Running for Larsen, No. 10, Phil Rizzuto (60 Years Ago, August 16, 1956)

In his last game as a Yankee, and perhaps in his big league career, on Friday, August 12 of this year, Alex Rodriguez probably did not know that in another four days it would be the sixtieth anniversary of Phil Rizzuto's last game as both a Yankee and a major league ballplayer. A-Rod was treated with a farewell ceremony before the game at Yankee Stadium, being in the starting line-up, and knowing it would be his final farewell appearance—at least in pinstripes. For the Scooter, there was no farewell ceremony; he was not in the starting line-up; and he did not know it would be the final game of his career. Indeed, all Phil Rizzuto knew for certain was that he was still a New York Yankee when the game ended, although now a seldom-used reserve for Casey Stengel.

Running for Larsen, No. 10, Phil Rizzuto
(60 Years Ago, August 16, 1956)

Boston right-hander Willard Nixon took a 2-0 lead and a 1-hitter into the bottom of the ninth at Yankee Stadium on August 16, 1956. Yankee hopes got a rise when shortstop Milt Bolling booted Gil McDougald's grounder and pinch hitter Mickey McDermott—a pitcher who frequently masqueraded as a pinch hitter for Stengel because he could hit—singled to put runners on first and second leading off the ninth. For McDermott, it was the 16th time his manager had sent him up to pinch hit and his fourth hit in 13 official at bats (he also walked twice and had a sacrifice bunt). Billy Hunter was sent in to run for McDermott, representing the tying run.

Yankee starter Don Larsen, himself a pretty good hitter for a pitcher, came to bat, presumably to bunt both runners over, and wound up reaching base himself on a fielding error by second baseman Billy Goodman. The bases were loaded with nobody out and Hank Bauer, Billy Martin, and Mickey Mantle were the next three Yankees due up. 

Perhaps Yankee Stadium was graced by the voice of the home team's long-time public address announcer Bob Sheppard, then in only the 6th of his eventual 57 years on the job, intoning . . . "Running for Larsen, Number 10, Phil Rizzuto." (I admit to presuming, since I don't know.)

Rizzuto, representing the could-be winning run, would be running on 38-year-old legs that would be 39 in a little over a month. Once the cornerstone shortstop of Casey Stengel's five pennants and five World Series championships in his first five years as Yankee manager from 1949 to 1953, which included the Scooter finishing second in the 1949 voting for AL Most Valuable Player, winning the Award in 1950, and finishing sixth in the 1953 MVP voting, Phil Rizzuto was now at the end of Casey Stengel's bench.

Hardly able to keep his average above .200 in the summer of '54, Rizzuto was often removed for a pinch hitter if he came to bat and the Yankees had a scoring opportunity. He was benched in favor of Willy Miranda as the starting shortstop in mid-August that year, although Stengel often sent him in as a late-inning defensive replacement. Billy Hunter had the shortstop job in 1955, but the Scooter won his job back in early August and started all seven games in the World Series. McDougald was Stengel's choice to play shortstop in 1956, and this time there was no winning back the job for the baseball-elderly Phil Rizzuto.

If Rizzuto was not exactly the 25th man in the dugout, it was only because the Yankees were obligated to keep 19-year-old infielder Tommy Carroll on their major league roster because he signed as a "bonus baby," and because Stengel chose to keep third-string catcher Charlie Silvera on the team. Carroll would appear in 36 games for the 1956 Yankees and get into the starting line-up just once, when Stengel started him at third base in the last game of the season. Silvera spent virtually the entire season warming up pitchers in the bullpen, appeared in just seven games all year, and also got just one start—his in the Yankees' 139th game on the schedule on September 12. 

When Stengel called on him to pinch run for Larsen with the bases loaded and nobody out in the bottom of the 9th inning on August 16, 1956, it was only the 31st time Rizzuto had gotten into a game so far in the season. He had started just 15 games, including seven straight from June 24 to July 1, during which he had 5 hits in 19 at bats. The last game he started was on August 2 in Cleveland, where he went hitless in three at bats against Herb Score, who shutout the Yankees on 4 hits. Rizzuto had not played in any game since.

Faced with a bases loaded, no out jam, Red Sox pitcher Nixon fanned Bauer and got Martin to hit into a force out at second base, a run scoring on the play, but Mantle flied out to end the game. Forced at second by Martin for the second out of the inning was Phil Rizzuto. As he jogged back to the dugout, the Scooter could not imagine that that would be his last act as a major league player. 

