October 1, 1947: Yankees clobber Dodgers 10-3 in Game 2

A crowd of 69,865 packed Yankee Stadium for the second game of the 1947 World Series. The New York Yankees had won Game One with five runs on only four hits. The Brooklyn Dodgers aimed to even the Series when the two teams took the field on a chilly October afternoon.

Allie Reynolds was given the nod for the Yankees for his first career World Series start. Reynolds had finished the season with 19 victories and 129 strikeouts after coming from the Cleveland Indians in an offseason trade for infielder Joe Gordon. Reynolds looked strong from the start as he retired the first six batters he faced, striking out three.

“The strains of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ sung by Dorothy Sarnoff, had scarcely floated away on the clear autumn air,” wrote the New York Times’s John Drebinger, describing the bottom of the first.2  Snuffy Stirnweiss knocked the first pitch into right field for a single. Two pitches later, Tommy Henrich singled to center and Stirnweiss scurried to third.

Johnny Lindell continued the Yankees attack with a sharp groundball to third baseman Spider Jorgensen. Jorgensen threw to second to start a double play, as Stirnweiss crossed the plate with the first tally. Joe DiMaggio followed with a single, but Lombardi struck out George McQuinn to keep it a 1-0 game.

Brooklyn drew even in the third. Pee Wee Reese led off with a walk and stole second with two outs. Eddie Stanky singled up the middle; Reese was held at third when second baseman Stirnweiss grabbed the ball to keep it from going into the outfield. Jackie Robinson then became the first Black player to get a hit and an RBI in an Organized Baseball World Series game by singling to left field, scoring Reese.

The Yankees went back ahead in their half of the inning on a pair of triples. Stirnweiss hit a low drive that squirreled between center fielder Pete Reiser and right fielder Dixie Walker. After Henrich fouled out, Lindell “hit a high rocketing shot … which saw Reiser make a futile, headlong plunge for the ball” before it landed on the grass and rolled to the wall, Drebinger wrote.3 Lombardi gave DiMaggio an intentional pass before striking out McQuinn to limit the Yankees to one run.

Dixie Walker brought the Dodgers even in the fourth on Brooklyn’s first home run of the Series, a blast that sailed over the right-field wall. But the Yankees wasted no time in reclaiming the lead when they came to bat in the bottom of the inning.

Lombardi “served one to Billy] Johnson which the Yank third sacker sent sailing down the center of the fairway.”4 Reiser ran back, lost his balance, and fell down as the ball rolled away from him. Johnson ended up with a triple as the Yankees took advantage of the misplay.

Phil Rizzuto followed and hit a high pop fly that barely landed on the grass in left field and “left three hotly pursuing Dodgers looking like so many greyhounds after the mechanical rabbit disappeared.”5 Rizzuto ended up on second as Johnson easily crossed the plate to give the Yankees the lead, 3-2.

Henrich opened the Yankees’fth with a home run over the right-center-field wall. Lindell followed and hit a smash into left field that bounded into the stands for a ground-rule double. At this point, Lombardi was “plainly victim of a knockout,” wrote the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.6 Right-hander Hal Gregg took over. After DiMaggio grounded out, McQuinn singled to score Lindell for a 5-2 lead.

The Dodgers’ poor defense continued when Johnson hit a grounball back to the pitcher. Gregg threw to second, but Stanky dropped the ball as McQuinn slid into him. Gregg got Rizzuto to fly out and then struck out Yogi Berra to end the frame.

When Reiser caught Rizzuto’s fly ball for the second out, after his defensive struggles in the previous two innings, the crowd gave Reiser sarcastic cheers.7

The Yankees added another run in the sixth. Reynolds led off with a single. After Stirnweiss walked, Henrich’s sacrifice to Gregg advanced both runners. Lindell’s long fly ball to left field scored Reynolds.8

Drebinger wrote that “the Yanks, caught in the contagion of hilarious misplays, started cutting up capers in the seventh.”9 The first incident came when Gene Hermanski hit a high pop right in front of the plate. Several Yankees converged on the ball but none caught it, and the ball landed untouched. Fortunately, for New York, the ball rolled foul and Hermanski then struck out.

Two batters later, Jorgensen hit the ball right in front of the plate. Berra picked up the ball and fired it past first baseman McQuinn. Berra’s miscues led Tommy Holmes of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to write that “Berra’s catching alone is worth the price of admission.”10

Hank Behrman replaced Gregg on the mound in the seventh. Behrman, who had pitched the previous day, struggled out of the gate this afternoon. McQuinn led off with a single and took second on a wild pitch. Johnson followed with a sharp single to center as Reiser let the ball roll between his legs for a “grievous error.”11 McQuinn scored and Johnson ended up on third.

