June 30, 1955: George Shuba’s walk-off single wins it for Dodgers

The injury-plagued Dodgers played the Giants at Ebbets Field on June 30, 1955 and emerged with a come-from-behind 6-5 victory. The win brought their record to 20-8 for the month of June and extended their league lead to 13 games over the Milwaukee Braves.

A crowd of 22,434 was kept on edge during a 3-hour and 24-minute roller-coaster ride as the first-place Dodgers played a back-and-forth game with their rivals from Manhattan that went 11 innings and featured three rallies by the home team.

The starting pitchers were Don Newcombe (13-1) for Brooklyn and Jim Hearn (7-8) for the Giants. The Giants broke the ice with two runs in the first inning. Al Dark singled and Whitey Lockman doubled. Dark came home on a groundout by Don Mueller and Lockman scored on a double by Hank Thompson. Newcombe, the only fully healthy member of the Dodgers rotation, then got down to business, striking out the last batter in the first inning, the side in the second inning, and the leadoff batter in the third inning.

The Dodgers tied it in the fourth inning. Pee Wee Reese walked and made the trip around the bases on singles by Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson. Snider, who had advanced to third on Sandy Amoros’s force out, scored on a fly ball by Gil Hodges to deep center field to tie the score. The throw home by Willie Mays was deadly accurate and drew cheers from the Giants partisans in the crowd, but it was too late to get the runner.

The Giants pushed across a run when Wayne Terwilliger stole home in the seventh inning to give the visitors a 3-2 lead. The play had been set up when Dodgers pitcher Newcombe threw a potential double-play comebacker into center field. On the play, Terwilliger went from first to third. Dusty Rhodes, pinch-hitting for catcher Ray Katt, had hit the grounder and wound up on first. Bill Taylor came up pinch-hitting for Giants pitcher Hearn. With the count 2-and-1, Rhodes broke for second base. As the throw left catcher Rube Walker’s hand, Terwilliger broke for home. Before the throw reached second base, Reese cut it off and threw home, but Terwilliger scored as the throw was just enough off-line to be mishandled by the catcher. Terwilliger’s hook slide gave the Giants a 3-2 lead. Walker was playing in place of Roy Campanella, who was out of action with a kneecap injury sustained two days earlier.

The Dodgers’ injured ranks grew in the eighth inning. Mays singled, knocking Newcombe out of the game. The Dodgers brought in Karl Spooner to face Mueller. Mueller bunted Mays to second, and Thompson walked. The next batter was Gail Harris. A hard grounder to the right side was headed to the gap between first baseman Hodges and second baseman Junior Gilliam. Gilliam darted to his left and fielded the ball. He spun and threw to first to retire Harris. Mays kept running. Hodges gunned a throw to Walker. Mays was out on the play, but he caught Walker’s shoulder with his knee as he tumbled over the Dodgers catcher. As the dust cleared and Walker held on to the ball, umpire Stan Landes made the out call. To no avail, Giants manager Leo Durocher and coach Freddie Fitzsimmons argued that Mays was safe on the play. Walker and his banged-up shoulder left the game. Seldom-used Homer “Dixie” Howell, who had not been behind the plate in three years and started the season as Brooklyn’s bullpen catcher, finished the game behind the plate for the hosts.

Marv Grissom, who had entered the game to pitch for the Giants in the seventh inning, easily retired Brooklyn in the eighth. No ball left the infield during the first two innings he pitched.

As the ninth inning began, another Dodger was lost to injury. Reese had pulled a thigh muscle rounding third base in the fourth inning and came out of the game after striking out in the bottom of the eighth. He was replaced by Don Zimmer. Spooner retired the Giants in order in the top of the ninth.

The Giants took their 3-2 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning. Singles by Sandy Amoros and Hodges put runners on first and second. Carl Furillo stepped to the plate and the powerful Skoonj bunted the runners over on the first pitch. It was the first of four bunts, each on the first pitch, that the Dodgers used to advance their cause in the last three innings of the game. With first base open, the Giants elected to pitch to Howell, and a fly ball by Dixie brought Amoros home with the tying run.

Rookie Ed Roebuck took the mound for Brooklyn in the 10th inning. A two-run homer by Mays, his 20th of the season, following a single by Dark and a force play looked to clinch the game for the Giants, but Brooklyn, using all of its resources, came from behind to tie the game.

