October 5, 1941: Mickey Owen’s dropped third strike costs Dodgers series-tying win

It was, without question, one of the wildest ninth innings in postseason history. The Brooklyn Dodgers, holding a 4-3 lead over the New York Yankees in Game Four of the 1941 World Series, were one strike away from evening the Series at two games apiece. Dodger reliever Hugh Casey, who had pitched scoreless ball since entering the game with two out in the top of the fifth inning, had retired Johnny Sturm and Red Rolfe on groundouts to open the frame. With a 3-and-2 count on Yankees right fielder Tommy Henrich, Casey threw a pitch that broke sharply, and Henrich swung and missed. The Ebbets Field crowd erupted. Dodgers win! Series tied!

But wait. … Henrich was running toward first base, and Dodgers catcher Mickey Owen was chasing after the ball, which was rolling toward the backstop. The game was about to turn upside down.

Up to then, it had been a very competitive series. The Yankees, winners of the four of the last five World Series (1936-39), had won Game One at home behind Red Ruffing, 3-2. After Whitlow Wyatt and the Dodgers evened the Series with a 3-2 victory of their own, the Yankees took the Series lead with a 2-1 victory at Ebbets Field. Casey had been the Dodgers goat in Game Three, taking the loss after surrendering both Yankee runs in the top of the eighth to break a scoreless tie.

Dodgers manager Leo Durocher selected right-hander Kirby Higbe, 22-9 in the regular season, to start Game Four; Joe McCarthy, skipper of the Yanks, countered with right-hander Atley Donald, who had posted a 9-5 record. The Yankees quickly took the lead in the top of the first; Rolfe singled with one out, Joe DiMaggio drew a walk one out later, and Charlie Keller singled past Brooklyn first baseman Dolph Camilli to drive in Rolfe.

The Yankees made it 3-0 in the top of the fourth. After New York loaded the bases to open the inning on double by Keller, a walk to Bill Dickey, and Joe Gordon‘s single, Higbe seemed poised to escape the jam when Phil Rizzuto hit into a third-to-home force out and Donald struck out on three pitches. But Sturm singled to center, driving in Dickey and Gordon and moving Rizzuto to second. With left-handed hitters Rolfe and Henrich up next, Durocher replaced Higbe with lefty Larry French. When one of French’s pitches landed in the dirt and got away from Owen, the runners tried to advance, but Owen was able to grab the ball quickly and throw to third; Rizzuto was tagged out in a rundown to retire the side.

The Dodgers responded with two runs in the bottom of the fourth. After retiring the first two hitters, Donald walked Owen and Pete Coscarart. Jimmy Wasdell batted for French and “sliced a fly that landed less than two feet inside the left-field foul line deep in the corner for a double, scoring Owen and Coscarart.”1 The Yankees threatened to score again in the fifth, loading the bases with two out against Johnny Allen, who had taken over from French. But Casey relieved Allen and got Gordon to fly out to end the inning. The Dodgers took the lead in the bottom of the frame. After Dixie Walker doubled, (according to the Los Angeles Times play-by-play) Pete Reiser “hit the first pitch over the scoreboard in right field for a home run, scoring behind Walker. The scoreboard is about 40 feet high and 350 feet from home plate. The crowd went wild over the Dodgers taking the lead, and Donald stalked off the mound as [Marv] Breuer, another right-hander, came in to pitch for the Yankees.”2

Reiser’s home run gave the Dodgers a 4-3 lead, and it remained that way until the top of the ninth, with Casey shutting down the Yankees and Breuer (three scoreless innings) and Johnny Murphy (a one-two-three eighth) doing likewise against the Dodgers. Then came the fateful ninth, and the two-strike pitch that got away from Owen after Henrich swung and missed.

“With two strikes on Henrich,” wrote Henry McLemore, “Casey throws a perfect curve that cuts the middle. As Henrich swings and misses, the crowd jumps to its feet to applaud its heroes. Policemen run around the field to guard the diamond. For a split second, Brooklyn has won the game and the series is tied at 2-all. Then – for reason that only the fates who pull the strings on us humans know – the ball spins out of the hands of Catcher Mickey Owen and rolls toward the stands.”3

Henrich was able to reach first safely before Owen could retrieve the ball and retire him at first, and the Yankees were still alive. The turn of events seemed to rattle Casey. With Joe DiMaggio at bat, Paul Zimmerman wrote, “The unnerved Casey put one right in the groove and DiMag smashed it into left field a clean hit. Up came Charlie Keller, who had already enjoyed three hits today. He tore into one of Hughie’s offerings and planted it high against the barrier in right field for two bags, easily chasing Henrich and DiMaggio home. … ” Keller’s double gave the Yankees a 5-4 lead. “Casey, thoroughly upset now, walked Bill Dickey and Joe Gordon drove in the other two runs with a double against the left field wall” to make it 7-4.4 Casey walked Rizzuto before finally ending the half-inning by retiring Yankee pitcher Johnny Murphy on a groundout. Murphy retired the Dodgers in order, with no ball leaving the infield, in the bottom of the ninth to preserve the victory. Instead of being tied two games apiece, the Yankees now held a three-games-to-one series lead and were one victory away from their fifth World Series championship in the last six seasons.

“I really can’t tell you how it happened, fellows,” Owen told reporters after the game, “because I don’t know. It was a good pitch, maybe the best curve ball Casey threw all afternoon. It squirted out of my glove somehow. Why, I don’t know. I DO know I’m a better catcher than that!”5

As for the ball that got away from Owen, many observers contended that Casey’s 3-and-2 pitch to Henrich was not a curveball, but an illegal spitball. Casey himself told conflicting stories. Several years after he had left the Dodgers, he told J.G. Taylor Spink, “I give you my word it was not a spit ball. It was a crazy sinker. Sometimes that pitch looks like a spitter. I don’t pitch spitters.”6 But then he changed his story. “Years later,” wrote sportswriter Tommy Holmes, “Casey admitted his third strike to Henrich had been a spitball, which may explain why Owen didn’t handle it.”7

Writing about the alleged spitter in his 1975 autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last, Casey’s manager, Leo Durocher, wrote, “It just isn’t true, though. Hugh Casey didn’t even know how to throw a spitball.”8 And in a 1988 New York Times interview of Owen and Henrich by Dave Anderson, Owen contended that “if Casey threw a spitball, he threw it on his own. … It never looked like a spitball to me. It was a curveball. That’s what I called for.” Henrich agreed. “That’s right,” he told Anderson. “Spitballs drop down. I swung at a big breaking curveball.”9

Spitball or curve, the ball got away from Owen, and the Dodgers had shockingly lost a game they thought they had won. The next morning’s New York Times featured a parody of “Casey at the Bat” entitled “Casey in the Box – 1941,” by Times newsman Meyer Berger. The poem concluded:

Oh somewhere North of Harlem the sun is shining bright
Bands are playing in The Bronx and up there hearts are light.
In Hunts Point men are laughing, on The Concourse children shout.
But there is no joy in Flatbush. Fate had knocked their Casey out.10