in Brooklyn's 83 remaining games on the schedule. Manager Alston's decisions to frequently bench him at the start of games may have taken into account not only his ailments and wanting to preserve as much of a healthy Robinson as possible for the presume-we'll-be-there World Series, but to give Hoak a chance to show what he could do for the Dodgers in the future, 

After hitting .338 in the month of June, Robinson hit just .217 in July (starting in just 6 of the Dodgers' 32 games that month), .208 in 12 starts in August, and .186 in 16 September starts. He wound up hitting .256 with 8 home runs (just 2 after June) and 36 RBIs (25 of them before July) for the season. 

Don Hoak made 45 consecutive starts at third from July 4th to August 21, during which Robinson started 7 times in left field, and Don Zimmer was regularly in Alston's line-up as the second baseman. Hoak hit .258 in the 53 games (49 starts) he played in July and August, but batted a mere .167 in the final month. Zimmer hit .294 in 32 starts in July before the reality of his major league abilities caught up with him; he was back below .200 (.191 to be precise) in 38 August appearances.

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.