October 4, 1962: Whitey Ford wins record 10th World Series game as Yankees down Giants in opener

Is it better to start a World Series with a rested team or with one riding the wave of momentum? The defending World Series champion New York Yankees clinched the 1962 American League pennant on September 25, five days before the end of the season.1 In the National League, the San Francisco Giants trailed the Los Angeles Dodgers by two games on September 25 but caught the Dodgers on the season’s last day.

The Dodgers and Giants played a best-of-three playoff to determine the Yankees’ World Series opponent. They split the first two games. With the Series scheduled to start in the NL winner’s city, the Yankees flew to San Francisco on October 2.2 They held a workout at Candlestick Park on October 3, the same day the Giants won the third playoff game, 6-4, with a four-run ninth-inning rally at Dodger Stadium.3

The Giants and Yankees had been World Series opponents six times, most recently in 1951.4 The Giants won their first two Series meetings, with the Yankees winning the next four.5 The Giants moved from New York to San Francisco after the 1957 season. The 1962 matchup was the first coast-to-coast contest in World Series history.

The Yankees’ offense, led by Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, scored the most runs of any team in the AL in 1962. Both outfielders’ home-run totals dropped from their 1961 record pace – Maris’s to 33 from the prior year’s 61 and Mantle’s to 30 from 54 – but the addition of Tom Tresh (20 homers) and the improved hitting of third baseman Clete Boyer (18 homers) helped keep the offense at the top of the league. Tresh had filled in at shortstop while Tony Kubek was serving in the US Army. He was shifted to left when Kubek returned in August.6

“I’ve had the opening lineup, batting order, and pitcher set for 10 days,” said Yankee manager Ralph Houk.7 He selected Whitey Ford (17-8, 2.90 ERA) to pitch the first game. Although Ford’s 1962 record did not match his previous year’s 25-win, Cy Young Award performance, the 33-year-old left-hander carried a record 32 consecutive World Series scoreless innings into the postseason. Ford had last pitched on September 29, a three-inning tune-up start. Ralph Terry (23-12, 3.19 ERA) and Bill Stafford (14-9, 3.67 ERA) were scheduled to pitch the second and third games.

They faced the most potent offense in the majors. San Francisco crossed home plate more than any other big-league club in 1962, and the Giants’ 204 homers were second only to the Detroit Tigers’ 209. Their attack revolved around Willie Mays, whose 49 home runs led the majors. His eighth-inning solo home run provided the margin of victory in a 2-1 win over the Houston Astros that tied the Dodgers for first place on September 30.8 Orlando Cepeda hit 35 homers, giving San Francisco the top home-run duo in the major leagues. Felipe Alou led the team with a .316 batting average and hit 25 homers. Willie McCovey contributed 20 homers despite his part-time playing status.

San Francisco on paper had the deeper starting pitching, but the Giants’ workload during the last week of the pennant race limited the options manager Alvin Dark had for the October 4 start of the World Series. Jack Sanford (24-7, 3.43 ERA) pitched five innings in the second playoff game against the Dodgers on October 2. Juan Marichal (18-11, 3.36 ERA) went seven innings in Game Three. Billy Pierce (16-6, 3.49 ERA) hurled a shutout in the playoff opener on October 1. Pierce also pitched the ninth inning to close out the October 3 game.

Dark picked 29-year-old left-hander Billy O’Dell (19-14, 3.53 ERA) to face Ford. The most rested of San Francisco’s starting pitchers, O’Dell had hurled seven innings on September 30 and faced three batters in relief on October 2.

The first World Series game held in San Francisco drew a sellout crowd of 43,852. The starting time was moved up to noon in an attempt to avoid the usual mid-afternoon winds at three-season-old Candlestick Park, but almost from the first pitch there were constant gusts of wind.9

O’Dell started the game by striking out Kubek. After bloop singles by Bobby Richardson and Tresh, Mantle struck out. Alou denied Maris a home run, getting his glove on the ball two feet above the 10-foot fence in right field. But when Alou’s arm hit the fence, the ball popped loose and landed in the field of play. Maris settled for a double, giving the Yankees the lead, 2-0.10

Ford retired the Giants in order in the first inning, but San Francisco ended his scoreless streak in the second. Mays singled and advanced to third on Jim Davenport’s one-out single. With two outs, José Pagán surprised the Yankees by bunting Ford’s first pitch between the mound and the third-base line. Ford got to the ball but couldn’t make a play as Mays scored.11

The Giants tied the game, 2-2, in the third inning. Chuck Hiller hit a one-out double and went to third on Alou’s single. Mays singled up the middle, scoring Hiller.

