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.

  

Pitchers' Day--September 25, 1956 (Sixty Years Ago)

On September 25, 1956, with less than a week left before the regular season ended, Cleveland's Early Wynn beat Kansas City for his 20th win. That had no bearing on the American League pennant race since the Yankees had already officially punched their ticket to the Fall Classic. But in a game that did have significant pennant-race implications, Milwaukee's Warren Spahn won his 20th beating Cincinnati, a pretender that had become a real contender. That kept the Braves on top of the National League and all but officially eliminated the Reds from contention. Oh, and Sal Maglie's 12th win of the year kept the Dodgers within half-a-game of the Braves. But Maglie's 12th wasn't just any win. It was a no-hitter.

Pitchers' Day

(60 Years Ago, September 25, 1956)

In the bottom of the 10th on September 25, rookie Rocky Colavito made a 20-game winner of Cleveland starter Early Wynn with his 21st home run against the KC Athletics. For Wynn it was his fourth 20-win season in six years going back to 1951.  

Wynn's win, however, did not come in the heat of a pennant race since the Cleveland Indians had been officially eliminated nine days earlier when they split a doubleheader with the Yankees. They won their next six games. The fourth of those wins was a 5-hit shutout by Wynn's mound mate, Bob Lemon, on September 19, which made him the second pitcher in the American League, after Chicago's Billy Pierce on September 13, to win 20 games in 1956. Four days after Lemon's shutout, Detroit's Frank Lary ended the Indians' 6-game winning streak with his 20th win of the season.

So, Early Wynn was the fourth American League pitcher to join the 1956 chapter of the 20-win club. The next day, he and Lemon were joined in the 20-win club by their teammate, Cleveland's phenomenal southpaw, Herb Score. It was the third time in six years that the Indians' staff featured three 20-game winners; Bob Feller, Mike Garcia, and Wynn did it for Cleveland in 1951, and Wynn, Garcia, and Lemon in 1952. No other team had as many as three 20-game winners in a single season since the 1931 Philadelphia Athletics with Lefty Grove, George Earnshaw, and Rube Walberg.

Meanwhile, over in the National League, it was 150 games down and just 4 to go when Warren Spahn took the mound at Cincinnati's Crosley Field on September 25, 1956. Not only was he going for his 20th win, which would make for seven 20-win seasons so far in his career, but more importantly, his Braves had the slimmest of leads in a taut three-team pennant race—half a game up on the Dodgers and just 1½ ahead of the Reds. 

Once again for the Redlegs, another critical game. They had won six straight since four consecutive losses—two to the Dodgers and two to the Phillies (discussed in the two previous posts)—had seemed to put an end to their pennant ambitions. But Cincinnati didn't fold; instead they picked up three games in the standings. But they had also played 151 games and were down to their final 3. Lose this game, and they would need to win both of their remaining games against the Cubs in Chicago while hoping that the Braves lost all of their final three games against the Cardinals and that the Dodgers won no more than one of their remaining games.

Larry Jansen started for the Reds. Once a premier pitcher for the New York Giants from 1947 to 1951, he was back in the minor leagues in 1955 trying to recover from arm problems. Signed by the Reds before the '56 season started, Jansen pitched for Seattle in the Pacific Coast League before being called up in August to help with the pitching. He won his first two starts—both complete-game victories—but was 0-2 with an 8.40 earned run average since then, dating back to August 24. He had given up 8 runs in his last 10 innings. Reds ace Brooks Lawrence, meanwhile, had not pitched since working in his seventh game in eight days five days before.

Perhaps Cincinnati manager Birdie Tebbetts should have tried Lawrence. Jansen got just 4 outs and gave up 3 runs before he was shown to the showers. After three innings, the Braves led, 6-1. Lawrence pitched two shutout innings later in the game. Spahn was efficient—9 innings, 6 hits, 1 walk, just 2 strikeouts—on his way to becoming the National League's second 20-game in 1956, more than a month after Don Newcombe had won his 20th. 

It was also a very good day on the mound for the Dodgers' Sal Maglie. He didn't win his 20th. It was only his 12th win of the year. Not only did he not give up any runs, Maglie also didn't give up any hits. Like Spahn in winning his 20th, Maglie was efficient on the mound, striking out three, walking two, and hitting one, and, of course, no hits.

Maglie took the mound knowing this was a crucial game. Since Carl Furillo's walk-off homer to beat Brooks Lawrence eight days earlier, the Dodgers had lost four of six. If he could pitch his team to a victory and Milwaukee lost, Brooklyn could end the day in first place. The other way around, they'd be 1½ back.

