May 10, 1955: Don Newcombe faces the minimum and one-hits the Cubs

“He looms over the batter, brings his hands up over his head and down violently as if he were ringing a church bell, down and back behind him as far as they can go, then up to his head again and then he throws, violently, falling off the mound a little toward first base as he releases the pitch. The ball spits toward the plate, leaving, it seems, a little smoking thread of white in the air behind it.”1 

Stare at Don Newcombe’s baseball card. Imagine one of those schoolyard stickball games in the 1950s.2 You are mimicking the emphatic motion of Newcombe’s windup and at the same time, there’s a good chance your opponent is impersonating the distinctive batting stances of one of Newcombe’s Brooklyn Dodgers teammates – Jackie, Duke, Gil, or maybe Pee Wee. Perhaps it’s Roy Campanella.

Newk and Campy. An unlikely pair as described by author William Kashatus. “Campanella was a squat five-foot-nine, two-hundred-pound catcher with the build of a fire plug, while Newcombe was a gangling six-foot-four-inch giant with the long arms and broad shoulders of a pitcher.”3 Campanella was always cheerful and outgoing, while Newcombe had a more reserved disposition. Sportswriter Charles Dexter called Newcombe a shy worrier, “his best often clouded by a fear that he would fail.”4

It was no coincidence that Branch Rickey wanted to pair the veteran catcher and the young hurler with a world of potential.5 They became teammates and roommates when they were signed by the Dodgers in 1946 and assigned to Nashua, New Hampshire, Brooklyn’s only Class B farm team that would accept two Black ballplayers. As Nashua’s young general manager Buzzie Bavasi put it, “If they can play ball better than what we have, then we don’t care what color they are.”6 As batterymates who held a great respect for each other, it was Campanella behind the plate when Newcombe made his first big-league start for the Dodgers in 1949, as well as when he made his last start in Brooklyn.7

Achievement and honors came to both Newcombe and Campanella. Newcombe was named National League Rookie of the Year in 1949, won 20 games in 1951, and made three All-Star Game appearances in his first three seasons with the Dodgers. Campanella was the NL Most Valuable Player in 1951. While Newcombe was missing two full seasons in 1952 and 1953 due to military service, Campanella was winning a second MVP award in 1953 along with a fifth consecutive All-Star appearance.8

Rusty and overweight, Newcombe returned to the Dodgers in 1954, finishing with a lackluster record – 9-8, 4.55 ERA, and only six complete games in 25 starts. The season could not have been much worse for Campanella, who was beset by hand injuries that limited him to 111 games and a season-ending .207 batting average.

The 1955 season had to be better for both, but not without drama and controversy surrounding Newcombe. The Dodgers began the season with a 10-game winning streak, a modern major-league record.9 By May 4 they had won 17 of their first 19.

Newcombe was fortunate to have a 2-0 record in April after being hit pretty hard to a 5.50 ERA in three starts against the New York Giants and Philadelphia Phillies, failing to complete any of them. By May 5, eleven days had passed since his last start and Newcombe was eager for more. Walter Alston, now in his second season as Brooklyn’s skipper, was relying on other pitchers. Newcombe twice refused to pitch batting practice and was suspended indefinitely for insubordination.10 After speaking with Bavasi, now general manager of the Dodgers, Newcombe was contrite. “It was a mighty expensive day off and it ain’t gonna happen again.”11

One day later, on May 6, Newcombe was back on the hill to pitch two innings of relief, getting the win in an extra-inning game against the Phillies. What followed was arguably Newcombe’s best stretch of pitching success in his career with his friend and roomie, Roy Campanella, directing from behind the plate. He proceeded to win 15 starts in less than three months.

It started on May 10 when the Dodgers opened a two-game series at Wrigley Field on their second 10-game winning streak of the season. Newcombe (3-0, 4.95 ERA) faced the Cubs’ Warren Hacker (1-1, 1.16 ERA). Brooklyn was in total control in the National League with a 21-2 record and a nine-game lead over the second-place Milwaukee Braves.

Newcombe was perfectly efficient over the first three innings. Only Randy Jackson saw ball three, and he struck out looking on a full count to open the second inning. In fact, only one other Cubs’ hitter, Bob Speake, saw ball three all afternoon, when he whiffed in the fifth.

Hacker was nearly as efficient in keeping the game scoreless. Jackie Robinson was stranded on second base in the second inning after walking and Sandy Amoros’s double went for naught in the fourth.

