Sport: Antique Series

Even Ebbets Field, breeding ground of some of the wackiest baseball in the world, had seldom seen such a collection of antique athletes. When the New York Yankees invaded Brooklyn to touch off the World Series last week, the Dodger clubhouse seemed to creak with age. There was portly Catcher Campanella, noticeably slowing down at 34, the bumps and bruises and broken bones of two decades of baseball hurting more than he liked to admit. There was that cantankerous infielder, Jackie Robinson, 37 and thick in the middle, but still a scrapper.

There was Shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a remarkably chipper 37 despite 14 seasons of big-league ball. And there, walking out to the mound to hold off the challengers, was the granddaddy of the squad, Sal Maglie, a scowling, blue-bearded craftsman uncomfortably close to 40.

Nor were the Yankees overloaded with apple-cheeked youth. Without Manager Charles Dillon Stengel, a swivel-tongued seer of 65, the Yankees would be just another ball club. Then there was Outfielder Hank Bauer, a hardened old pro at 34, and a veteran of six series. Catcher Yogi Berra was only 31, but already a squat relic of more series (seven) than any other player on either team. There was also a durable outfielder of 40 summers named Enos Bradsher Slaughter. Back in mid-August, old Case Stengel had squinted into the future and decided that once his Yanks won the pennant they would need someone like “Country” Slaughter—a tough customer who plays every ball game for blood. So Country, who had grown up on the gashouse tactics of the old St. Louis Cardinals before drifting to the Yanks and then the Kansas City Athletics, was back with New York for his third series in 16 years of major-league play.

The First Game belonged to Maglie. Slaughter reached him for a single and then a brash youngster named Mickey Mantle clouted a two-run homer. Sal was magnificently unconcerned. The two last-minute victories with which he had ensured the Dodgers’ pennant weighed heavily on his wrenched back. But he bent his wicked curve over the corners of the plate and he never made the same mistake twice. Slaughter calmly hit him three for five, but Sal struck out ten Yanks, stranded another nine on the bases. Behind him, the Dodgers piled up nine hits (including homers by Robinson and Hodges), got rid of starting Pitcher Whitey Ford in the third inning, tormented Relievers Kucks, Morgan and Turley, and won easily, 6-3.

The Second Game was a Yankee debacle. Starting Pitcher Don Larsen went into the second inning six runs in front, thanks to Berra’s grand-slam home run. Incredibly, the big lead was not enough. The Dodgers’ old men began to rattle hits all over the ballpark, capped by Duke Snider’s three-run homer. Before the inning was over Brooklyn, too, had six runs and Larsen was taking a shower. Don Newcombe, the Dodgers’ 27-game winner who seems constitutionally incapable of winning in the series, failed again, unhappily slouched off the field under the Yankees’ second-inning fusillade, later relieved his frustration by taking a poke at a heckling parking-lot attendant. But his teammates went on a rampage. Stengel flung one pitcher after another into the fray (for a World Series record of seven), but the Dodgers hit them all impartially and often, whenever they were not drawing walks (the Yankees’ seven pitchers issued eleven bases on balls, another series record). The game produced several other records. The Dodgers’ six runs in the second inning, plus the Yankees’ five, was a series mark for one inning. Duke Snider’s second-inning home run put him right up with Lou Gehrig with a lifetime series total of ten four-baggers. Brooklyn First Baseman Gil Hodges hit three for three, including two doubles that pushed the Dodgers’ final score to 13 over the Yankees’ 8.

The Third Game brought the Yankees home to their own stadium, and they came to life. Ford was back on the mound; this time his curves were snapping off sharply and his fast ball was really running. While Whitey’s good left arm held the Dodgers helpless, Slaughter pounded them to death with his bat. Old Enos began the game with a series batting average of .556; by the end of the day it was .583. The Yanks gave the Dodgers a run in the second inning, but brash Billy Martin got one right back with a home run. In the sixth, the Dodgers pushed Pee Wee Reese home from third after he walloped a resounding triple. Slaughter, his team behind once more, came to the plate with two men on and two out. He scowled at Pitcher Roger Craig, glared back across ten years to the fierce joy of that day in 1946 when he hit his last World Series home run (against Boston). Then he parked a 3-and-1 pitch in the right-field stands to break up the ballgame. The final score was Yanks 5, Dodgers 3, but the game belonged to Slaughter. “I’d be fibbing,” he said, “if I didn’t own up that the homer meant something a little extra special for me. You know, I’m getting toward the second half of my career, and you like to prove you can still do it.”

The Fourth Game matched Dodger Carl Erskine against Yankee Tom Sturdivant—Erskine the canny righthander who set a series strikeout record (14) against the Yankees in 1953, Sturdivant the lanky in-and-outer who was almost released by the Yankees last spring and who was blasted out of the second game. For six innings Sturdivant let the leadoff Dodger get to first base, and for six innings he shut the door on all but one run. The Yanks chipped away at Erskine for three runs in four innings, and Erskine departed. Home runs by Mantle and Bauer pushed the Yankee total to six. By the eighth inning Sturdivant was obviously weary. Between pitches he fidgeted like a man with a mouse down his back. In the ninth, with one Brooklyn run scored and the bases still full of Dodgers, even Casey got the jumps. But Sturdivant struck out Pinch-Hitter Randy Jackson, got Junior Gilliam on an easy fly for the last out and a 6-2 victory.