ABOUT REYNOLDS
In seven of his 12 seasons with the Indians and Yankees, Allie Pierce Reynolds won 16 or more games (20 in 1952), totaling 182 wins against 107 defeats from 1943 through 1954. But his greatest triumph of all was in the 1949 World Series opener, as detailed here.
-Baseball Digest, October 1959
10 YEARS AGO: REYNOLDS' GREAT VICTORY IN '49
"Allie pitched one of the finest games in World Series history by edging the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1-0, in the opening game of the 1949 set. But unless you saw Reynolds pitching against Don Newcombe, you couldn't appreciate what was happening to Reynolds. It looked as if he were losing, honestly, it did.
Hardly anybody expected Reynolds to finish the game, for the very reason that he seldom does. Imagine a pitcher winning 17 games and being able to finish only four of what he started. That was Reynolds during the 1949 season.
Yet Reynolds pitched nine full innings in heat and humidity. He won. He gave up only two hits. What else can a guy do before 66,224 screaming mortals? What else ... ?
Allie worked on track and baseball in his undergraduate days at Oklahoma A&M at Stillwater. The Cleveland Indians signed him, and the first thing we knew, just as the war was warming up, Allie was promoted from Wilkes-Barre to Cleveland.
Bill Veeck wanted Joe Gordon and Larry MacPhail wanted Reynolds, which is how Allie got to win 19 games for the Yankees in 1947 and become a loud instrument in their pennant music. But when it came time to pick a pitcher for the opening game of the Series, Bucky Harris, then manager of the Yankees, delivered a supreme insult to Allie. He picked chubby Frank Shea, a rookie, and he made Allie wait until the second game.
Allie swallowed hard and took the bitter pill. Nobody wrote or said anything within his hearing that Harris thought Allie was too timid, but everyone knew what Harris was thinking and why. So Allie pitched and won the second game, 10-3.
'That's a typical Reynolds game,' carped the critics later. 'He doesn't like those tight games.'
Now it is 1949 and Reynolds is winning a flock of games, mainly with the help of Joe Page. Four complete games for a pitcher of Reynolds' capabilities! Wonder why they were talking about the guy's ticker?
They were waiting for him to blow up all during the first game of the Series. He was up against a great hurler, Newcombe. Allie gave up a double in the first inning, a fly by Spider Jorgensen that Lindell would have caught in faster going in the outfield. But Allie got Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson.
Still, Allie was getting second billing in the grandstand conversations, so terrific was Newcombe. But Newcombe wasn't better than Reynolds, wasn't as good, if you looked at the performances. It just seemed that way.
All of a sudden it was the eighth inning and only one Dodger (Hermanski in the second) had got past second base. Then you saw an odd sight. The Yankee bullpen was alive with guys throwing baseballs. No need for it. Allie was strong and good. Didn't Allie usually blow up close to the wire? Those four complete games must have been haunting Casey Stengel, the nervous manager of the Yankees. Casey had picked Allie as his starting pitcher. Timid? Casey didn't think so.
Yet Casey tossed his thoughts against the walls of the Yankee dugout and had caught them in his cap. He considered yanking Allie, despite the 0-0 score, and finishing with Joe Page. But Casey didn't. He went down to the wire with Allie, down through the ninth inning. He let Allie pitch that BIG inning to Robison, Hermanski and Furillo. Allie handled the three as if they were toys.
Why not? Allie had struck out nine men to 11 for Newcombe. They kept it close, much too close for a timid guy if Allie was that type. Besides, Allie didn't allow a hit between the first and eighth, when Pee Wee Reese singled.
You know the story of the ninth. Newcombe's third pitch to Henrich ... a home run ... the rush to the subways. And for Reynolds, the pitcher who was losing a tie ball game, a triumph because ...
Well, because he wasn't timid."
-Frank Lewis, Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, October 1959)
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