There was nothing cheap about Chicago second baseman Gene Baker’s lined one-out single to center in the fourth. He was the only Cub baserunner all day. Two batters later Baker was caught trying to steal second, Campanella to Jim Gilliam, to end the inning.

The Dodgers finally broke the scoreless tie in the sixth against Hacker when Duke Snider lined his 200th career home run to the deep right-field corner.12 The homer gave him the major-league lead with 9 home runs and 30 runs batted in.13

That would be enough for Newcombe, but Brooklyn added single runs in the seventh and ninth for good measure. In the seventh, Newcombe followed Don Hoak’s one-out walk with a line drive single to right, his second hit of the game, moving Hoak to third. Gilliam’s sacrifice fly gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead.

In the ninth, the Dodgers manufactured a run with Gilliam’s two-out single to right and Pee Wee Reese’s line-drive double to center. Reese got caught in a rundown between second and third, but Gilliam was able to score the third and final Dodgers run.

When Newcombe retired the side in order in the ninth, the near-perfect performance was complete and the Dodgers’ winning streak reached 11 games.14 Perhaps the sparse afternoon crowd (6,686) at Wrigley Field was disappointed that they had not seen the rarity of a perfect game. It would have been the first perfect game in the majors since Chicago White Sox pitcher Charlie Robertson’s gem in 1922 against the Detroit Tigers.15

Johnny Podres had intently watched the entire game, completing a task reserved for one of the Dodgers’ pitching staff. He tracked every one of Newcombe’s 96 pitches – 61 fastballs, 34 curves, and one changeup.16 What Podres also saw was Newcombe’s six strikeouts and only five fly balls hit to the Dodgers outfield in a game that lasted five minutes short of two hours.

Newcombe beat the Cubs for the 11th time in his career, an 11-0 record with 10 complete games. The other victory? Newcombe needed reliever Erv Palica to get the final two outs in a 1949 win. As it happened, his 1955 winning streak as well as his dominance of the Cubs ended in mid-June in a 9-5 loss at Ebbets Field.17

Try to explain Newcombe’s remarkable streak of 18 wins through July that was now unfolding. Campanella had a simple one: “You put a man into the Army for two years and it takes two years for him to get adjusted back to baseball. All of a sudden Newk got adjusted.”18 Newcombe succinctly recalled, “When I got out in 1954, I couldn’t get back in the pitching groove all that season.”19

Later, Newcombe shared that his pitching performance that day at Wrigley was his finest since the 1949 World Series Game One duel with the Yankees’ Allie Reynolds.20 That one ended as a tough 1-0 loss when Tommy Henrich hit a walk-off home run, Newcombe pitching with the same repertoire and efficiency – fastball, curve, changeup, and no walks.

What about Newcombe’s hitting? There was not a better hitting pitcher in his era. His 1955 batting line was impressive – 42-for-117, .359 batting average, 7 home runs, 23 runs batted in. Campanella, on his way to a third MVP award, recalled, “I always thought that he would have done as good as a batter as he did as a pitcher.”21

Campanella’s respect for Newcombe the hitter dated to their earliest days as teammates.22 Their manager at Class B Nashua in 1946 was none other than Walter Alston. Back in Nashua, Alston was thrown out of a game for arguing and designated the highly dependable Campanella to act as manager. Ninth inning, his team trailing by one run. Campanella called on Newcombe to pinch-hit and told him to hit a homer. He did and Nashua won.

Overall, Newcombe’s life and baseball career were more complicated as SABR biographer Russell Bergtold has written.23 Perhaps Newcombe’s words ending Dexter’s essay, The New Newcombe, best explain his 1955 season. “I had to work this out in my own way. I stopped worrying. I demanded work. I got work. That about sums it up.”24

Most importantly, at season’s end the Dodgers brought something special to Brooklyn and their fans. A World Series title for the first and only time in their history.25

Author’s note

Watching Newcombe’s windup was mesmerizing and repeated many times in those stickball games. And, of course, it was Newk and Campy as batterymates in the author’s very first visit to Ebbets Field and a memorable ballgame at Roosevelt Stadium.

