September 23, 1952: Dodgers clinch National League pennant

Carl Furillo, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Preacher Rowe, and Gil Hodges were all members of the 1952 NL All-Star team. (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)

On September 23, 1952, with autumn in the air, fans filed into Ebbets Field to watch a Dodgers doubleheader against the Phillies. Home-team patrons came to the game anticipating Brooklyn’s first National League pennant since 1949. With six games left to play, the Dodgers needed just one more win to clinch the championship, a championship that they deserved. The team had played well all season, climbing into first place on June 1 and remaining there throughout the rest of the season. Returning from a three-game sweep of the Boston Braves, the team was primed to claim the pennant. The championship seemed almost inevitable. Just one more win. However, everyone remembered what had happened the two previous seasons. The specter of the Bobby Thomson blast that completed the Giants’ amazing September run the previous year still haunted Dodgers fans. Memories of 1950, when the Dodgers finished a game back of Philadelphia’s Whiz Kids, also lingered.

The day began well for the Dodgers. Despite a two-out walk followed by Del Ennis‘s single, rookie starter Johnny Rutherford kept the Phillies off the scoreboard. Phillies starter Karl Drews did not do as well. In the bottom of the inning, he walked Duke Snider with two outs, then served up a Jackie Robinson line-drive double to left that scored Snider.

The second inning went about the same as the first for Rutherford. Facing the bottom of the Philadelphia order, he issued a one-out walk to third baseman Willie “Puddin’ Head” Jones but otherwise had no problems. In the bottom of the inning his mound counterpart, who was looking for his fifth win over the Dodgers, cruised through the Brooklyn order retiring the side in order.

It was in the third that Rutherford ran into some trouble. With one out, center fielder Richie Ashburn singled up the middle. Bill Nicholson then worked Rutherford for the Phillies’ third walk in three innings. With runners on first and second, Del Ennis grounded a potential double-play ball that third baseman Billy Cox muffed to load the bases with one out. Next up was Granny Hamner. The Phillies shortstop smacked Rutherford pitch well over the left-field fence. It was the second grand slam of his career and gave his team a three-run cushion.

In the bottom half of the third inning, Drews needed just three pitches to put down the Dodgers. After years of struggling with his control, the Phillies pitcher used a particularly effective sinker to work his way into a Philadelphia rotation that included Robin Roberts and Curt Simmons. He had already beaten the Dodgers four times in 1952, twice on shutouts. Enjoying what was easily the best year in his major-league career, Drews finished the season with 14 wins while dropping 15, and had a 2.72 ERA. In the top of the fourth it took Rutherford six pitches to match Drews.

In their half of the fourth inning, the Dodgers began chipping away at the Phillies’ lead. After retiring nine in a row, Drews served up a pitch that left fielder George “Shotgun” Shuba launched over the scoreboard in right-center field. Shuba had played for Montreal most of the previous season but manager Chuck Dressen brought him up at the beginning of the 1952 season to add bench strength, especially against right-handed pitching. The move turned out well for the Dodgers. After the game Dressen claimed, “There’s the difference between last year’s club and this – (pitcher Joe) Black and Shuba. We’d have never won the pennant without them.”1

Well before helping the Dodgers win the pennant, Shuba had already attained a bit of baseball celebrity. On April 18, 1946, while playing for Montreal in a game against Jersey City Giants, Shuba followed Jackie Robinson in the batting order. That day Robinson hit a three-run home run and Shuba, unlike his teammates who had just scored, shook Robinson’s hand as he crossed the plate. A photographer snapped a picture, labeled “A Handshake for the Century,” which was the first photograph of an interracial handshake in professional baseball history. That handshake has been immortalized by statuary and paintings ever since.2

An inning later Brooklyn took the lead. After Rutherford put down the Phillies in order, Gil Hodges led off the Dodgers fifth with a single to left field. Rutherford followed Hodges and laid down a sacrifice bunt that first baseman Ed Waitkus fumbled, putting runners on first and second. The next hitter, Billy Cox, forced Hodges at third, but Pee Wee Reese lined a pitch to center field, scoring Rutherford. Reminiscent of the run-scoring double that he had hit to clinch the pennant in 1949, Duke Snider swatted a double to right-center, pushing both Cox and Reese across the plate.

Now only four innings away from the National League pennant, much of the burden of holding the lead fell on the shoulders of Johnny Rutherford. He got through the sixth and seventh innings giving up only a single to Puddin’ Head Jones in the sixth and a walk to Bill Nicholson in the seventh. Meanwhile, Rutherford rapped out the only Dodgers hit during those two innings.

In the eighth the Dodgers hurler ran into some trouble. Granny Hamner led off with a single to right field and went to second on a groundout to first by catcher Smokey Burgess. Jones then collected his third hit of the day, a single that put the tying run on third with only one out. Rutherford escaped the inning when Waitkus grounded sharply to Jackie Robinson at second who scooped the ball up and threw to his keystone partner Pee Wee Reese, who fired to first to complete the double play.