There is no record of any appreciative applause by the Yankee Stadium fans for a terrific career by a player who had been instrumental in the Yankees winning nine American League pennants and seven World Series going back to his rookie year in 1941. Nobody knew it would be his last game.

For the 75-39 Yankees, whose lead was now 9½ games over Cleveland as a result of that loss, it was 114 games down and just 40 to go in the 1956 season. Phil Rizzuto surely figured he'd still be in pinstripes for those 40 games, even if hardly used, and would get into his tenth World Series with the Yankees, or at least get to watch from a prime seat in the dugout.

In fact, he had little over a week left as a New York Yankee.

1956 Yankees Wave Bye-Bye to Rest of League (July 20, Sixty Years Ago)

The first-place Yankees put away the last-place Kansas City Athletics on July 20th, sixty years ago, to extend their advantage over second-place Cleveland to 11 games. After beginning the month with only a 2-game lead over the White Sox, and the Indians 5½ behind, the Yankees' streak of 16 wins in their first 19 games in July had them now firmly in control of the American League pennant race. 

1956 Yankees Wave Bye-Bye to Rest of League

The Yankees began the month of July with three straight wins at home, two of them walk-offs. In the second game of a July 1st Sunday doubleheader against Washington, after Joe Collins's 2-run homer off Camilo Pascual in the 8th inning of the opener lifted the Yankees to a 3-2 win, Mantle blasted his 29th home run of the season with a runner on and the score tied 6-6 in the last of the 9th to end the game. The Mick had also homered in the 7th, that one erasing the Senators' 6-5 lead. 

Two days later, after an off day, Casey Stengel made the unconventional move of sending Mickey McDermott, a pitcher by profession—but a pitcher who could hit—up to bat for Gil McDougald with the bases loaded and one out in the last of the 12th in a 3-3 game against the Orioles. That seemed odd, given that McDougald was batting .295 and was 2-for-5 on the day. As so often was the case with Mr. Stengel, his instinct proved the correct one; McDermott singled home the winning run for another Yankee walk-off. For more on Mickey McDermott's prowess with the bat, see my post of May 14 in this series on the 1956 season, "Batting 8th for the New York Yankees, the Pitcher ..." (link at end of article.)

Then it was off to Boston for the Yankees, who were walked-off by a Jimmy Piersall run-scoring single in the bottom of the 11th in the first game of a July Fourth doubleheader, but easily won the second game. Game 2 was the first time all year that Mickey Mantle was given a game off. It wasn't a day off, because he played in the first game. 

In fact, Mantle not playing the second game was less a nice gesture by Stengel to give his best player a breather than concern that Mantle might have reinjured his ever-troublesome right knee charging Piersall's single into center field trying to cut down the winning run at the plate in the opener. Failing to do so, he hobbled off the field and ended up missing the next four games. Mantle returned to play in the final game before the All-Star break, went 1-for-3 before being removed in the 5th inning, then played all 9 innings in the All-Star Game two days later, hitting a home run.

The Yankees' triumph in the second game of their Fourth of July doubleheader in Boston was the first of 11 straight victories that broke open the American League pennant race. It surely helped that five of those wins came consecutively against the only two clubs anyone thought could actually, seriously, challenge the New York Yankees for the 1956 pennant.

The All-Star break ended with the tied-with-Chicago-for-second Cleveland Indians coming to Yankee Stadium for three games beginning July 12. For the Indians, trailing the Yankees by 6½ games, this was a pivotal series, and they went into it with their three best pitchers—Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, and Herb Score—lined up to face the Bronx Bombers. They got bombed, the Yankees won all three games, and the Indians left New York, New York down by 9½ games. The Yankees won the concluding game of the set, 5-4, in the last of the 10th when Billy Martin greeted relief pitcher Bob Feller, brought in specifically to face him, with a one-out bases-loaded single to drive in the winning run.

The 37-year-old Feller was by now worn out, pitching mostly in relief, and in his last major league season. This was his 10th appearance of the year, and he would pitch in just 9 more games before calling it a career. Feller's last two appearances were complete-game starts 15 days apart in September. He lost both games to go 0-4 for 1956, and 266-162 for his career. If not for missing three full seasons and most of a fourth serving his country during World War II, Bob Feller almost certainly would have been in the neighborhood of at least 340 wins.