Maglie retired the first eight Phillies he faced before walking the opposing pitcher. The Phillies did not have another base runner until Willie Jones walked to lead off the 8th. He was wiped out in a double play. Maglie also hit Richie Ashburn with a pitch with two outs in the 9th, then got Marv Blaylock to ground out to second to end the game. Roy Campanella's 2-run homer in the 2nd was all that Maglie needed in what was, in the end, a 5-0 Dodgers win to stay within a half-game of the Braves. 

It was now 150 games down and just 4 to go for the 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers. With one game left against the fifth-place Phillies, who were 69-81 after being no-hit, and three with the sixth-place Pirates, who were 66-85, while the Braves would be up against a better team—the 74-76 fourth-place Cardinals—Brooklyn, with the same number of losses and one fewer victory than Milwaukee, was in a good position to make up the difference and try to defend their 1955 World Series championship against the Yankees.

Final '56 Showdown, Braves at Dodgers (60 Years Ago, Sept 11 & 12, 1956)

The 1956 Milwaukee Braves came to Brooklyn for one final series with the Dodgers on September 11 and 12, sixty years ago, with a slim one-game lead and the season winding down to just 17 games remaining for both. For the Dodgers, who were last in first place (tied) way back on May 20, this was a critical series, and they had their two aces in line in their effort to send the Braves out of town in second place. Don Newcombe, already with 23 wins, was to pitch the second game. Pitching the first game would be Sal Maglie. The Dodgers surely would not have been in contention without Big Newk's extraordinary season. But just as certainly, they would not have been in contention without Maglie, who once upon a time—when he was younger and a Giant—was a despised arch-enemy.

Final '56 Showdown, Braves at Dodgers
(60 Years Ago, September 11 & 12, 1956)

At 39 years old, Sal Maglie was thought to be over the hill as the 1956 season got underway. After pitching just five innings in two games for the Cleveland Indians through the first four weeks of the season, the Dodgers paid a nominal sum to procure his services. They were 12-9 at the time, the season was still young, and there was no compelling reason why they would need Sal Maglie, but the Dodgers knew exactly what they were doing. They had a history with Sal Maglie. It was not a pleasant one for them, which was precisely why they wanted him.

Sal Maglie had been a nasty thorn in their side pitching for their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, through the first half of the 1950s. Nicknamed "The Barber" for his aggressiveness in giving close shaves to opposing batters, Maglie's high-and-tight reportoire provoked numerous contretemps, as in players-on-the-field confrontations (ugly words, pushing, shoving, sometimes worse), with Dodgers batters taking exception to his pitching philosophy. 

When he walked into the Dodgers' clubhouse for the first time in mid-May, Maglie had a career record of 104 wins and 48 losses. More than a fifth of his wins were against Brooklyn; he had beaten the Dodgers 23 times as a hated Giant and lost to them just 11 times. He had thrown more innings against the Dodgers (302) than against any other team, and Maglie pitches had hit 8 Brooklyn batters—a modest number, given both his reputation and the ferocity of the two teams' rivalry. 

And the Dodgers no doubt had painful memories of his 5-1 record against them in 1951—a year that lives in Brooklyn infamy because of the huge August lead they blew and Bobby Thomson's "Giants win the pennant! Giants win the pennant!" home run. Maglie started that game for the Giants, and would have been the losing pitcher, but for that home run. Three of Maglie's 8 wins during the Giants' miracle surge to the pennant in August and September to force a playoff series for the pennant came against the Dodgers. He was 23-6 in 1951, which turned out to be the only 20-win season he'd have in his career.

Since coming to the Dodgers, Maglie was giving the Ebbets faithful lots of love, not hate. His first victory for the Dodgers came on June 5 when he shutout the Braves in Milwaukee on 3 hits. He had made three starts against them since then, all without a decision, but pitched well. As he took the home-town mound in the top of the 1st against the Braves on September 11, 1956, Maglie's record stood at 9-4, he had won 7 of his last 8 decisions, and his earned run average in his 11 starts in that time was 2.33. Against the Braves, Maglie was only 1-0 in four starts, but he had given up just 7 earned runs on 20 hits in 29⅓ innings for a 2.15 ERA.

Maglie gave up solo home runs to Eddie Mathews in the 2nd and Joe Adcock in the 9th. They were the only two runs the Braves scored. Maglie's single in the 3rd off Braves' starter Bob Buhl gave the Dodgers a 2-1 lead, and in the 8th, Jackie Robinson, still a menace on the bases at 37, scored from second base when, reacting to Jackie's dancing off the bag, reliever Ernie Johnson's pickoff attempt went awry, and Gil Hodges followed with a homer of his own. The Dodgers and Braves were now tied for first place.

