PRAISE 'N' BRAYS FOR SERIES PLAYS
"The World Series of 1955:
Most Spectacular Play: Sandy Amoros' catch of Yogi Berra's high fly in the seventh game.
Best Fielding Play: A double play by the Yankees in the last game. Billy Martin made a great stop of Pee Wee Reese's bounding ball, got the ball to Phil Rizzuto at second and, while flying through the air, Rizzuto made the relay to first.
Biggest Mystery: Don Newcombe's arm, sore or not?
Sharpest Crack: Casey Stengel, when Martin was thrown out at the plate trying to steal in the first game, asked what he said to Martin, the Yankee manager replied, 'I congratulated him on being out.'
Second Sharpest Crack: Duke Snider's home run to right center in the fifth inning of the fifth game, a legitimate home run in any ball park in the world. No other Series homer could make this claim.
Worst Strategy: Walt Alston's failure to yank Billy Loes in the fourth inning of the second game when the Yankees were combing his hair with line drives. Even after a walk and four sharp singles, Alston permitted Loes, a right-hander, to pitch to Eddie Robinson, a left-handed pinch hitter. He promptly hit Robinson. Then with Tommy Byrne, a good left-handed hitter, up, Alston still left Loes in, though Spooner was ready to relieve. Byrne's drive past Loes' ear cracked the game wide open.
Best Manager: In the long one, Alston, despite a wobbly beginning. He refused to be stampeded by his own men, some of whom (notably Zimmer and Newcombe) groused openly. Finally, in the clutch game, Alston and Johnny Podres settled on the type of pitching best suited to Yankee Stadium as contrasted to Ebbets Field.
Best Pitcher: Podres, perod. He had everything a winning pitcher needed, including guts.
Best Game: The seventh, when the only tension and stress of the entire series became manifest in the late innings. As Podres continued to be the master of the Yankees, the regard and affection of the customers for him grew to mammoth proportions.
Biggest Winners: The club owners, who got rich from the fifth, sixth and seventh games.
Best All-Around Fielder: Phil Rizzuto again. The Yankee shortstop handled all chances, several of them requiring agility and speed you wouldn't expect from a 37-year-old shortstop. He ranged the infield, from deep in the hole to back of second. He pivoted, at the risk of limb, on double plays. And he rushed in to make great underhand throws on balls hit slowly past the mound.
Best Second Guess: The Yankees would have won with Mantle able to play all of each game.
Second Best Second Guess: On Stengel in the fifth game. With the Yankees behind, 4-2, in the eighth inning, and with a man and Martin representing the tying run, he didn't pinch-hit Mantle in that spot. A long ball was the Yankees' only hope and in Ebbets Field any kind of a fly ball Mantle might hit might be a home run.
Unluckiest Player: Irv Noren. Handicapped by a leg injury, he grounded into five double plays.
Luckiest Player: Roy Campanella because he has to play in Yankee Stadium only at World Series time.
Luckiest Non-Players: Silvera, Wiesler, Leja, Walker, Howell and Koufax. All got full shares without appearing in a single game.
Cheapest Home Runs: Furillo in the first game in Yankee Stadium, Amoros in the fifth game in Ebbets Field. Furillo's was a slicer that went only about 310 feet, Amoros' was a lazy fly that fell just over the right field fence.
Best Inning: The ninth of the seventh game. You could hear the heartbeats of 62,465 tightened-up fans as Podres retired Skowron, Cerv and Howard in order."
-Franklin Lewis, condensed from the Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, November 1955)
WHY CASEY DIDN'T BUNT WITH BERRA
Here's Stengel's Playback Of Key World Series Play
"When the Yankees' daily chores are done, Casey Stengel and his coaches gather with the newspapermen and William, maitre de press room in Yankee Stadium, serves refreshments. If a visitor minds his manners and is pure of heart and does good deeds, he may be rewarded with a dissertation on baseball by the incomparable, the imitable, the unmitigated Mr. Stengel.