Gilliam opened the Dodgers’ 10th with a bunt single off Grissom, who was pitching his fourth inning. After Zimmer struck out, Snider’s triple scored Gilliam and brought Robinson to the plate. Durocher brought knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm into the game. Dodgers manager Walt Alston ordered a suicide squeeze that Robinson executed to perfection, laying the bunt down the first-base line. Robinson reached first base and Snider scored when Terwilliger was unable to handle Wilhelm’s throw to first base. Wilhelm left the game and was replaced by left-hander Windy McCall, who struck out Amoros. With the right-handed Hodges due up, Durocher next brought in Paul Giel, who retired the Dodgers first baseman. The Giants had used four pitchers to get three outs.

The Giants were held scoreless by Roebuck in the top of the 11th inning. Giants pitcher Ramon Monzant, their sixth pitcher of the game (and fifth in as many batters), came on to face Brooklyn in the bottom of the inning after Giel left for a pinch-hitter in the top of the inning. Monzant walked leadoff batter Furillo, who took second on a sacrifice by Howell, and scored the winning run on a single up the middle by George Shuba, batting for Roebuck. Shuba was the 33rd and final participant in the game.

The win went to Roebuck, bringing his record for the season to 5-3. Monzant, with the loss, went to 0-4.

Robinson’s two hits raised his batting average to .286. Robinson, in his next-to-last season, played in only 105 games, 84 of them at third base. After June 30, he appeared in only 45 of Brooklyn’s remaining 83 games, batting .202 over that stretch. At age 36, he was nearing the end of a career that had begun in 1945 with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League.

The Dodgers went on to win the National League pennant and defeated the Yankees in five games for their first World Series championship. With the loss, the Giants, the defending World Series champions, slipped to four games below .500 and were in fifth place. They finished the season in third place with an 80-74 record.

Howell, the catcher who took over for Walker, was a capable sub, starting seven of Brooklyn’s 10 games between July 1 and 7, sitting out the second game of three doubleheaders when Walker, not quite at 100 percent, started. Howell batted .300 over that span. Campanella returned to action on July 14 and despite missing 31 games during the season, won his third MVP title.

Willie Mays, whose 20th home run of the season gave the Giants the lead in the 10th inning, went on to club a league-leading 51 homers during the 1955 season. He also led the league with 13 triples and finished fourth in the MVP balloting. Mays, who was a streak hitter, was very hot against the Dodgers in the three-game series that concluded on June 30. In the three games he had three homers and 10 RBIs while going 9-for-14 and lifting his batting average from .273 to .293. He brought his hitting streak to five straight games and that streak would grow to 11 straight and 18 out of 19.

For Dodgers starting pitcher Newcombe, his 0-for-2 at the plate on June 30 brought his batting average down to .418. He got his 14th win in his next start and went on to post a 20-5 season record. It was his second 20-win season. The following year Newcombe went 27-7 and won both the Cy Young Award and the MVP, becoming the first player to win both awards in the same season.

SOURCES

In addition to Baseball-Reference.com, the author used the following:

Daley, Arthur. “Sports of the Times: Overheard in Flatbush,” New York Times, July 1, 1955: 15.

Drebinger, John. “Dodgers Rally to Down Giants in Eleventh Inning on Pinch Single by Shuba,” New York Times, July 1, 1955: 15.

Lang, Jack. “Bench Strength Keeps Dodgers Flying,” Jersey Journal (Jersey City), July 1, 1955: 15.

Lundquist, Carl (United Press). “Dodgers Bunting Their Way to Bunting!” Durham (North Carolina) Sun, July 1, 1955: D-1.

McGowen, Roscoe. “Walker’s Left Shoulder Bruised/Campanella’s Replacement Is Injured in Collision with Mays of Giants in Eighth – Howell Will Work Behind Bat,” New York Times, July 1, 1955: 15.

Morris, Everett B. “Dodgers Come from Behind 3 Times, Beat Giants in 11th, 6-5,” New York Herald Tribune, July 1, 1955: 17.

Young, Dick. “Shuba Pinch-Single in 11th Nips Re-Tied Giants, 6-5,” New York Daily News, July 1, 1955: 60, 63.

Photo credit: George Shuba, courtesy of Mike Shuba.