Rizzuto popped out to second. Behrman walked Berra to skip the 22-year-old catcher, who had hit .280 during the regular season, and take his chances with the pitcher coming to bat. But Reynolds bunted along the first-base line. Robinson tried to grab the ball but missed and before anyone else could get it, Johnson had scored and Berra was on third.12

Shotton was forced to go to his bullpen for the third time, with Rex Barney getting the call. Stirnweiss hit a groundball to Robinson, who fielded it easily this time. But he “looked to first, then to second and in fact everywhere else only to find nobody in position anywhere to take a throw,” the New York Times reported.13

Berra came home amid the confusion. Reynolds moved to third when Henrich flied to center and came home with the fourth run when Barney threw a wild pitch. Barney walked Lindell. By the time DiMaggio grounded out to end the frame, the score was 10-2 and “even the most gloating Yankee fan must have had enough,” Drebinger wrote.14

With a comfortable lead to support him, Reynolds took the mound in the ninth looking for a complete-game victory.

He walked leadoff batter Hermanski, who reached third on Reese’s one-out single and came home with the Dodgers’ third run when Jorgensen grounded into a force out. But it was too little, too late. Al Gionfriddo, pinch-hitting for Barney, grounded to third baseman Johnson, who threw to second for the final out.

Many sportswriters and fans questioned Shotton about his decision to keep Reiser in the lineup and asked if he would use Carl Furillo in the next game since he was the better fielder. Shotton replied, “We won the flag with these men in there. I don’t know why we should change now, just because of a bad day.”15

Al Simmons, the former Philadelphia Athletics star and future Hall of Famer who now coached for the A’s, was in the stands for the game. He came to Reiser’s defense, telling reporters that they shouldn’t “be too hard on Reiser. The outfield in Yankee Stadium is one of the toughest of all to play. That triple deck with the smoke rolling out makes you lose the ball as it comes down out of the bright sun into the haze and shadows. I’ve seen better outfielders than Reiser look like bums out there.”16

“We’re certainly in the driver’s seat now but we’re taking this series one game at a time,” said Yankees manager Bucky Harris.17 He commented, “They just simply can’t be as bad as they looked. They really had a tough day, didn’t they?”18

“Well, anyway, we’re going back to Ebbets Field tomorrow. That makes a big difference,” Shotton told reporters in the locker room.19

The Dodgers won two one-run games at Ebbets Field to tie the Series. New York took the third game in Brooklyn, also by one run. When the teams returned to Yankee Stadium, the Dodgers tied the Series at three games apiece with another victory. In the seventh and final game, the Yankees beat the Dodgers, 5-2, behind five scoreless innings of relief by Joe Page, for their 11th World Series championship.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, I used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for box-score, player, team, and season pages, pitching and batting game logs, and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA194710010.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1947/B10010NYA1947.htm

Notes

1 The other three pitchers were Ralph Branca, Joe Hatten, and Harry Taylor.

2 John Drebinger, “Yanks Crush Dodgers, 10-3, for 2-0 World Series Lead,” New York Times, October 2, 1947: 1.

3 Drebinger.

4 Drebinger.

5 Drebinger.

6 Tommy Holmes, “Big Day Arrives but Omigosh,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 2, 1947: 17.

7 “Big Day Arrives but Omigosh.”

8 It was Lindell’s fourth RBI of the Series. He would finish with seven, the most of any player, despite missing the final game of the Series. Lindell suffered a broken rib along with a severe bruise of his left knee when he attempted to break up a double play in Game Six. Frank Eck (Associated Press), “DiMaggio’s Blow Longest He Ever Hit, Mates Say,” Lexington (Kentucky) Herald, October 6, 1947: 6.

9 Drebinger, “Yanks Crush Dodgers, 10-3, for 2-0 World Series Lead.”

10 Holmes, “Big Day Arrives but Omigosh.”

11 Drebinger.

12 Drebinger.

13 Drebinger.

14 Drebinger..

15 Dick Young, “Change Lineup? Could Be, Says Burt,” New York Daily News, October 2, 1947: 36. Reiser was back in the lineup in center for Game Three, but he injured his ankle on a third-inning steal attempt. Furillo replaced him and started in center for the final four games of the World Series.

16 Young, “Change Lineup? Could Be, Says Burt.”

17 James Dawson, “Bomber Leaders More Restrained,” New York Times, October 2, 1947: 33.

18 “Bomber Leaders More Restrained.”

19 “Change Lineup? Could Be, Says Burt.”