The next day, it was a matchup of each team's pitcher with the most wins. For the Dodgers, Newcombe took the mound with a 23-6 record; Newk was 13-1 with a 2.18 ERA in his 16 starts since July 4th. For the Braves, it was Lew Burdette, who was 18-9 and had a 2.37 earned run average so far for the year. Burdette was 6-3 with a 1.55 ERA in 9 starts since July 5. 

Both had a terrible day. Burdette failed to make it out of the 1st inning, giving up 3 runs, and Newcombe, after having retired the side in order in the first and now with a 3-0 lead, could not get a single batter out in the second. He left after giving up a walk, a pair of singles, and a triple that tied the score, and Bill Bruton, the guy who hit the triple, scored after he left. The Dodgers, trailing 7-4 in the 7th, scored three times to tie the game, but the Braves won in the 8th on a single by Hank Aaron, a walk, and an RBI single by Bruton. 

Milwaukee left Brooklyn with the same one-game advantage they came to Ebbets Field with. At the close of the day on September 12, 1956, for both the Braves, at 84-55, and the Dodgers, at 83-56, it was 139 games down and 15 to go. It was also 139 down and 15 to go for the Cincinnati Redlegs, who were still hanging around at 3 games behind. The Dodgers had two games left against the Reds at home. The Braves had just one left against the Reds, in Cincinnati. For the Braves and the Dodgers, their season series was over—Milwaukee had won 12, Brooklyn 10—unless, of course, a playoff between them would be required should they have identical records at the end of the 154-game schedule.

Maglie might come in handy then.

POSTSCRIPT:

In case you were wondering why Braves' ace Warren Spahn was not lined up to start in this all important series . . . It was because the Dodgers totally owned Warren Spahn. Since 1948, Spahn was 6-18 in 27 starts against Brooklyn. He did not pitch a single inning against them in 1955. In 1956, the Braves decided to see if maybe a year of not pitching at all to Brooklyn batters might have made a difference and gave Spahn a start against them on June 5 in Milwaukee. The Dodger curse plaguing the great Spahn continued; he gave up 2 runs on 4 hits while getting just 4 outs before being removed from the game. He did not get another chance against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

For more on Warren Spahn's troubles with the Dodgers, see the following post on Baseball Historical Insight from July 21, 2015 (last year), "No Spahn Sighting in Brooklyn" (: http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2015/07/60-years-ago-no-spahn-sighting-in.html

Brooks Lawrence to the Rescue (60 Years Ago, Sept. 3, 1956)

To those who might have said that Brooks Lawrence's failure to win any of his six starts in August may have cost the Cincinnati Reds the 1956 pennant: if it was not for his gutsy performance against the Milwaukee Braves on September 3rd, the Reds' pennant chances could well have ended right then and there, and it would have been a two-team Milwaukee vs. Brooklyn race to the end, instead of a three-team duel also involving Cincinnati.  

Brooks Lawrence to the Rescue
(60 Years Ago, September 3, 1956)

Trailing the Braves by 3½ games and tied with the Dodgers in second place, the Redlegs traveled to Milwaukee for a critical four-game series that would start with a doubleheader on September 3. This was their chance to cut into the Braves' lead, or it could have been the death knell to their season. That second scenario looked more plausible when their loss in the first game of their doubleheader on a walk-off win by the Braves dropped the Reds 4½ back, especially since they failed to hold onto a 2-0 lead because Hank Aaron hit home runs in the 4th and 7th innings to tie the game, then doubled and scored the winning run on Joe Adcock's single in the 9th. 

In the second game, the Reds held a 5-2 lead in the 3rd when the Braves loaded the bases with nobody out in the last half of the inning. Due up next were Aaron and Eddie Mathews, followed by Adcock. Aaron had 23 home runs, including his two in the first game, 78 runs batted in, and was batting .327. Mathews had 37 homers and 86 RBIs, and had been red-hot since the end of July, having belted 15 round trippers and driven in 38 runs in 39 games since August 1. Adcock had 34 homers, 93 RBIs, and was batting .305.

Did I mention the bases were loaded and there were no outs? Even with a 3-run lead, Cincinnati manager Birdie Tebbetts had no choice but to remove starting pitcher Larry Jansen from the proceedings, because that 3-run lead was looking very precarious. And the reality was: if the Reds hung on to win, they'd be back to a manageable 3½ games behind. But should they lose, they would be 5½ back. That potential two-game swing in the standings could make all the difference going forward. A 3½-game deficit with just 23 games left to play after this one was not too large to overcome, but 5½ games behind just might be.

