Sport: Joy in Brooklyn

Everest had been scaled, man had run the four-minute mile, and last week the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series.

After half a century of futility, and seven failures (1916 to 1953) in World Series tries, Brooklyn’s first world baseball championship came the hard way. The Dodgers were up against baseball’s greatest money team, the New York Yankees, unbeaten in seven series since 1942. The Dodgers lost the first two games; no team ever had come on to win a seven-game series* after such a poor start. Even when they erased the deficit by winning the next three games, the Dodgers’ hopes were still dim. Those three victories came in their own cozy Ebbets Field, where the fences are in easy range for hitters. But the seventh series game, the payoff, was to be played in spacious Yankee Stadium, the vast Bronx lot out of which no hitter, not even Babe Ruth, ever drove a baseball.†

Scarce Hits. To the stadium’s pitching mound for the finale, Brooklyn’s Manager Walter Alston sent 23-year-old Johnny Podres, a slender (6 ft. 170 Ibs.) lefthander who had spent most of the season on the Dodger bench. Alston’s logical starter, 2O-game winner Don Newcombe, was down with a sore arm. Podres, who “won only nine games in the regular season, had not lasted a full nine innings in league play since June 14. In late summer, the Dodger front office thought of shunting him to the disabled list and bringing up a minor leaguer who might be more help. But Alston gambled on starting him in the third series game, and Podres beat the Yankees. The manager and Podres himself were confident that the youngster could do it again. “I’ll shut them out,” said cocky, gum-chewing Johnny Podres. “I can beat those guys seven days a week.”

During one of the tensest World Series’ finishes ever played, Johnny Podres made his prediction stand up. Brooklyn’s Catcher Roy Campanella, First Baseman Gil Hodges and Shortstop Pee Wee Reese bunched scarce base hits to score single runs in the fourth and sixth innings. The Yankees came clawing back every time, getting men on the bases and bringing the potential tying or winning run to the plate. Once the Dodgers were saved by a brilliant running catch by Left Fielder Sandy Amoros. But their best defense was Podres’ zipping fast ball, carefully assorted with well-disciplined slow curves that kept the Yankees swinging off balance throughout the afternoon’s siege. Finally, a gentle grounder rolled to Dodger Captain Pee Wee Reese for the last putout.

Free Beer. The borough of Brooklyn (pop. 2,848,000) erupted with joy over their beloved Dodgers’ first triumph. A blizzard of paper and ticker tape fluttered from office buildings. Barkeepers served beer on the house, and lunchroom operators handed out free hot dogs. Snake-dancing and parades went on all night. Life was so complete for one Brooklyn rooter that he tried to end it with a suicide leap off Brooklyn Bridge.

Brooklyn’s joy was shared by the iron-mining hamlet of Witherbee. N.Y. (pop. 1,050), hometown of Johnny Podres, the son of a Lithuanian-American miner. Series Hero Podres, who earns about $1 1,000 for an entire season’s work, stayed in Manhattan just long enough to pick up $3,000 for TV guest appearances, and a $9,768 check for his winner’s share of the series gate. Then he drove home to Witherbee in a new white Corvette sports car that he won for being the series star. A testimonial dinner was planned at first but had to be called off in favor of an outdoor celebration and parade through Witherbee and neighboring Mineville. There was no hall in the area big enough to hold the crowd that came to cheer the Witherbee boy who had pitched Brooklyn to its first world championship.

*The New York Giants won in 1921 after losing the first two games but the series was then a nine-game affair.

† Deep centerfield in Yankee Stadium is 466 ft. from home plate; at Ebbets Field it is 393 ft.