July 12, 1949: The All-Star Game finally comes to Brooklyn

Considered one of the best defensive shortstops of his era, Hall of Famer and 10-time All-Star Pee Wee Reese was the quiet yet forceful captain of the postwar Dodgers. (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)

Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field was hosting the All-Star Game for the first time, the last of the major league locations in existence in 1933 to have the honor. Brooklyn was to have hosted the 1942 game, but baseball shifted the contest to the Polo Grounds. The thinking was that the Polo Grounds’ larger seating capacity would produce greater attendance, and thus more revenue for the two charitable beneficiaries – the Bat and Ball Fund, which supplied baseball equipment to servicemen, and the Army and Navy Relief Fund.1

This game, played through an intermittent drizzle, was a sloppily played slugfest that featured 25 hits, a record 18 runs, and a record six errors, five by the Nationals. Two of those errors came in the first inning and allowed the AL to score four unearned runs. The NL fought back, and despite squandering several scoring opportunities actually went ahead, 5-4, in the third, only to surrender the lead permanently an inning later. Vic Raschi of the New York Yankees, the winning pitcher a year earlier, entered the game in the seventh inning and pitched three scoreless innings to preserve the victory.

For the first time in All-Star play, six umpires were used, with one stationed down the left-field line and one down the right-field line. Yet, oddly, when they made the traditional switch after 4½ innings, NL ump Al Barlick, who’d been behind the plate, departed, resulting in the right field line being uncovered for the remainder of the game.

National League manager Billy Southworth of the Boston Braves chose as his starting pitcher lefty Warren Spahn, who along with Johnny Sain had helped pitch Boston to its first pennant in 34 years in 1948. But Spahn was mainly ineffective in this game, giving up four runs, six hits, and two walks in 1⅓ innings. In fairness, the four runs were unearned and with better luck, Spahn might have retired the Americans in order in the first.

Spahn struck out leadoff hitter Dom DiMaggio and number-three batter Ted Williams, and should have had the number-two batter George Kell. The Tigers’ third baseman had bounced a routine grounder to his opposite number, Eddie Kazak of the St. Louis Cardinals, but the rookie’s throw handcuffed New York Giants first baseman Johnny Mize, and Kell was safe.2

Kell stole second as Williams was striking out, but even there, a better throw by Philadelphia Phillies catcher Andy Seminick might have gotten him. Joe DiMaggio, playing in his 11th All-Star Game, singled to left and the AL had its first run. Then, after walking Philadelphia A’s shortstop Eddie Joost, Spahn gave up a single to Washington Senators first baseman Eddie Robinson. DiMaggio scored and Joost went to third.

When Cass Michaels of the Chicago White Sox followed with a bouncer to Brooklyn’s Pee Wee Reese, Spahn appeared to have escaped with just the two runs allowed. But the Dodgers shortstop failed to handle the routine groundball. Joost scored run number three and Red Sox catcher Birdie Tebbetts’s single to left brought Robinson home with the fourth run. Spahn had struck out the side (all three victims being members of the crosstown Boston Red Sox), but was charged with four unearned runs.

Mel Parnell was the first Red Sox pitcher to start an All-Star Game since Lefty Grove in 1936, and his match-up with Spahn was the first time two pitchers from the same city had squared off since the Giants’ Carl Hubbell and the Yankees’ Lefty Gomez did so in 1934.

In the home first, Parnell quickly surrendered half the lead. He retired Reese, but then Jackie Robinson slashed a double to left and the Cardinals’ Stan Musial, in what was a familiar sight to Brooklyn fans, drove a home run over the wall in right and onto Bedford Avenue.

Robinson, playing in his third big-league season, was the first African American to participate in an All-Star Game. Currently leading the National League with a .362 batting average, he was the league’s leading vote-getter (1,891,212) and second overall to Williams (2,087,466). The Chicago Tribune, conductor of the poll, announced that the fans had cast 4,637,743 votes, more than half a million higher than in 1948.3

To fill out the roster, Southworth and AL manager Lou Boudreau of the Cleveland Indians had selected three additional Black players: Southworth chose pitcher Don Newcombe and catcher Roy Campanella, both of the Dodgers, and Boudreau chose Indians outfielder Larry Doby. (Doby was one of five Cleveland players on the AL team, although none of the defending World Series champions had been elected to start.)