So, who was he gonna call? Hersh Freeman was the Reds' relief ace, but Tebbetts probably thought it was too early in the game to call on him. Freeman rarely came into games before the 7th inning, and just once as early as the 5th. Art Fowler had often come into games in the early and middle innings and was rested, having last pitched four days ago, 6 innings of shutout ball to get a win against the Giants. There were a few other options, too, but—

—With the bases loaded, nobody out, Aaron and Mathews up next, Birdie Tebbetts wanted Brooks Lawrence, even though Lawrence had pitched a 9-inning complete-game victory just two days before. That was his 17th win of the year, but his first as a starting pitcher in more than a month (since July 29, to be precise).

In fact, Lawrence would not look back kindly on August 1956. He had won his first 13 decisions of the season, although four them were in games he came in to relieve. He ended the month of July on a high note with a complete-game victory in Pittsburgh in which he allowed just 4 hits. He was 15-2 at the time. His earned run average was 3.32. 

Then came August. Brooks Lawrence made 6 starts in August and lost them all. His earned run average for the month was a rather unsightly 5.89. Lawrence's one win was in relief, on August 9 against the Cubs; he entered a tie game in the top of the 9th with a runner at second and one out, retired Ernie Banks and Monte Irvin, pitched a scoreless 10th, and came out a winner on Gus Bell's walk-off homer. 

Two of Lawrence's August losses were against the Braves, the team out front in the National League. On August 12, pitching in Milwaukee where a victory would have cut the third-place Reds' deficit from two games behind to one, Lawrence gave up six runs before being sent to the showers in the third inning. Eight days after that, Lawrence gave up only 3 runs in 8 innings against the Braves, but was the losing pitcher because the Reds' offense was limited to a solo bottom-of-the-9th home run by Frank Robinson. All three runs Lawrence surrendered scored on homers—a two-run shot by Mathews, who was due up after Aaron in our game in question, and a solo shot by Adcock, due up after Mathews.

Lawrence's most recent engagements with the Braves didn't matter to Tebbetts. Neither did his very bad month of August. What mattered was that the bases were loaded, there were no outs, the Reds' 3-run lead was in jeopardy, the Braves three most dangerous hitters were next up, a loss could be devastating to Cincinnati's pennant chances, AND Brooks Lawrence, for all his August struggles, was his best pitcher.

Brooks Lawrence retired Aaron on a short fly to left and got Mathews to hit into a double play. End of inning. He left the mound with the Reds' 5-2 lead intact. Then he pitched the remaining 6 innings of the game. He gave up 3 runs, but not until after Cincinnati had taken a 5-run lead. And he pitched those 7 innings against the Braves in a must-win game on just one day of rest after pitching a 9-inning complete game. Lawrence was now 18-8, and the Reds were back to 3½ games behind the Braves.

Their season rescued by Lawrence, the Reds won the next two games against the Braves and left Milwaukee in second place, 1½ games behind and half-a-game up on the Dodgers. As of that date—September 5, 1956—there were 134 games down for the Cincinnati Reds and 20 to go. 

Pitching on the three days of rest that were typical for pitching aces back then, and assuming he would get them after this intrepid performance, Brooks Lawrence could still to make as many as 6 starts in those 20 games, not taking into account the times his manager might want to use him—as he did on September 3 in Milwaukee—to pitch critical innings as a reliever in a must-win game. 

Problem was, Lawrence had now pitched 204⅓ innings, and there were still maybe those 6 starts and some relief appearances to go. The most major league innings he had pitched before this was 158⅔ in his rookie season of 1954 with the Cardinals, a total he exceeded in the first week of August, explaining perhaps why August 1956 was not kind to Brooks Lawrence. 

Dodgers Trip the Braves (60 Years Ago, August 2, 1956)

Just in case the 1956 Milwaukee Braves were getting too comfortable about their voracious drive to the top (and then some) after Fred Haney took over the manager's job from Charlie Grimm in mid-June, the Brooklyn Dodgers reminded them that they—Dem Bums—were not only the defending-National League champions, but the defending World Series champs, by taking three of four from the Braves at Ebbets Field as July turned to August, sixty years ago. Jackie Robinson, in what would be his final year, was playing well and played a key role in two of those victories. Don Newcombe delivered the coup de grace by shutting out the Braves in the series finale, 3-0, on four hits to earn his 16th win.