The Yankees were the only team against which Feller had a losing record, winning just 30 of 67 decisions in 79 games (73 of them starts). One of those 30 wins was the second of his three no-hitters, a 1-0 masterpiece at Yankee Stadium on April 30, 1946, in which he fanned 11 but walked 5.

Anyway, back to 1956. 

Coming next to New York for a Sunday doubleheader on July 15 were the Chicago White Sox, tied with Cleveland for second, 9½ games back of the Yankees. This really was a make-or-break two games for the White Sox because they had lost 6 in a row. Whitey Ford outdueled Chicago ace Billy Pierce to win the opener, 2-1, and after the White Sox took a 5-4 lead in the top of the 10th of the nightcap, the Yankees won their fourth walk-off in their last 13 games when Hank Bauer lined a two-out bases-loaded single in the bottom of the inning to drive in the tying and winning runs. The White Sox had now lost 8 in a row on their way to a season-destroying 11-game losing streak before they were finally back in the win column.

After splitting their next four games with the Tigers, Kansas City came to New York for three games beginning on July 20. Whitey Ford's victory in the first of those games gave the Yankees their largest lead of the season. Their record at 60-28, the Yankees had won more than two-thirds of their games. 

With 88 games down and 66 to go, their lead over second-place Cleveland at 11 games and Chicago 13 games behind in fourth place, and with Mantle having a year for the ages, the Yankees had effectively said good-bye to the rest of the American League. Especially it being these were The New York Yankees, it was highly improbable they would not win their seventh pennant in the eight years of the Stengel regime, even with more than two months to go. The big question for the Yankees now was:

Might Mickey Mantle, with 31 home runs in the Yankees' first 88 games, keep up the pace to break Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a single season? It took the Babe 94 games into the season to get to 31 in 1927, so the Mick was ahead of the Bambino. Both players had missed just four of their team's games by the time they hit their 31st home run.

For more on Pitcher Mickey McDermott, the Batter, see:
 http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2016/05/batting-8th-for-new-york-yankees.html)

Batting 8th for the New York Yankees, the Pitcher ... (60 Years Ago in 1956)

It's often said that the baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. After having set the pace out front of everybody else since just the fourth game of the year, the Yankees awoke in Cleveland on May 16, 1956, preparing to play they 27th game of the season—the equivalent of 4.5 miles into a 26-mile marathon—to find that the Indians were now running beside them in the race. True, it was early, but the Yankees definitely preferred that their arch rival since the 1951 season be running behind them, rather than running even. Casey Stengel's starting line-up for the game was quite unorthodox; he had the pitcher bat eighth and his weak-hitting shortstop, Phil Rizzuto, ninth—not so unusual today, perhaps, but in the 1950s it certainly was.

60 Years Ago (1956): Batting 8th for the New York Yankees, the Pitcher . . .

The Indians pulled into a first-place tie with the Yankees in both teams' previous game when left fielder Al Smith led off the last of the ninth with a game-winning, walk-off home run off Johnny Kucks to break a 2-2 tie. Both Yankee runs came on home runs, back-to-back off Cleveland ace Bob Lemon in the fourth by Gil McDougald and Mickey Mantle. For Mantle, it was his 12th of the year, and he now had 26 RBIs in the Yankees' first 26 games. Many had predicted the Mick would have an unbelievable year. They were proving right on that one.

Anyway, Stengel had hard-throwing southpaw Mickey McDermott take the mound for the Yankees in their next game against the Indians. In 1949 McDermott had been a hot-shot prospect for the Red Sox. but he was hardly as disciplined at his craft as, say, his teammate Ted Williams was at his, and never lived up to expectations. He had become a journeyman pitcher. When the Yankees acquired McDermott before the start of the 1956 season, it was primarily to provide pitching depth should something happen to one of their core starting pitchers. He was making his fourth start of the year with a record of 1-2. He was the losing pitcher in his previous start six days before, giving up 4 runs in 5 innings when Cleveland was in New York.

What was unusual about this start was not that Stengel started him opposite Cleveland right-hander Mike Garcia, a very good pitcher in his own right, in a game against the club the Yankees considered to be their principal rival for the pennant, even though Whitey Ford, his ace, was sufficiently rested. No, what was unusual was that McDermott was batting eighth in the line-up and shortstop Phil Rizzuto ninth.