This was such a day. Talk meandered aimlessly for a while, touching on Mr. Stengel's threat to play nine shortstops occasionally this year just because he had nine shortstops in camp, moving on to the six-man and seven-man infields which Branch Rickey experimented with a few springs ago, and all of sudden the meeting was hips-deep in a discussion of offensive tactics with special reference to the final game of the last World Series.
That was the game of the Wonderful Double Play which Brooklyn won, 2-0, behind Johnny Podres. The Yankees couldn't score on Podres but they were about to score when Yogi Berra sliced a fly to left field with one out and runners on first and second. Sandy Amoros, going faster and farther than Wes Santee, rushed from left-center field to the foul line, caught the ball and fired it to Pee Wee Reese, whose relay doubled Gil McDougald off first base, ending the inning and saving the world's championship. It was a game whose details remain vivid in Casey's memory and probably always will because he's never lost a World Series before.
Now he replayed it.
'I didn't make too many excuses because how can you get mad at that fella for pitching so good and everybody keeps talking all winter about the seventh game but where I lost the Series was in the third, fourth and fifth games because all I got to do is win one of them and there ain't no seventh game. I win the first two games and if you win the first two games of a short series like that you figure to take the series and all I wanted was one of those three games in Brooklyn but I lost three there and after being ahead in one, 6-1.
'Now, they ask me would I bunt with Berra in that situation with two men on base and I say, yes, I would bunt with Berra but let me remind you of Charlie Dressen a couple years before. He bunted with Campanella but I got a man there behind the plate built like a wrestler, you'd say, because he ain't got legs that would look good on a woman.
'Dressen bunted twice with Campanella and the next fella, a pretty good hitter too, and that fella looks like a wrestler, he jumped out there in front of the plate and got the bunts and th'owed men out at third. All the writers said wow, it was close, did the umpire blow the play maybe, but Mr. Berra made the play and the umpire said out.
'Now, you compare catchers, if you can compare American and National League, and I don't think Campanella, the great catcher that he is, could get out there for that ball quite as fast as the wrestler. Ask me a catcher that can th'ow a little better than Berra sometimes and I have to give you Mr. Campanella. Or you want a fella can do a job for you with that stick on a ball up here, Mr. Campanella is a batsman that gets better with age. He will hit that ball for you and Berra will hit some of them, too.
'All right, maybe I could bunt with Berra but baseball today is the greatest act I ever saw in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings. The first baseman charges you and the third baseman charges you and when you got runners on first and second base they can make a force-out at third.
'Suppose Berra does bunt and they move those runners over, are they going to bring the infield in now and give the next batter a chance to get a base hit on a ground ball? With the score 2-0, they are not. That fella over there who I think did an amazing job because he kept his mouth shut and handled some men that were maybe a little tough to handle, he will have his infield back for the double play and concede me that run on third base.
'Maybe I could get that run home but the way that fella was pitching we didn't look like we were gonna score because we had other chances and didn't score. Do you know how many innings I went without scoring? The day before I won, but didn't score after the first inning so it was 17 innings I didn't get a run in those two games and then I went to Honolulu and I didn't score in my first three innings there. That's 20 innings and I'm not used to going that long.
'No, I figure I got a man up there at bat built like a wrestler that can pull a ball into the right field seats pretty good and if we're going to score at all again against that pitcher this might be the time. Remember, I need two runs to tie and if I give up Berra on a bunt then it's two out and the sacrifice fly is no good to me to get any runs home.
'I figure Berra might pull the ball to right field and so do they, because if they were pitching outside to make him hit to left, why was their outfield playing all the way over in right field? Because it's a right field hitter that's up.
'But Berra hits to the foul line in left and with the left fielder way towards center field that's going to be a two-base hit nine times out of ten. McDougald runs past second and I don't blame McDougald because he's looking to tie the score from first base the way our club can do some times. McDougald ain't dumb and he runs the bases pretty good.
'If I was the runner on first base I would do the same thing as McDougald because he is the tying run. If that ball drops in there, they wouldn't have had a chance in the world to get McDougald at the plate, I don't care how good the relay is.
'But the ball don't drop in, and I'm ruined.' "
-Red Smith, New York Herald-Tribune (Baseball Digest, May 1956)
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