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Through six months and 327 ball games it seemed
unlikely that the collective pitching staffs of
the New York Yankees and the San Francisco
Giants were in any danger of being inducted into
the Hall of Fame en masse. Neither team reached
the World Series on pitching, but on crash. The
Giants led the National League in batting and
home runs, the Yankees led the American League
in batting and were second in homers. Willie
Mays won a championship, Mickey Mantle narrowly
missed another. The Yankees had three regulars
over .300, the Giants four. So what happened in
the Series? Somebody took the rabbit out of the
ball and put spaghetti in the bats. The names of
the scoundrels were Ford, Sanford, Terry,
Stafford, Pierce and Marichal Some of them won
and some of them lost but seldom, if ever, has a
World Series begun with such superb all-round
work from the mound. After three games the
Yankees were hitting .202 as a team, with one
home run, the Giants .213 with two. Inevitably
such futile swatting had to end, but even when
it did, in the fourth game, it was because both
starting pitchers had been replaced—due to
circumstance, not weakness.
The fourth game began with Juan Marichal,
considered by some the finest young pitcher in
the National League, attempting to even the
Series at two games apiece at the expense of
Edward Charles Ford, considered by almost
everyone the finest middle-aged pitcher south of
Cooperstown. For four innings the Yankees could
do nothing with Marichal and trailed 2-0 as a
result of Catcher Tom Haller's two-run homer in
the second. But then Ford solved the problem
himself.
In the top of the fifth he threw a pitch that
Marichal, trying to bunt, misjudged. The ball
hit Marichal on the pitching hand, smashing his
index finger, and the young right-hander was
through. The Yankees tied the score in the
sixth, and Ford departed, too, for a pinch
hitter. The pitching replacements available to
Manager Ralph Houk were all Giant cousins.
The big Giant effort was delivered by young
Chuck Hiller with two out and the bases loaded
in the seventh inning. Two innings before,
Hiller had struck out with the bases full. This
time he swung lustily at a Marshall Bridges fast
ball that promptly landed in the lap of a New
York restaurant owner named Cappy Roselli
sitting up front in the right-field stands. This
was the first World Series grand slam home run
ever hit by a National Leaguer. Six of the
previous seven were hit by Yankees.
"Mah fast ball usely runs in on a left-handah,"
said Bridges. "This one fohgot to run." In a
most unusual Series, it was one of the few
pitches that didn't go where it was aimed.
Ford won the opener by a score of 6-2 over Billy
O'Dell, who had started only once and relieved
only once in the previous four days as the
Giants scrambled frantically past the Dodgers to
the National League pennant. He was, therefore,
the most rested—or least unrested—member of
Alvin Dark's pitching staff. But O'Dell was
tired and he knew it. So did Manager Dark, but
there was nothing he could do about it. And so
did the Yankees—although it took them seven
innings to cash in on the fact.
They led, briefly, 2-0 on Roger Maris'
first-inning double that was a home run until
Felipe Alou climbed up the right-field fence and
pulled it back into the field of play (see page
20). But the Giants pecked away at Ford for a
run in the second inning on three hits, the last
of these a deftly executed bunt by Jose Pagan
with Willie Mays on third. "I see third baseman
play left field", said Pagan, "so I surprise
heem. I surprise pitcher, too, no?"
The Giants tied it up in the third when Mays
drove in a run with a clout into center field.
In fact, for a while the ball game seemed to be
shaping up as a duel between Ford and Mays.
Wondrous Willie got three hits, one of them a
viciously hooking ground ball through shortstop
that Tony Kubek called "the hardest I have ever
seen." Tony started toward his left, ended up
reaching, in vain, toward his right as the ball
shot past. "I thought you played that one
beautifully," Bobby Richardson told Kubek later.
"you managed not to get hit by it." Although
Mays won the battle, it was Ford who won the
war. He stopped the Giants after the third
inning on four scattered singles, one by Mays,
and even struck Willie out on a good fast ball
tight across the letters his fourth time up.
When Mays trotted to the bench, Ford had to
grin.
One reason for the grin was that the Yankees had
put him back in the lead in the seventh on Clete
Boyer's lead-off homer to left. They scored
three more runs against O'Dell, Don Larsen and
Stu Miller in the eighth and ninth innings.
Whitey's record World Series scoreless streak
ended at 33 2/3 innings when Mays crossed the
plate, an event that hardly left Ford in tears.
"I'm glad it's over. That thing was beginning to
bug me," he said.
Ford pitched well but no better than Ralph Terry
on Friday. The only trouble was that Terry ran
into Jack Sanford on what Sanford later
evaluated as his greatest day. The Boston
Irishman, who once worked as a chauffeur for Lou
Perini of the Braves and spent seven years
rattling around the minor leagues, went into the
game with 24 National League victories, a bad
cold and only two days' rest. He came out of the
game with a cold and a magnificent three-hitter
for his first World Series win. "The cold didn't
bother me," he said between sniffles. "What did
I do for it? I just blew my nose. But, man, was
I nervous. About like I felt in my first game as
a rookie. But I knew I had one thing in my
favor. They wouldn't send me down to the minors
this time, even if I lost."