By now, eight years into the Stengel era, if there was any lesson learned about Casey as a manager, it was that he was nothing if not unconventional—from his incessant platooning of players, to his constant manipulation of who batted where in the line-up in any given game, to his frequent in-game position-player substitutions. But there was always a method to his madness that he never tired of explaining, although his explanations usually needed explanation.

In the 1950s, the pitcher always batted ninth. The pitcher was presumed to be the weakest hitter in the line-up, and that's just the way it was. It didn't matter, for example, that a pitcher like Brooklyn's Don Newcombe was a damn-good hitter who hit .271 in his career, had 15 career home runs, drove in 108 runs, and was frequently used as a pinch hitter; in the 294 games Big Newk was the starting pitcher in his major league career, not once did he ever bat anywhere but in the No. 9 spot. 

To the Ole Perfessor, that didn't necessarily make sense. Sometimes, which was rarely, his pitcher was not necessarily the weakest bat in the line-up. If the ninth spot was for the weakest hitter, and that hitter happened to be a position player, maybe the pitcher should bat eighth instead. Casey experimented extensively with that concept the previous year in 1955.

Of the 2,474 starting line-ups that were made out by the managers of the 16 major league teams in 1955, only 15 had the pitcher not bat last. All 15 of those line-ups were written out by Casey Stengel. Tommy Byrne batted eighth in 8 of the 22 games he started and seventh in 3 other starts in 1955, and Don Larsen eighth in 4 of his 13 starts. That was perfectly logical to Casey because the three position players who batted ninth in those 15 games—infielders Rizzuto, Billy Hunter, and Jerry Coleman—were all light-weight hitters in slumps, and both Byrne and Larsen were very good hitters for pitchers. Byrne finished his major league career with 14 home runs and a .238 average. Larsen also had 14 homers in his big league career, while batting .242. 

The game in Cleveland on May 16 was the first time Stengel had his pitcher bat eighth in 1956. McDermott was a good hitter, and not just with the faint praise of "for a pitcher." He was a good hitter, who had hit .281 in his six years in Boston and who would retire with a lifetime .252 average, with 9 homers and 24 RBIs. He was 2-for-7 for a .286 average so far in the season, including 1-for-2 as a pinch hitter. Phil Rizzuto, meanwhile, was still looking for his first hit.

Rizzuto was no longer the Yankee shortstop. In the not too distant past he had been the shortstop cornerstone of the five (pennants)-and-five (World Championships)-in-five (years) Yankee teams from 1949 to 1953. Those years, the Scooter batted first or second in Stengel's line-up. But now he was 38 years old, at the end of his career, and the 25th guy on the club instead of a core regular. On this day, Rizzuto was starting for only the third time all year. He had also played in four games as a late-inning defensive replacement. He was hitless in six at bats.

As it happened, Rizzuto went 1-for-4 to bring his average up to .100 and drove in the Yankees' 3rd run of the game with a sacrifice squeeze bunt. McDermott lasted only 3.1 innings, giving up just one run even though he allowed four walks and three hits. He went hitless in his two at bats. Mantle had a 3-for-4 day to raise his average to exactly .400, including his 13th home run in the seventh to finish off the scoring in the Yankees' 4-1 win. Did I mention many predicted the Mick would have an unbelievable year?

The Yankees were now 17-10 and back in first place all alone, one game ahead of Cleveland and 1½ up on Chicago, their next stop for three games. It was 27 games down and 127 to go. The Yankees never again in 1956 had to look anywhere but down to see how any other team was doing.

As for the pitcher-batting-eighth gambit, of the 2,492 starting line-ups written by managers during the 1956 season (including 4 games that ended as ties because of weather), the pitcher batted 9th in 2,489 of them. On May 9, the White Sox batted pitcher Dick Donovan eighth and struggling rookie Luis Aparicio ninth; then came the game McDermott started against the Indians, and finally on June 3 against Detroit, Stengel batted starting pitcher Larsen eighth and third baseman Jerry Coleman ninth. Coleman had just 1 hit in 10 at bats at the time and was making just his second start of the season.  

BTW: Don Larsen was batting ninth on October 8, 1956, when he pitched his perfect game in the World Series.