Sport: Fantastic Finish

The Yankees were nervous. In the dressing room, Joe DiMaggio paced the floor. Weak and pale from an attack of virus pneumonia which had kept him out of the line-up for 14 days, he muttered: “I wish I could save the energy I’m using now.” Then the Big Guy walked out to home plate to take his bow in the celebration of “Joe DiMaggio Day.”

Joe, the highest-paid player in baseball, had said in advance that he would give the money gifts from his hero-worshiping fans to charity. But there was a lot more than money ($7,500) in the gifts that were showered on him: two automobiles, a motorboat, two television sets, a radio, two watches, a $100 hat, an electric blanket, shirts, ties, a watch chain, potatoes, oranges, walnuts, lima beans, homemade lemonade, 300 quarts of ice cream. After the speeches, Joe bit his lip and let the tears run down his cheeks. “I thank the good Lord that he made me a Yankee,” he said.

It was fine that Joe, the most popular player alive, was having his “day.” To the 69,551 in Yankee Stadium, it was even better that he was back in the lineup. The Yankees, who had held onto first place since the very first day of the season despite 70 injuries to their players, had fallen a game behind. In one of the most frenetic baseball weeks since 1908,* Joe McCarthy’s Boston Red Sox had taken over first place. In the National League, Burt Shotton’s Brooklyn Dodgers had been suddenly handed a one-game lead when the St. Louis Cardinals fell apart. The scene was set for a storybook finish.

At Yankee Stadium. On his first time in at the plate, Joe DiMaggio struck out. Then Pitcher Allie Reynolds walked three Red Sox in a row and Relief Pitcher Joe Page walked two more. By the time the hitting-and-walking uprising was put down, the Red Sox were four runs ahead. His third time up, Joe DiMaggio doubled; Slowly, the Yankees began to nibble away at the Red Sox lead. Left-hander Page, getting a grip on himself, said: “Whenever I got a little tired, I looked at that guy [DiMaggio] and said to myself, ‘If he can play the way he feels, I can pitch forever.’ ” To Yankee fans, it seemed that he did. He gave only one hit in the last 6| innings; the Yankees won (5-4) on a homer by long-legged Outfielder Johnny Lindell.

Next day, in the game that would decide everything, DiMaggio lashed out a triple and lasted into the ninth inning. When he was too weak to run after a long drive, he took himself out of the game. But by that time the Yankees had built up enough of a lead. Despite a last-minute Red Sox rally, they won the game (5-3) and their 16th pennant. Said Manager Casey Stengel: “The greatest thrill of my life.”

Dodger Day. Exactly 36 minutes later in Philadelphia’s Shibe Park, the Dodgers hauled in the National League pennant with a 9-7 ten-inning victory over the Phillies. In the final week, they had gone to the top of the league (after six weeks in second place) by winning a crashing doubleheader in the rain over the Boston Braves (9-2 and 8-0). But they had less reason to thank their own bats than the batty stretch-run performance of the Cardinals.

All through the Midwest there were banshee cries from distraught fans as the Cardinals let pop flies drop for base hits, ran the bases like schoolboys and failed to hit in the clutch. The most harassed man in the midlands was Cardinal Manager Eddie Dyer, who got tired of making excuses for his butterfingered heroes and snapped: “We just ran out of gas, that’s all.”

*When the Chicago Cubs (Evers, Tinker and Chance) and the Detroit Tigers (Donovan, Crawford and Cobb) each won their respective pennants on the last day of the season.