Sanford was never in danger of losing—until the
final out. The Giants scored a run in the first
on Chuck Hiller's double, a sacrifice by Felipe
Alou and Matty Alou's grounder to second base.
In the seventh Willie McCovey hit a baseball
that soared up into the wind over Candlestick
Park's right field, somehow missed the
helicopters and light planes that circled
overhead all day, and finally fell to earth well
beyond the fence, where Maris watching in some
disapproval.
"Ever hit one farther?" Willie was asked in the
locker room after the game.
"Yep," said McCovey.
Maris had a chance to tie it up in the ninth
after Mantle doubled. But Dark overshifted his
infield to the right side, using Pagan, Hiller
and Orlando Cepeda between first and second
base. "Every ball I had seen Maris hit was to
the right side," said Dark. "Maybe he'll hit 20
to the left tomorrow, but until he does we'll
shift on him every time the Yankees need the
long ball." Whether Alvin Dark is or is not a
genius, he certainly earned a gold star. Maris
sent a sizzling ground ball to the right of
Cepeda for what would normally have been a
single into right. The ball was hit so hard that
Hiller didn't have much chance to move, but he
didn't need to move far. He leaned over, plucked
it off the ground and threw Maris out. The game
was over, and Ralph Terry, with a two-hitter of
his own working for six innings, could only
shrug it off. As for Ralph Houk of the Yankees,
he sat in his locker for a long time after the
game, puffed on his cigar, grinned
philosophically—and mentally stuck pins in a
Giant doll.
An arm and a shin The pins had less to do with
what happened on Sunday than Bill Stafford's
right arm and left shin. For 6 1/2 innings,
Stafford and Billy Pierce hooked up in a
pitching contest that permitted a total of only
three hits. Stafford walked two Giants in the
first inning, then shut off the threat without a
run and gave up only a harmless double to Jim
Davenport and nothing more until the eighth. His
good fast ball was sizzling and along with it he
threw more curves and changeups than usual,
keeping the Giants off balance, forcing them to
hit the ball softly into the air or weakly along
the ground.
Through six innings Pierce kept pace, stifling
the Yankees on his big left-handed curve as he
had back in the days when he pitched regularly
in their league and won 189 games. But the
Yankees, held to two hits this time, finally
broke loose. Tom Tresh, leading off the seventh
inning, singled. Mantle singled and when the
ball took a high hop off Felipe Alou's glove,
Tresh went to third and Mantle to second. This
left first base open but, after a conference,
Pierce and Dark decided not to walk Maris
intentionally.
"I wasn't going to give him anything good," said
Pierce. "I was going to throw him four balls
outside; if he bit at them, fine, if not, that
was O.K., too. I didn't mind walking him but I
didn't want to give him anything good to hit. So
what did I do? I put one pitch right over the
plate." Maris drove it into right field, scoring
Tresh and Mantle and went to second base when
McCovey bobbled the ball. He raced to third on
Elston Howard's fly ball to center, beating a
throw from Mays. He remained there when Moose
Skowron was hit by a pitch. And he scored on a
double-play ball that was bobbled, momentarily,
by Chuck Hiller. The famed Yankee luck had
returned to normal, which means for the better,
and the three runs meant the ball game.
Stafford had to do more than pitch in the Giant
half of the eighth. Pagan led off with a single
and was forced by Pinch Hitter Matty Alou. Then
a ball came rifling back at Stafford off the bat
of Felipe Alou. It smashed into his left shin
and bounced 15 feet in front of the mound.
Stafford pounced like a cat, threw to first base
to beat Alou by a stride and then sat down. The
Yankee trainer ran out, followed by Houk.
Teammates gathered around. They supplied
smelling salts and sympathy and advice, but the
thing that brought Stafford back to his feet was
his own stubborn, cocky pride. He grabbed the
ball, waved everyone aside and threw two
violent, testing pitches to the plate. Then he
motioned to plate Umpire Stan Landes to get the
game going again and made Chuck Hiller ground
out to second base.
The Giants finally scored off Stafford with two
out in the ninth. Mays banged a double down the
left-field line leading off the inning, and
three batters later Ed Bailey hit a fast ball
hard enough to beat Maris to the short
right-field seats. It was clear that Stafford's
leg was hurting; he was limping after each
pitch. But after Bailey's home run, he had to
throw only a few more pitches. The last of these
went into the hands of Tom Tresh in left field
for the final out.
"Did I consider taking him out?" said Ralph Houk.
"No. There wasn't any blood showing, was there?"
Then he grinned. "I really was worried," he
admitted, "but how could you take out a boy who
was pitching a great game in the World Series
like that?" How indeed? Especially in a
pitchers' World Series like this one. |
