July 17, 1959: Yankees’ Ralph Terry takes no-hitter into ninth but loses to White Sox

The New York Yankees had won the American League pennant each season from 1955 to 1958, but as they hosted the Chicago White Sox on Friday, July 17, 1959, in the opener of their four-game series, Chicago, not New York, topped the AL standings. In a game Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News called “a dramatic duel”1 and the Chicago Tribune’s Edward Prell labeled a “titanic pitching and defensive battle,”2 a crowd of 42,168 watched the White Sox score twice in the ninth to win, 2-0.3   

Chicago began the week in second place, trailing the Cleveland Indians by one game, but the White Sox took two of three in Boston, while New York swept three from the Indians, giving Chicago the AL lead. The fourth-place Yankees (44-43) trailed the White Sox (49-37) by 5½ games.   

New York manager Casey Stengel started Oklahoman Ralph Terry, a 23-year-old right-hander, who began his career with the Yankees before being traded to the Kansas City Athletics in 1957.4 The Yankees had reacquired Terry on May 26,5 and since then he had made four starts and seven relief appearances, including six scoreless innings in relief against the White Sox.

Chicago turned to 39-year-old future Hall of Famer Early Wynn (11-6). In a June 28 clash with New York, Wynn had tossed a complete-game win over Whitey Ford.

Wynn and Terry dominated from the night game’s first pitch. Through eight innings Terry did not allow a hit. Wynn surrendered just one hit, and many observers agreed with White Sox first baseman Earl Torgeson that the Yankees hit was an out, but “the umpire missed it.”6

Terry began the game with three groundball outs. When the Yankees came to bat, Wynn retired Bobby Richardson and Norm Siebern before facing Mickey Mantle.

Mantle, batting from the left side against right-hander Wynn, shot a line drive directly to rookie right fielder Jim McAnany. Manager Al López, in professional baseball since 1924, later told reporters he had never seen so many spectacular defensive plays in a game;7 this play by McAnany was not among them.

McAnany lost the ball in the Yankee Stadium lights; it struck him in the groin, resulting in an error that allowed Mantle to reach second. McAnany was attended to by the team trainer before play continued.8

Yogi Berra walked, putting two aboard. Wynn thought he whiffed Héctor López for the third out, but catcher Sherm Lollar asked for a timeout just before the pitch, giving López another chance. López did not cash in, flying to McAnany. The Yankees had missed an opportunity to take the early lead.

In the second, Terry got two outs, then walked Al Smith. With Billy Goodman batting, Smith broke for second base; Berra’s throw beat Smith to the bag, and shortstop Gil McDougald applied the tag.

In the bottom of the second, great defense kept the Yankees off the bases. First, Nellie Fox nipped 43-year-old Enos Slaughter at first after dashing far to his right to snag Slaughter’s grounder. After another groundout, Torgeson ended the frame with a one-handed running catch of McDougald’s foul fly near the box-seat railing.

Neither team put a runner on base in the third, and Terry enjoyed a one-two-three top of the fourth. Mantle brought the crowd to life in the Yankees’ half of the inning by launching a fly ball to deep center field. Chicago’s Jim Landis turned and raced for the ball. When it drifted to his left, he propelled himself into the air to make a backhanded catch 430 feet from home plate. Berra flied out, and Lopez grounded to shortstop for the third out.

Terry chalked up his eighth straight out when Lollar opened the fifth by grounding to short. Torgeson walked, breaking the string, and went to second on Smith’s groundout. Goodman grounded out, leaving Torgeson on base. The game had reached its halfway point, and neither team had a hit or a run.

In the bottom of the fifth, Wynn again needed help from his supporting cast. Slaughter looped a fly to short left-center that Al Smith caught with a belly-flopping dive. Elston Howard flied to right, and McDougald’s grounder up the middle was grabbed by Fox, who pivoted and fired to first in time. That made it 13 Yankees in a row retired by Wynn after he walked Berra in the first inning. Thanks to stellar defense, Wynn, like Terry, had yet to yield a hit or run.

Terry had another easy inning in the sixth; two groundouts and a fly out sent Chicago back out on the field. Wynn’s sixth inning was anything but easy, and it was the most controversial inning until the fateful ninth.

Terry led off for New York and smashed a hard grounder toward the hole at short. Luis Aparicio raced to his right, gloved the ball, and fired to first. Torgeson scooped the one-hop throw. Umpire Eddie Rommel called Terry safe—the first hit by either side.

The call was not well received by the White Sox. “I thought Terry was out, and I was sore at the time,” Wynn told reporters.9 Said Torgeson, “It’s all over now, but it’s a shame the call was made. I saw Terry coming to the bag when I looked over my shoulder after catching the ball.”10 Even the Daily News’s Trimble took Chicago’s side, calling it “a gift hit.”11

Richardson sacrificed Terry to second, where he stayed when Siebern flied to center and, after Mantle walked, Berra flied to left.

The White Sox went down in order in the seventh, and although Terry walked Torgeson to open the eighth—Terry’s third walk—a double play and a lineout retired Chicago without harm. Wynn set the Yankees down in order in the seventh and eighth. Neither team had scored entering the ninth.

