July 18, 1957: Dodgers survive wild ninth inning to win in 11

The right-handed batter was Gil Hodges, who, Broeg reminded his readers, “feeds on left-handers as though they were tender sprouts.”2 Hodges, 0-for-4 to that point on the day, stood at the plate in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and one out, and his Dodgers trailing the Cardinals 9-5. The next moment would unveil the culmination of a wild ninth inning.

That morning, the newspapers listed Hutchinson’s Cardinals (48-36) in a virtual tie atop the National League standings with the Milwaukee Braves. The Dodgers (46-37) of Walter Alston, meanwhile – himself a former Cardinal player for his one-day major-league appearance in 1936 – sat a mere game and a half back in fourth place, just behind the Philadelphia Phillies in the tightly-packed midsummer race. Alston’s choice for a pitcher was Johnny Podres and his 7-3 mark, slotted against the Cardinals’ third-year man Larry Jackson, who also entered the contest with a strong record of 10-5.

The first portion of the afternoon proceeded in relatively nondescript fashion – save for two blows by legendary figures. The Dodgers drew first blood in the bottom of the third, as with two out Duke Snider drove his 21st home run of the season to right field off Jackson. Snider’s blast was answered in the top of the fourth by the legend in the other dugout, Stan Musial, who led off with the 600th double of his career to place him sixth all-time behind Paul Waner‘s 605. Promptly sent home on an RBI single by Del Ennis, Musial was making his last appearance in the ballpark where he garnered his famous nickname in the 1940s, when worried Flatbush faithful began murmuring, “Here comes that man to the plate again!”

A close struggle continued into the very last frame, with the Dodgers crafting a 4-2 lead as the Cardinals got ready to take their final turn in the top of the ninth.

After Ken Boyer started the last St. Louis chance with a single, Alston decided Podres was finished and summoned relief specialist Clem Labine from the bullpen. Decades later it would be determined that Labine, with statistics of the era retroactively reconstructed, had “led” the National League in saves in 1956 and was on his way to doing so again in 1957.

Labine permitted another base hit to pinch-hitter Joe Cunningham before retiring the tough Wally Moon on strikes. However, two more hits followed, by Eddie Kasko and another pinch-hitter, Hobie Landrith, for a sudden 5-4 Cardinals lead. Rookie Danny McDevitt replaced Labine and was able to induce Don Blasingame to tap what appeared to be an inning-ending double-play grounder to Hodges; but the first baseman misfired on the throw to second and sent the ball sailing into left field as the deluge of St. Louis runs continued. After Alvin Dark was called out on strikes, a single by Musial, a triple by Ennis, a walk to Boyer, another hit by Cunningham (tying a record with his second pinch-hit in the same inning, most recently achieved by Sid Gordon of the New York Giants 10 years earlier3), and a wild pitch by McDevitt followed. It all added up to four additional unearned runs, bringing the grand total to seven in the inning and a stunning 9-4 Cardinal lead.

In the bottom half, Alston attempted to conjure magic from another aging Flatbush hero who, like Snider, Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, and Roy Campanella, was in his final months in Ebbets Field. The manager sent up Carl Furillo to bat for McDevitt. On the mound for St. Louis was Hoyt Wilhelm, pitching in his first season for the Cardinals after five with the Giants. Furillo took a mighty hack at a Wilhelm knuckleball, but was only able to squib the fluttering pitch softly off the end of his bat toward Kasko at third. Furillo hustled down the line and beat the throw, providing Brooklyn with a baserunner. Charlie Neal and Jim Gilliam followed with walks, as the Dodgers were instantly back in business with the bases loaded and nobody out. When southpaw Vinegar Bend Mizell replaced Wilhelm to face the left-handed-batting Snider, the Cards conceded a run with Snider’s subsequent groundout to first.

To the surprise of many of his players on the field, Hutchinson permitted Mizell to next face the right-handed Gino Cimoli. Cimoli walked, which loaded the bases again and brought the tying run to the plate in the person of the powerful Hodges. Right-handers Herm Wehmeier and Lloyd Merritt were warming up in the bullpen, but Hutchinson sat unmoved in the visitors dugout.

A hopeful, growing noise echoed in the stands, as early half the crowd at Ebbets that day was a contingent of vocal adolescents who incessantly championed the Dodgers’ cause. “When Mizell was pitching in the big ninth,” Roscoe McGowen of the New York Times noticed, “most of the 9,500 youngsters among the crowd of 22,059 gave Vinegar a roaring chant with each delivery. It may have upset him.”4

Looking to atone for his critical error in the field, Hodges unloaded. He cannonaded a 1-and-1 pitch for a home run into the left-center-field bleachers, “the most dramatic of his career,” wrote McGowen.5 The blast tied Rogers Hornsby and Ralph Kiner for the most grand slams by a National League player with 12. (Hornsby and Kiner hit their slams for multiple teams, while all of Hodges’ came as a member of the Dodgers.) The blow also gave Hodges 999 RBIs for his career – leaving him behind only Musial and Ennis among active National Leaguers at the time.

However, Mizell was not relieved until he failed on yet another batter. After walking Sandy Amoros, Vinegar Bend finally departed the premises as Hutchinson “storming out[,] grabbed the ball from the pitcher and jawed heatedly at him,” according to Broeg.6 Wehmeier doused the blaze in recording the final outs to send the contest into extra innings.

With each team failing to score in the 10th, Snider once again got the home side going in the bottom of the 11th. After leading off with a double, he moved toward third on a bunt by Cimoli. The St. Louis native and rookie Merritt, now pitching in relief of Wehmeier, pounced on the ball and fired a throw to Kasko in an attempt to get Snider; but the third baseman missed the ball completely, allowing Snider to pop up from his slide and ramble home with the winning run.

While spectators in Ebbets Field jumped up and down in jubilation, one of the locker rooms fell silent. “Manager Hutchinson stalked off to lock himself and his ball club in their dressing quarters,” Broeg wrote. It was the first time he recalled Hutchinson forbidding writers inside the clubhouse since he became manager. As a result, Broeg and other reporters were unable to get Fred’s reasoning behind his questionable late-game decisions. “There was no explanation forthcoming from Hutchinson why he allowed the unpredictable and disappointing Mizell, hammered hard in previous appearances by the Dodgers, to stay in to face the righthanded batters,” wondered Jack Herman of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.7

St. Louis general manager Frank Lane, traveling with the club, stated that Hutchinson’s job was safe despite the lapse in judgment, while nonetheless noting that “it was a tremendous disappointment to lose a game like that, especially when one of the best left-handers, Warren Spahn, never pitches here [in Ebbets] and Johnny Antonelli rarely wins here.”8

As the Cardinals licked their wounds and got ready to travel to Pittsburgh for the next stop on their road trip, they would make only one more visit to Ebbets Field – a lone contest on August 25, which brought down the East Coast curtain on a heated rivalry that continues today on the shores of the Pacific.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

NOTES

1 Bob Broeg, “Stormy Hutch Bars Door in Brooklyn, but Not on Dodgers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 19, 1957.

2 Broeg.

3 Jack Herman, “Hutchinson Blames Wilhelm More Than Mizell,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 19, 1957.

4 Roscoe McGowen, “Homer by Hodges Marks 10-9 Game,” New York Times, July 19, 1957.

5 McGowen.

6 Bob Broeg, “Stormy Hutch Bars Door in Brooklyn.”

7 Jack Herman, “Hutchinson Blames Wilhelm More Than Mizell.”.

8 Herman.