October 3, 1947: Cookie Lavagetto’s walk-off double shocks Yankees, ruins Bill Bevens’ no-hit bid

When the New York Yankees won the first two games of the 1947 World Series, many fans started calling it the “worst World Series in history.”1 After Brooklyn beat the Yankees 9-8 in Game Three, Dodgers fans showed up at Ebbets Field hoping to see their team even the Series. History-minded Brooklyn fans might have recalled former National League President Harry Pulliam’s words about “taking nothing for granted in the game of baseball.”2 Their recollection was perfect. The World Series game on October 3, 1947, proved that. The Dodgers were held to one measly hit by Yankees pitcher Bill Bevens, and didn’t get it until the ninth inning: But the hit, by seldom-used Cookie Lavagetto, plated the tying and winning runs.

Harry Taylor was given the nod as Brooklyn’s starter. The right-hander finished the season with a 10-5 record but struggled late in the season after he tore a tendon in his right elbow. Taylor failed to pitch more than two innings in his final two starts of the season, leading many to wonder how he would perform in the Series.

Taylor got in trouble immediately. Snuffy Stirnweiss and Tommy Henrich led off with singles. Yogi Berra then hit a groundball to first, and when shortstop Pee Wee Reese couldn’t handle the throw to second for a force out, the bases were loaded.

Taylor then threw four straight balls to Joe DiMaggio and the Yankees were up by a run. “Taylor was through; he had been a losing gamble,” opined sportswriter Dick Young.3 Dodgers manager Burt Shotton was forced to go to his bullpen for Hal Gregg.

Gregg got George McQuinn to pop out to short, and Billy Johnson to hit into a double play that left the Yankees with just one run on the scoreboard. That lone run “was all the Yanks made out of their flying start” due to Gregg’s efforts.4

The Yankees had an opportunity to add to their lead in the third. With two outs, Gregg walked DiMaggio. McQuinn hit a tapper in front of the plate. Catcher Bruce Edwards grabbed it and threw wild to first. DiMaggio and McQuinn were running on contact. Rounding third, DiMaggio “was waved on by the usually cold calculated [coach] Chuck Dressen, who miscued this time. Out in right Dixie Walker collared the ball and fired it to the plate in ample time for the third out.”5

The Yankees did add another run in the fourth when Johnson led off with a triple and came home on Johnny Lindell‘s double to right field. That made the score 2-0.

Meanwhile, the Yankees’ starter, right-hander Bill Bevens, owner of a 7-13 season record, kept the Brooklyn bats “silent as a tomb”6 for the first eight innings as he held the Dodgers lineup hitless. Bevens was far from perfect on the mound. He walked eight through the first eight innings. But Bevens, even with his wildness, kept Brooklyn from scoring until the fifth.

In that inning, the first two batters, Spider Jorgensen and pitcher Gregg, walked, Eddie Stanky sacrificed them into scoring position. Reese followed with a groundball to short that allowed Jorgensen to score and narrow the Yankees’ lead to one run.

Although Bevens was never able to tame his wildness, he received outfield support that kept the Dodgers in check. Gene Hermanski was robbed of hits twice. In the fourth inning DiMaggio made a running catch over his shoulder of a drive by Hermanski. In the eighth, Henrich robbed him of another hit when he caught Hermanski’s smash by “climbing up the scoreboard in right.”7

Hank Behrman took over from Gregg in the eighth. He held the Yankees in that inning but got in trouble in the ninth. A pair of singles and a fielder’s choice on a bunt loaded the bases, putting New York in a position to blow the game open.

Shotton rushed Hugh Casey in from the bullpen. Casey had pitched the final 2⅔ innings the day before. He was credited with the Dodgers’ win, in large part because his “million-dollar serve”8 had forced DiMaggio to hit into a double play at a crucial moment.

This time, with the bases loaded, Casey faced Henrich, who “slapped the first pitch right back into Casey’s hands. [Casey] fired to Edwards at the plate for one out and Edwards winged it to Robinson at first for the double play.”9 Once again, the Yankees saw an opportunity slip away.

After that it was the Dodgers’ ninth. They were down to their final three outs. Bruce Edwards led off and hit a fly ball that Lindell caught with a leap against the front of the left-field bleachers. Bevens then walked Carl Furillo, his ninth free pass.

Spider Jorgensen fouled out to first baseman McQuinn and Bevens needed just one more out to become the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter in a World Series.