Terry was closing in on a no-hitter. The most recent Yankee to pitch a no-hitter in Yankee Stadium was Don Larsen, who twirled a perfect (27 consecutive outs) Game Six in the 1956 World Series. Allie Reynolds had pitched the Yankees’ last regular-season no-hitter at home, in 1951.12

If Terry retired Chicago’s next three hitters, he would enter Yankees lore and hasten New York’s ascent to the top spot in the AL. But leadoff batter McAnany sent a 1-and-1 waist-high curveball whistling past Terry and bounding into center field for the first White Sox hit. The Yankees fans moaned in sympathy.13

Wynn bunted; Terry threw late to second, and runners occupied first and second with no outs. Aparicio sacrificed, and with first base open, Fox was walked, bringing up Landis with the bases loaded and one out.

Landis nearly struck out on a fastball, but Berra could not hold his foul tip. Landis got another fastball and drove it to right, scoring McAnany and Wynn and sending Fox to third. On the throw home Landis took second. The White Sox were up 2-0, with runners at second and third.

Lollar flied to Mantle, and Fox feigned a dash for home. The fake fooled Landis, who raced for third as Fox retreated to the same bag. Fox spied Landis, and reversed course, heading for home. Howard took the relay from Mantle and fired to McDougald, who whipped the ball to Berra for the tag on Fox.

Down to its last three outs, New York notched its second single—and first undisputed hit—when leadoff man Siebern ripped a line drive right through the box. Mantle followed with a low liner toward first, speared by Torgeson on a bounce. He fired to Aparicio to force Siebern and stretched for the return throw, nipping Mantle for a double play.

Coach Ralph Houk, Mantle, and Stengel protested the call, with Stengel gesturing irately.14 Mantle jostled Rommel, and was ejected.15

After the argument ran its course, Berra lofted a popup near the mound. Fox caught it to end the game, capping Wynn’s two-hit win. It was his 40th career shutout and 12th two-hitter.

“Wynn was sharp,” said Lollar, and Wynn elaborated: “I gave ’em a little of everything. Fastball, slider, curve, and 10 or 12 knucklers. Got three or four of the Yankees out on the knuckler.”16

Terry yielded only two hits, and some in the press thought he pitched the better game.17 He came within three outs of a no-hitter; yet his record with the Yankees fell to 1-3.18 Terry remained in the starting rotation, finishing the season 3-7 for New York and 5-11 with a 3.89 ERA overall.

The White Sox won again the next day for their seventh win in eight games, but the Yankees took the final two. Chicago left town tied for first place with Cleveland while maintaining its 5½-game lead over the perennial champion Yankees, a “team which had begun to act as if it would make a comeback in the pennant race[,]”19 when it swept Cleveland.

Chicago remained in first place all but two days the rest of the way, winning its first pennant since 1919 and finishing five games in front of Cleveland and 15½ ahead of the third-place Yankees. Wynn’s 22 wins topped the major leagues, earning him the Cy Young Award.20

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Anthony Escobedo and copy-edited by Len Levin. I wish to thank Larry DeFillipo, whose article “Eleven Masterpieces: Yankee Stadium’s No-Hitters,” in Tara Krieger and Bill Nowlin, eds., Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark (Phoenix: SABR, 2023), 134-142, brought this game to my attention.

Photo credit: Trading Card DB.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play. The author also relied on game coverage in the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, and reviewed SABR BioProject biographies for several players participating in the game.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1959/B07170NYA1959.htm

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA195907170.shtml

Notes

1 Joe Trimble, “Terry No-Hitter Dies in 9th as Wynn Stalls Yanks, 2-0,” New York Daily News, July 18, 1959: 26.

2 Edward Prell, “McAnany Snaps Terry’s Spell; Landis Drives in Winning Runs,” Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1959: 37.

3 The attendance figure is from Baseball-Reference.com. Both the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News reported attendance of 42,020. This game was also viewed by a nationwide television audience.

4 Terry pitched in 10 games for New York in 1956-57.

5 Héctor López was also acquired in the trade, which sent Jerry Lumpe, Tom Sturdivant, and Johnny Kucks to the Athletics.

6 Prell.

7 Prell.

8 “He Got Up to Become a Star Eight Innings Later,” Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1959: 37.  

9 Prell.

10 Prell.

11 Trimble.

12 Two weeks before Terry’s feat, on July 4, 1959, Terry’s teammate Bob Turley took a no-hitter into the ninth at Yankee Stadium before surrendering a single to the Washington Senators’ Julio Becquer. The Yankees won, 7-0.

13 Trimble.

14 Prell.

15 According to Retrosheet.org, this was the fourth of eight career ejections for Mantle.

16 Prell.

17 Prell. Terry’s game score was 72; Wynn’s was 82, but the perception may have been that Wynn was bailed out by his defense. Game score is a statistic created by Bill James and updated by other sabrmetricians that starts with a base of 50 points and adds or deducts points for various achievements (or faults) by a starting pitcher. An average game score is 50; a score of 100 is exceptional.

18 Terry had been 2-4 with Kansas City and was now 1-3 for New York.

19 Prell.

20 From 1956, when the Cy Young Award was introduced, to 1966, only one award was given out for both leagues. Starting in 1967 an award was presented in each league.