Dodgers Trip the Braves 
(60 Years Ago, August 2, 1956)

For the Dodgers, 1956 was nothing like 1955. In 1955, the Dodgers won 22 of their first 24 games to open up a 9½-game lead before the season was even a month old. After June 11, just shy of two months into the schedule, Brooklyn's lead was always in the double-digits and never less then 10 games. They coasted to 98 victories and a 13½-game final margin of victory over runner-up Milwaukee.

But so far in 1956, the Dodgers had spent hardly any time in first place. The last time they had not trailed in games behind was after their doubleheader sweep of the Cubs on May 20, and even then, their winning percentage was just third-best behind the Braves and Cardinals. All three clubs were just half-a-game ahead of the Reds at the time. The Dodgers did pull within half-a-game of the Pirates for top of the heap by beating the Braves in the first two of a four-game series the last time Milwaukee visited Brooklyn in mid-June. The main significance of those victories, however, turned out to be a boon to the Braves, who fired Grimm and replaced him with Haney.

While the Braves played extraordinarily well under their new manager, the Dodgers continued at an uneven pace, almost seeming disinterested in the National League pennant-race proceedings. They were six games out in third place following a 13-6 pummeling by the Cardinals in St. Louis on July 21. It was their 9th loss in 14 games, which included losing four in a row to the Braves in Milwaukee in their first series after the All-Star break.

But then the Dodgers woke up. While eight wins in a row only gained them two games in the standings, they nonetheless showed the Braves that the Dodgers were still in this thing. With Milwaukee coming back to Brooklyn for their first visit since the events that deposed their manager, now the Dodgers had a chance to prove it.

In the first game, on July 30, the Braves took a 7-1 lead into the 8th on homers by Eddie Mathews, Joe Adcock, and Hank Aaron and held on to win 8-6. The next day, Jackie Robinson singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 9th to give the Dodgers a 3-2 win. Having hit a two-run homer earlier in the game, Robinson drove in all three of Brooklyn's runs. The home run was his 8th of the year and the 135th of his career. He would hit just two more and end up with 137 home runs.

For Jackie, his 3-for-4 day was a redemption of sorts. It was his first start in more than two weeks in what had been a long struggle of a season. Starting the year as the Dodgers' everyday third baseman, Robinson was hitting only .236 at the end of May and spent most of June on the bench nursing a battered ego as Randy Jackson got the playing time. Once he was back in the starting line-up at the end of June, Robinson hit .359 in his next 14 games before getting hurt in the final game of the series in Milwaukee after the break. He appeared just four times as a pinch hitter before getting back in the starting line-up against the Braves on this last day of July. 

The next day, the first day of August, Jackie Robinson was at it again against the Braves, going 2-for-4. More importantly, he began the game-winning rally with the score tied at 1-1 when he led off the bottom of the 8th by touching Lew Burdette for a single, and came around to score what proved the winning run on pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell's two-out single. This hit was probably the highlight of Mitchell's brief Dodgers' career . . . unless one wants to consider taking a called third strike for the final out of Don Larsen's World Series perfect game two months down the road to have been a personal Dale Mitchell highlight.

Welcome to Brooklyn, Mr. Mitchell! It was his first at bat for the Dodgers since being acquired from the Cleveland Indians just days before. Mitchell had been the Indians' regular left fielder for seven years from 1947 to 1953, during which time he batted .314, mostly as their lead-off batter. But by now he was 34 years old and over the hill. Cleveland was not unhappy to dispense with his .133 average in 38 games as a pinch-hitter when Brooklyn came looking for a left-handed bat off the bench.

The next day, August 2, it was Don Newcombe's turn to take the hill. Newk was on a roll, having won his six previous decisions, and 8 of his last 9. He was masterful this day. Aaron singled in the first. Adcock doubled to lead off the second, and at second base he stayed. Jack Dittmar, the Braves' second baseman and lead-off hitter, singled in the sixth. Bill Bruton singled in the ninth. And that was it. No other Milwaukee Brave reached base. Newk walked nobody. Only Adcock got as far as second. Newcombe struck out 10 of the Braves—his highest strikeout total of the season. 

Don Newcombe was now 16-5 for the season. The Dodgers were now 57-41. More importantly, from the Ebbets Field perspective, the Milwaukee Braves' 5½-game lead of exactly one week ago was down to just a single game over the Cincinnati Reds, and two over the Dodgers.

If the Yankees, barring an un-Yankee-like collapse, had the field to themselves in the American League, the National League was settling in for a three-team run to the finish line. For the Brooklyn Dodgers, it was 98 games down and two months and 56 to go. Five would be against the Reds and four against the Braves.