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The 1961 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Yankees moved to Cincinnati’s Crosley Field for a pivotal third game with the Series tied at a game apiece. The Reds, under temperamental manager Fred Hutchinson, had won the National League pennant by four games over the Los Angeles Dodgers.1 They were in […]

I guess it was the best game I ever pitched — Whitey Ford1   During a 16-year career, Whitey Ford pitched a total of 3,170⅓ innings. On eight occasions, he pitched more than nine innings. His longest outing, a 14-inning shutout in 42-degree weather, occurred in Griffith Stadium on April 22, 1959.2 The Yankees defeated […]

In Game Two of the 1951 World Series, Eddie Lopat of the New York Yankees bested Larry Jansen of the New York Giants in a 3-1 complete-game triumph at Yankee Stadium, knotting the series after the Giants’ Game One win. But Mickey Mantle’s knee injury, which sidelined the talented rookie for the rest of the […]

As the New York Yankees arrived at Dodger Stadium for the fourth game of the 1963 World Series, they knew no team had ever come back from a three-game deficit to win. “The knowledge of defeat could not be disguised in the quiet but calm Yankee clubhouse,” wrote the New York Times’s Leonard Koppett after […]

The Braves had last hosted a World Series game in 1948, and that game was played in Boston. In 1957 the Braves, in their fifth season in Milwaukee, won the National League pennant. The first two games of the World Series were played in New York. The Yankees, behind Whitey Ford, had won the opener, […]

When Warren Spahn took the hill for Game Four of the 1957 World Series, he had started two previous Series games, losing to Bob Lemon of Cleveland in 1948 and to Whitey Ford of the New York Yankees in 1957’s Game One. Would today be his day? He was up against Tom Sturdivant of the […]

On October 1, 1961, ending a quest that had enthralled both the baseball world and the American public, New York Yankees outfielder Roger Maris capped one of the most spectacular seasons in baseball history when, with one swing of the bat, he became the major-league single-season home-run leader. The New York Yankees had begun the […]

Between its opening in April 1923 and its final game in September 2008, Yankee Stadium hosted 161 postseason games.  That stadium’s legacy is larger, perhaps, than even our collective memory of it, a true baseball cathedral that hosted so many of the sport’s immortal players and moments that it is inextricably meshed with the lore […]

Griffith Stadium played host to the 23rd All-Star Game on July 10, 1956. A sellout crowd of 28,843 saw the National League win its sixth decision in the past seven encounters, 7-3. The overflow crowd filled the seats behind the center-field wall, creating a bad background for the batters, and there were 17 strikeouts in […]

Only 825 spectators, the smallest crowd of the season at Comiskey Park, had turned out the night before to see the White Sox score two runs in the eighth and beat Boston, 6-4, but tonight would be different. Tonight the New York Yankees were in town. The Yankees of 1962 were not the fence-busting juggernaut […]

As the 49-year-old midtown Cincinnati ballpark hosted Game Five of what proved to be its final postseason, it sported a new paint job, applied after the end of the 1961 regular season. Crosley Field was all dressed up in its gaudiest colors in years. The outside of the ballpark had a gleaming coat of white […]

The Setting The baseball world has been captivated this summer by a home run chase, pitting New York hero Mickey Mantle and last year’s MVP Roger Maris against each other, as well as against a legendary ghost, Mr. George Herman (Babe) Ruth. But, as Arthur Daley pointed out in this morning’s New York Times, “Winning […]

The New York Yankees broke a 2-2 tie with four runs in the eighth inning of Game Seven to win the 1958 World Series, reversing the result from the previous year, capturing the Bronx Bombers’ sixth title of the 1950s, and becoming the first team to win a Series by taking the final two games […]

Tom Metcalf had been called up by the New York Yankees in early August of 1963 and had appeared in only four games for the league-leading Yankees during the month. Relief appearances were few and far between; the New York staff led the American League in complete games with 59. In fact, the Yankees used […]

When the Yankees took the field at Comiskey Park on Chicago’s South Side, the question wasn’t whether the Bombers would capture their seventh pennant in eight years since Casey Stengel took over as skipper in 1949, but rather when they would clinch. Catapulted by a 27-6 run, which ended on July 30, the front-running Yankees […]

As Monte Irvin stepped into the batter’s box in the eighth inning of Game One of the 1951 World Series, a frustrated Yogi Berra said to him, “We don’t know how to get you out. We throw you high balls and you hit it, and we throw you low balls and you hit it. Can […]

One of the most important games hurled by Clement Walter Labine took place at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on October 9, 1956. The day before, Don Larsen had pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 2-0, in the fifth game of the World Series. Dodgers manager Walter Alston […]

New York Yankee rookie Tom Tresh was living a dream. He stepped into the lineup of the defending World Champions in 1962, became a key contributor, faced some adversity, and here he was starting in the World Series. Not only was he contributing, he was the favorite to be named the American League Rookie of […]

By the time he retired from the National League’s New York Mets after the 1962 season, Eugene Richard “Gene” Woodling had accumulated a number of honors, including batting over .300 five times in his seventeen seasons. Although averaging .284 lifetime, he was best known as a dangerous hitter with runners in scoring position during the […]

Elston Howard was born February 23, 1929, in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Emmaline Webb and Travis Howard. A schoolteacher in Sikeston, Missouri, Emmaline fled to St. Louis when Howard, her principal, refused to marry her. She worked to become a dietician, and when Elston was 5 years old, she married Wayman “Big Poppy” […]

As a boy, he rooted for the New York Yankees. Before he became an adult, he was playing for them. Although he left the club for a time, it never left him, and when he got the chance he did not hesitate to return. For the past twenty-five years, in one way or another, he […]

Andy Warhol once suggested that “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Hal Smith was no exception, even though he had only about 13 minutes of fame, or even less. Smith could have been the hero of the 1960 World Series were it not for several events that occurred shortly after his […]

Maurice Joseph McDermott, Jr. was a hard-throwing southpaw teenage “can’t miss” prospect who devolved into a journeyman reliever. Slated as the next Lefty Grove, Mickey McDermott played 12 seasons in the big leagues with the Red Sox, Senators, Yankees, Athletics, Tigers, and Cardinals. He spent the first half of his MLB career in Boston where […]

George Weiss presided over the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball history. Under Weiss’s leadership, from 1948 through 1960, the New York Yankees won ten pennants and seven World Series. After a slip to third place in 1959 Weiss retooled his squad and returned to the top the following season. For this accomplishment The […]