Acknowledgments

This essay was fact-checked by Tom Brown and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

The author accessed Stathead.com (stathead.com/tiny/Xakij), Baseball-Reference.com for box scores/play-by-play information (baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN195505100.shtml) and other data, as well as Retrosheet.org (retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1955/B05100CHN1955.htm). The 1956 Topps baseball cards for Don Newcombe (#235) and Roy Campanella (#101) were obtained from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Robert Creamer, “Subject: Don Newcombe,” Sports Illustrated, August 22, 1955: 28.

2 Paul Dickson, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, Third Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), 827. “stickball A variant of baseball commonly played on city streets or other restricted areas with a broomstick or similar piece of wood and a rubber ball. The game usually requires an elaborate and very specific set of rules.”

3 William C. Kashatus, Jackie & Campy: The Untold Story of Their Rocky Relationship and the Breaking of Baseball’s Color Line (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 87.

4 Charles Dexter, “The New Newcombe,” Baseball Digest, September 1955: 9. (Reprinted September/October 2023).

5 Kashatus.

6 Kashatus, 85.

7 Newcombe pitched a five-hitter against Cincinnati at Crosley Field on May 22, 1949, and shut out the Reds, 3-0. He lost to the Chicago Cubs and Dick Drott, 9-4, on August 27, 1957, pitching 1⅔ innings.

8 Campanella’s 41 home runs and 142 runs batted in set a major-league record in 1953, subsequently broken by Johnny Bench in 1970 (45 and 148, respectively).

9 Luis A. Blandon Jr., “The Bums Flex Their Dominance in Record-Setting Victory,” in Gregory H. Wolf, ed., Ebbets Field: Great, Historic, and Memorable Games in Brooklyn’s Lost Ballpark (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2023), 322. The 1918 New York Giants, 1940 Brooklyn Dodgers, and 1944 St. Louis Browns each won nine games to start the season. The New York Giants won 12 games to begin the 1884 season.

10 “Newcombe Draws Brook Suspension,” New York Times, May 6, 1955: 26.

11 Roscoe McGowen, “Reinstated Newcombe Wins for Dodgers,” New York Times, May 7, 1955: 11.

12 Roscoe McGowen, “Newcombe of Dodgers Blanks Cubs With One Hit, Facing Minimum of 27 Men,” New York Times, May 11, 1955: 37.

13 Snider finished the 1955 season with 42 home runs, fourth behind Willie Mays’ major-league-leading 51. Snider did lead the majors with 136 runs batted in.

14 The streak ended the very next afternoon (Jeff Alan Howard, “May 11, 1955: Ernie Banks homer sets the stage to stop Dodgers’ road winning streak,” SABR Baseball Games Project).

15 Edward Prell, “Dodgers and Newcombe Take No. 11,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1955: 4-1.

16 McGowen. (Baseball-Reference.com reports that Newcombe threw 95 pitches in this game.)

17 Newcombe’s record slipped to 10-1 in the first game of a doubleheader against the Cubs at Ebbets Field on June 12, 1955. His start lasted only 5⅓ innings. Only four of the nine runs he yielded were earned. He would not lose another game until August 8, 1955, when the same Cubs beat him again, this time in a complete-game loss at Wrigley Field, 1-0.

18 Dexter, 7.

19 Bill Deane, Baseball’s Who’s Who of What Ifs, Players Derailed on Route to Cooperstown (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2021), 126.

20 Dexter, 8.

21 Dexter, 10.

22 Bob Oates, “Q&A: Roy Campanella,” Los Angeles Times, June 17,1985: 12. There are two other references to this Newk and Campy story: (1) Kashatus, 87; (2) Phil Elderkin, “Don Newcombe’s ‘Iron Man’ Feat,” Christian Science Monitor, July 22, 1983, csmonitor.com/1983/0722/072234.html. Kashatus also references the Campanella interview by Bob Oates. There is agreement that the Nashua Dodgers beat the Lawrence Millionaires in this mid-June 1946 New England League game. However, there are discrepancies as to the inning in which Newcombe hit the home run and whether it merely tied the score at the time. Kashatus reports that the home run occurred in the seventh inning; Campanella says in the interview that it occurred in the ninth inning. The point is relevant that Newcombe did bat .311 (23-for-74, 5 doubles, 3 triples, 2 home runs, 14 runs batted in) in 1946 to lead his team in hitting!

23 Russell Bergtold, “Don Newcombe,” SABR Baseball Biography Project.

24 Dexter, 10.

25 Steven C. Weiner, “October 4, 1955: Brooklyn Dodgers win first World Series as ‘Next Year’ finally arrives,” SABR Baseball Games Project.