In innings four through six, O’Dell allowed only one baserunner, who was erased on a double play. Ford scattered a walk and three groundball singles, including Mays’ third hit of the game, as the score remained deadlocked, 2-2, at the end of six.

Boyer led off the seventh and hit O’Dell’s 2-and-2 fastball on a line against the wind to deep left. Boyer, who afterward said he thought the pitch was a slider, wasn’t sure it was a home run until the ball cleared the fence, breaking the tie.12

With the Yankees leading by a run, 3-2, Mantle drove a 2-and-2 pitch deep to left, but the wind kept it in play for the first out of the eighth inning.13 Maris grounded a single to right and Howard was hit by a pitch. Dale Long singled to right, scoring Maris and advancing Howard to third.

Don Larsen – who had won three World Series games as a Yankees starter, including his perfect game against the Dodgers in 1956 – relieved O’Dell. Boyer hit a pop fly toward short left field. Harvey Kuenn came in and was in position to make the catch. Pagán, not hearing Kuenn call him off, caught the ball with his back to the plate as Howard tagged. The near collision delayed the shortstop’s throw home, giving the Yankees a three-run margin, 5-2.14

The Yankees added another run in the ninth. Howard’s two-out single off reliever Stu Miller scored Tresh from second base.

The Giants failed to score in either of their final two at-bats. Mays took a called third strike in the eighth, but only after the wind pushed his potential fourth hit foul in right field.15 Pagán grounded a single through the hole at short in the ninth, but a double play and a fly out secured Ford’s 10th World Series win, 6-2.

“It was a well-played game and well-pitched game from both sides,” said Houk. “Fortunately, we got the big breaks – the double by Maris that put us out in front and the homer by Boyer that got us back in the lead for good. … Ford pitched a fine game, although you can’t take anything away from Billy O’Dell. He did a good job too.”16

Ford allowed 10 hits but scattered only three groundball singles after the fourth. Elston Howard explained their midgame adjustment. “He has a big curve ball, you know, but it was breaking just about four inches, like a little wrinkle,” said the Yankee catcher. “After the fourth inning, I talked to him on the bench and we decided that the wind blowing across the field was the cause. It was blowing in such a way that the spin on the ball wasn’t biting into the air the way it should for a big breaking pitch. We decided to forget the curve. That breaking ball you saw in the last five innings was the slider.”17

When asked if Alou’s near miss on Maris’s double was the key play, Dark replied, “Ford was the big play today. He’s quite a pitcher.”18

“No matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t get yourself up for a maximum effort after what we’ve been through the last four or five days,” said 11-year veteran Kuenn. “Psychologically, there had to be a little letdown.”19

Sanford, the Giants’ scheduled starter for Game Two, added, “Tomorrow you’ll see a different club.”20

Sanford’s three-hit shutout leveled the Series at one game apiece, and they eventually went to Game Seven. The Yankees won the winner-take-all game, 1-0, to capture their 20th World Series championship.

Ford’s win in Game One was his last World Series victory. He started two more games in 1962. He received a no-decision in the Yankees’ Game Four loss and was the losing pitcher in Game Six. Ford’s career World Series records for wins (10) and consecutive scoreless innings (33 2/3) will likely never be broken.21

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Troy Olszewski and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Whitey Ford, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. for box scores/play-by-play information, player, team, and season pages, pitching and batting game logs, and other data:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN196210040.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B10040SFN1962.htm

The author also accessed YouTube’s Classic Baseball on the Radio for NBC’s national broadcast of this game by George Kell and Joe Garagiola:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy64yWobrLE

Notes

1 Jim McCulley, “Ford Nails Yanks’ 27th Pennant, 8-3,” New York Daily News, September 26, 1962: 75. While New York’s win total dropped from 109 in 1961 to 96 in 1962, they still finished a comfortable five games ahead of the second place Minnesota Twins.