With one out in the AL second, Kell singled and Williams walked. Joe DiMaggio was up next, prompting Southworth to bring in right-hander Newcombe to replace Spahn. Newcombe had made his big-league debut on May 20, less than two months earlier, making the 53 days between his debut and his appearance in an All-Star Game the shortest such span ever. If the rookie was nervous, he didn’t show it. He retired DiMaggio on a fly to Pittsburgh’s Ralph Kiner in left, and then got Joost on a popup to first baseman Robinson to end the threat.

In the home second, a walk to the Giants’ Willard Marshall, a single by Kazak, and a pitch that hit Seminick loaded the bases with no outs and finished Parnell. Boudreau called on Tigers right-hander Virgil Trucks to pitch to Newcombe, an exceptionally good-hitting pitcher. Newcombe, a left-handed batter, drove a ball deep to left field that the overwhelmingly National League crowd thought for a moment might be the first All-Star grand slam. However, the ball got held up in the wind just enough to allow Williams, playing despite a fractured rib, to make an outstanding one-handed catch while crashing into the wall. The blow scored Marshall, but when Reese followed by grounding into a 4-6-3 double play, the NL was forced to settle for just the one run.

“Boy, I thought I had that one,” Newcombe said. “I never hit a ball any harder, and I’d caught Williams over in left-center. But he got it. … It was the biggest day of my life, and I sure wanted to win.”4

Williams, in turn, paid tribute to the Dodgers pitcher. “Newcombe is as fast as anybody in our league,” he said. “His fast ball was hopping,” nodded DiMaggio in agreement.5

Another double play prevented the NL from a possible big inning in the third, although the two runs they did push across put them ahead, 5-4. Jackie Robinson, on his way to a batting championship and a Most Valuable Player Award, opened the inning with a walk. He went to third on Musial’s single and scored the tying run as Kiner bounced into a double play. However, the Nationals weren’t through. Mize singled to right and moved to second on a walk to Marshall. Brooklyn’s Gil Hodges ran for Mize and scored when Kazak followed with a single.6

When the National Leaguers took the field in the top of the fourth, Hodges was at first base while Campanella had replaced Seminick behind the plate. The new NL configuration had five of the hometown Dodgers in the field, three of whom were Black, including an all-Black battery.

After Newcombe began the inning by getting Boston’s Dom DiMaggio to ground out to third baseman Sid Gordon of the Giants, Kell singled and Williams walked. Newcombe got the big second out by again getting Joe DiMaggio, who also grounded out to Gordon, but he couldn’t get by Joost. The 11-year veteran, playing in his first All-Star Game, hit a twisting grounder off the end of his bat between first baseman Hodges and second baseman Robinson. Hodges made a barehanded attempt to grab it, but the ball bounced off his hand and into right field as Kell and Williams raced home.

“I hit the ball on the end of the bat,” Joost said. “Just call it a well-placed single.”7 The fluke hit put the AL back ahead, 6-5, and would serve to make Newcombe the losing pitcher and Trucks the winner.

George Munger of the Cardinals worked a scoreless fifth, but in the sixth the Americans scored two more off Boston’s Vern Bickford to stretch their lead to 8-5. Again the Nationals came back, scoring two in the home half to once more make it a one-run game. The AL’s runs came on Joe DiMaggio’s double that scored brother Dom and the Browns’ Bob Dillinger, running for Kell. DiMaggio, with three RBIs for the day, left for pinch-runner Doby, making the Cleveland outfielder the first Black to play for the American League in All-Star competition.

Because an injured heel had sidelined him for the first 65 games of the season, DiMaggio’s name had not been on the AL ballot. Nevertheless, he’d batted .350 since returning to the Yankees lineup, and Boudreau had named him to start in place of his teammate Tommy Henrich. Unlike 1947 and 1948, the first two years of fan balloting, the outfielders were chosen as a group rather than by individual position. Henrich had finished second behind Williams, but had missed the last week with a knee injury, and though he was on the bench and in uniform, he was unavailable to play.