Shotton now sent into the game as a pinch-runner.

Manager Shotton sent Pete Reiser up to bat for Casey and Al Gionfriddo in to run for Furillo. With the count 2-and-1, Gionfriddo broke for second. Berra’s throw was high and Gionfriddo slid head-first into second. “For the briefest moment, all mouths snapped shut and all eyes stared at umpire Babe Pinelli. Down went the umpire’s arms signaling that the [Dodgers] had stolen base no. 7 on the weak-winged Yankee backstop corps,” noted a sportswriter.10

With the count 3-and-1, Yankees manager Bucky Harris ordered Bevens to walk Reiser, who had a sore ankle. Many in the stands were amazed at the move, which “seemed a direct contradiction of one of baseball’s fundamental precepts which dictates against putting the ‘winning’ run on base in such a situation.”11

Shotton countered by sending Eddie Miksis to run for the hobbled Reiser. With no left-handed hitters left on the bench, Shotton sent Cookie Lavagetto, “a wiry baseball veteran at 34, an almost forgotten figure while the Dodgers were driving to the pennant,”12 to bat for Stanky.

Lavagetto swung at the first pitch – a fastball – and missed. Bevens threw another fastball. Lavagetto swung and connected, sending the ball toward the right-field wall. Over raced Henrich but he could not reach the ball and it sailed over his head.

Henrich desperately tried to grab the ball as it bounced off the wall but the sloping fence made that difficult and the ball caromed under his legs. Finally he grabbed the ball and while off-balance hurried a throw into McQuinn who relayed it to the plate.

But Gionfriddo and Miksis had already crossed home. Miksis landed on the plate “with a sitting slide. A big grin on his puss, [Miksis] sat right on home plate like an elated kid. He was home with the winning run and he didn’t want to get up.”13

Meanwhile Lavagetto trotted into second. “For a moment everyone on the field seemed stunned,” noted sportswriter Tommy Holmes. “Then there was a mad rush from the Dodger bench. They almost pulled Cookie apart and Cookie was almost hysterical himself.”14

As the Dodgers celebrated, Bevens walked silently off the field. “In a matter of seconds, a priceless no-hit victory had been wrenched from his grasp and converted into a galling one-hit defeat.”15

It was the third World Series one-hitter and the first one the pitcher lost. Eddie Reulbach threw one for the Cubs in 1906 and another Cubs pitcher, Claude Passeau, threw the other one in 1945.

Bevens also entered the World Series record book by giving up 10 walks. It was one more than the previous record, set by Jack Coombs of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1910. But, as with his loss, “[Bevens] will never reflect upon that [record] with any feeling of gratification,” observed the New York Times’s John Drebinger.16

While Bevens took the loss, Hugh Casey earned the win. “Just one pitch and he’s the winning pitcher of a World Series game. That’s wonderful,” said Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey.17 Casey had lost two games in succession to the Yankees in the 1941 World Series. Now he had won two straight.

Lavagetto said Shotton “had to tell me twice before I realized that he wanted me to go up and pinch-hit for Stanky. And he couldn’t have found a better man, chimed in Stanky from a nearby locker.”18

Harris justified his decision to walk Reiser because he was a “dangerous home run hitter.” Shotton, meanwhile, “played his cards perfectly in the ninth,” opined the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s Harold Burr.19

Burr added that the game “left the 33,343 fans with fallen arches, weak knees and thumping hearts, hardly able to stand, let alone grope their way to the subway. It was Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney and Frank Merriwell all in one ball park.”20

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.

Photo credit: Cookie Lavagetto, Trading Card Database.

NOTES

1 Dick Young, “Cookie Hit with Two Out in Ninth Spoils Bevens’ No-Hitter,” New York Daily News, October 4, 1947: 24.

2 Tommy Holmes, “Lavagetto Breaks Up Game of Games,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 4, 1947: 3.

3 Young.

4 John Drebinger, “Dodgers’ Only Hit Beats Yankees 3-2,” New York Times, October 4, 1947: 1.

5 Drebinger.

6 Drebinger.

7 Harold Burr, “Miracle Strikes Flatbush,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 4, 1947: 1.

8 Young.

9 Drebinger.

10 Young.

11 Drebinger.

12 Holmes.

13 Young.

14 Holmes.

15 Drebinger.

16 Drebinger.

17 Young.

18 Burr.

19 Burr.

20 Burr.