After Drews set down the Dodgers in order one more time, the Phillies came to the plate in the ninth inning with a last chance to prevent the Dodgers from clinching the pennant. As he took the mound in the ninth, Rutherford could not have imagined that this was the last regular-season inning he would pitch in the major leagues. His only other Dodgers appearance came in the eighth inning of Game Four of the World Series. Called in to relieve starter Joe Black, Rutherford gave up a triple to Mickey Mantle, who then scored the final run in the Yankees’ 2-0 win. Certainly not spectacular, Rutherford’s season had been successful by most standards. It was also a numerologist’s delight. He had started 11 games and relieved in 11 more. He finished with a 4.25 ERA with five wins and five losses as a starter and two wins and two losses as a reliever. In his 97⅓ innings on the mound, he had given up 97 hits, struck out 29, and walked 29. In this his last regular-season inning in the major leagues, Rutherford brought the pennant back to Brooklyn by getting the three Phillies he faced, Johnny Wyrostek, Connie Ryan, and Richie Ashburn, on routine groundouts.

The final out ignited a brief celebration by Dodgers fans and players alike “although for Brooklyn it was a rather polite demonstration.”3 Several Dodgers faithful jumped onto the field while the players embraced and tossed their hats in the air. Perhaps the most enthused was Jackie Robinson. Amid handshakes and hugs and back pats in the locker room, Robinson told reporters that much of the credit for his team’s victorious season belonged to manager Dressen. “I think you’ve (Dressen) done a tremendous job with the pitching staff. I don’t think anybody could have done better. For that matter, I think you’ve handled the team excellently. And I think everybody should be made aware of it.”4 Of course, the afternoon wasn’t over. There was still a second game to be played. The full celebration would have to wait.

Aside from the starting pitchers, the Phillies made only one change from the first-game lineup. Backup catcher Stan Lopata was penciled in for Smokey Burgess. His batterymate would be Curt Simmons, a hard-throwing southpaw who had established himself as one of the better lefties in the National League. Simmons had been the National League’s starting pitcher in that year’s All-Star Game. Billy Loes took the mound for the Dodgers. In his first full season with Brooklyn, Loes, who threw from the right side, had begun the season in the bullpen but worked his way into the starting rotation. Aside from establishing himself as a fine young hurler, Loes was already becoming known for his zany antics and various eccentricities.

The game immediately became a pitchers’ duel. Through the first two innings the only baserunner was the Dodgers’ leadoff hitter, Billy Cox, who walked. The game’s first hit came in the top of the third when the Phillies’ Eddie Waitkus lined a one-out single to center. Simmons followed with a base on balls, but the two runners were stranded as Loes struck out Connie Ryan and got Richie Ashburn to pop up to right.

The Dodgers didn’t get their first hits until the next inning. Rocky Bridges, who replaced Pee Wee Reese at shortstop in the top of the inning, singled to left but was caught stealing a batter later. Manager Dressen had begun replacing his starters in third when he substituted Bobby Morgan for Jackie Robinson. By the seventh inning all the Dodgers regulars, except for Cox, who had moved from third to second, were in the clubhouse getting an early start on their championship celebration. Loes remained on the mound.

The two pitchers continued to cut through the opposition. Simmons ran into some trouble in the eighth when the Dodgers’ first three hitters singled. Simmons weathered the storm on a force out at the plate, a strikeout, and a foulout. Loes’ challenge came in the next half-inning when the Phillies got a runner to third with one out. Loes struck out the next two hitters.

The duel between Simmons and Loes continued into extra innings. Loes’ day ended in the 11th when he was replaced by Jim Hughes, but the duel continued. Finally, in the top of the 12th, the Phillies broke through. With Eddie Waitkus on first and one out, Johnny Wyrostek, pinch-hitting for Simmons, drilled a shot to right field for a double that scored Waitkus. The game ended half an inning later after Kent Peterson, who replaced Simmons, struck out the side to preserve the Phillies’ 1-0 victory.

For those Dodgers fans still in Ebbets Field, the loss was a minor flaw in an otherwise happy day. Their team for the second time in four years would finish atop the National League and get another chance to knock off their crosstown rival, the Yankees, in the World Series.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and SABR.org.

NOTES

1 Ralph Roden (Associated Press), “Brooks Clinch NL Pennant,” Elmira (New York) Advertiser, September 24, 1952: 13.

2 Claire Noland, “Baseball teammate of Jackie Robinson,” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2014: 19.

3 Stan Baumgartner, “Dodgers Win NL Pennant, Beat Phils 5-4, Bow 1-0,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 24, 1952: 52.

4 “Dodgers Clinch National Flag by Splitting with the Phillies,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, September 24, 1952: 28.