After an 11-minute rain delay in the home sixth, Kiner blasted a two-run homer off A’s left-hander Lou Brissie, who had replaced Trucks in the fourth. They would be the NL’s final runs as any hopes for a National League victory ended with the new pitchers chosen to work the seventh inning. For while the Americans jumped on Howie Pollet for a quick three runs, Raschi would hold the Nationals scoreless the rest of the way.

Cleveland’s Joe Gordon greeted Pollet with a double, and singles by Dom DiMaggio and Dillinger plus a double by Indians outfielder Dale Mitchell netted three more runs and made the score 11-7. Cincinnati’s Ewell Blackwell and Brooklyn’s Preacher Roe were the sixth and seventh National League pitchers used. Blackwell set the Americans down in order in the eighth, and Roe did the same in the ninth. Unfortunately for the NL, those fine performances came too late.

Although Raschi, a 13-game winner at the break, was far from invincible – the Nationals had runners on in each of the final three innings – he duplicated his three scoreless innings of the previous year. Two men were on via walks in the seventh, but neither Reese nor Robinson could deliver them. Nor could the Nationals take advantage of Musial’s leadoff walk in the eighth or Pafko’s two-out single in the ninth. Pafko had taken second when Mitchell mishandled the ball, the AL’s only error of the day, but Reese made the final out.8

The game, less than crisply played, lasted 3 hours and 4 minutes, the first All-Star Game to exceed the three-hour mark. Records were also set for the most pitchers used by one team (seven by the NL) and by both teams (11), and for the most players used by both teams (42).

DiMaggio’s hitting stood out, particularly his double in the sixth, said winning manager Boudreau. “Those were two big runs,” Boudreau said, “but the break of the game came in the fourth on Joost’s hit. Jackie Robinson didn’t think it was a well-played game and he was sorry the NL lost, he said. “But I certainly got a great thrill out of being in it.”9

Southworth was proud of the pitching job turned in by Newcombe and Blackwell. He’d been criticized for both selections: Newcombe because of his lack of experience, and Blackwell because his sore arm had limited him to just one victory in the season’s first half. Critics had claimed that either Robin Roberts or Ken Heintzelman of the Phillies or the Reds’ Ken Raffensberger would have been the better choices.

With its 11-7 victory, the American League reached its high-water mark in All-Star competition. The win, the American League’s fourth in a row and seventh in the last eight, gave it an overwhelming 12-4 lead in the series. Counting their shutout in 1946, the Nationals had scored a total of just three runs in the last three games.10

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org.

This article is adapted from the author’s 1949 chapter in David Vincent, Lyle Spatz, and David Smith, The Midsummer Classic: The Complete History of Baseball’s All-Star Game (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).

NOTES

1 Fifty thousand fans were expected, but rain limited the crowd to 33,694.

2 The official scorers charged Mize with the error, later decided the error should go to Kazak, and several days afterward changed it back to Mize. Sportswriter Roscoe McGowen, the chief scorer, said that the three-man scoring panel had determined that Kazak’s throw was not in the dirt and that Mize should have handled it.

3 N.L. Looks to Southworth as Savior in All-Star Game,” Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1949.

4 Tommy Holmes, “Dodgers Lack Luster in Latest N.L. Fiasco, Brooklyn Eagle, July 13, 1949.

5 Harold Burr, “Nat’l Loop Says It with Dodgers,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 13, 1949.

6 Hodges had finished third in the voting for first basemen, behind Mize and Philadelphia’s Eddie Waitkus, but Waitkus had been incapacitated since suffering a gunshot wound on June 15. Waitkus was listed as an honorary member of the team, but for the first time since 1933, neither side had to replace anyone because of last-minute injuries.

7 “Joost’s End-of-Bat Hit Big One – Lou,” Washington Post, July 13, 1949.

8 It was an awful day for Reese. In addition to his costly error, the popular Dodgers captain went hitless in five at-bats.

9 Roscoe McGowen, “Newcombe and Blackwell Silence Critics of National Hurling Staff,” New York Times, July 13, 1949.

10 The NL scored one run in a 2-1 loss in 1947 and two runs in a 5-2 loss in 1948.