2 Jim McCulley, “Power-Plus Yank Forte,” New York Daily News, October 3, 1962: 81. Before 1925, a coin toss was used to establish the site of each year’s first World Series game. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis established the practice of alternating each year’s location of the first World Series game between the National and American Leagues in 1925. See Charlie Bevis, “The Evolution of World Series Scheduling,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 31 (2002), https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-evolution-of-world-series-scheduling/. From 2003 through 2016 the league that won the All-Star Game received home-field advantage. Starting in 2017, the team with the better regular-season record receives home field advantage.

3 “Ford vs. Giant O’Dell in First Series Game,” New York Daily News, October 4, 1962: 78. The Giants’ pennant-winning playoff game against the Dodgers occurred on the same date as Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth at the Polo Grounds in the third 1951 playoff game. The next day the Giants beat the Yankees, 5-1, at Yankee Stadium in Game One of the 1951 World Series. The Yankees would win four of the next five games to win their third straight World Series.

4 Yankees players active for both the 1951 and 1962 World Series were Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle (who suffered a knee injury in 1951’s Game Two). Whitey Ford, who made his World Series debut in 1950 with a win in Game Four, was serving in the military and missed the 1951 Series. Yankees manager Ralph Houk was a backup catcher for the Yankees in 1951 but did not play in the Series. Willie Mays was the only Giants player active for both the 1951 and 1962 World Series. San Francisco manager Alvin Dark was the Giants’ starting shortstop in 1951. San Francisco coaches Whitey Lockman, Wes Westrum, and Larry Jansen all played for the Giants in 1951.

5 The Giants and Yankees met in the World Series in 1921, ’22, and ’23 with John McGraw and Miller Huggins their respective managers; 1936 and ’37 with Mel Ott and Joe McCarthy as their managers; and in 1951 with Leo Durocher and Casey Stengel as their managers.

6 Mantle was named the league’s MVP for 1962, his third time winning the award. Despite being limited by injuries to 123 games, he led the AL in walks (122), on-base percentage (.486), and slugging average (.605) and led the Yankees with a .321 batting average. Tresh was selected as the league’s Rookie of the Year and had 93 RBIs (second on the team to the 100 posted by Maris) to go with his 20 home runs and .286 batting average.

7  McCulley, “Power-Plus Yank Forte.”

8 That was the 47th home run hit by Mays in 1962. Results of the playoff games counted in the players’ regular-season statistics. At the end of the 162-game schedule, Mays led the National League in home runs, with 47, but Harmon Killebrew of the American League’s Minnesota Twins led the majors with 48. Mays hit two homers in the first playoff game against the Dodgers, giving him a major-league-leading total of 49.

9 “Wind Deprived Mick of Homer,” The Sporting News,” October 20, 1962: 19. The Giants moved from New York to San Francisco after the 1957 season. In 1959 it looked as though San Francisco would be the first West Coast city to host a World Series game as the Giants held first place for most of July, August, and the first two-thirds of September. However, they lost seven of their last eight games to finish in third place. The Dodgers, who moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, tied the Milwaukee Braves for first place and won the playoff, two games to none. Los Angeles thus became the first West Coast team to host a World Series game. 

10 Curley Grieve, “Ford Had It; We Didn’t,” San Francisco Examiner, October 5, 1962: 1.

11 Dick Young, “Boyer Rams Solo; Maris Drives In 2 as Yankees Go 1 Up in World Series.”

12 Bob Brachman, “Victory Celebration? Not From the Old Pro Yankees,” San Francisco Examiner, October 5, 1962: 57.

13 “Wind Deprived Mick of Homer.”

14 Don Selby, “Giants Not Gloomy, Sure That They’ll Bounce Back,” San Francisco Examiner, October 5, 1962: 57.

15 “Wind Deprived Mick of Homer.”

16 “We Had Big Breaks – Houk,” The Sporting News,” October 20, 1962: 19.

17 “Ford Forced to Abandon Curve,” The Sporting News,” October 20, 1962: 19.

18 Selby, “Giants Not Gloomy.”

19 Grieve, “Ford Had It; We Didn’t.”

20 Grieve.

21 In the 1963 World Series against the Dodgers, Ford started games One and Four, losing each to Sandy Koufax. Ford’s last World Series appearance was in 1964 against the Cardinals when he started and lost Game One. In addition to career World Series records for wins (10) and consecutive scoreless innings (33 2/3), Ford holds the record for games started (22), losses (8), innings pitched (146), strikeouts (94), and walks (34). His three shutouts are tied with Three Finger Brown for second, one behind Christy Mathewson.