NOTE from The Sports Time Traveler
Readers of The Sports Time Traveler know that I follow sports as they occurred precisely 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 or 100 years in the past.
Due to open-heart surgery last month, I did not have the opportunity to follow the 1955 World Series exactly 70 years after it took place. Now that I’m recovered well enough to resume working part-time I’m picking up where I left off in September.
So here is the article that I would ideally would have published 2 months ago today.
NEW YORK - Tuesday, September 28, 1955
The Sports Time Traveler has been following the 1955 baseball season daily since spring training. The regular season has now concluded and the World Series is scheduled to begin this afternoon at Yankee Stadium at 1pm ET.
The Series will be televised nationally in color (for those who have color TV sets). On the West Coast, many baseball fans will be able to watch the Yankees and the Dodgers while they eat breakfast.
Here’s the TV schedule for the World Series as reported in the Fresno Bee in California this morning:
When I first saw the air times of 8:45am, I thought perhaps they were going to have a very long pre-game show. But then I found out that’s not the case. Several California newspapers mentioned the pre-game show was just 15 minutes and game time would be 9am PST.
I did a little investigating and found out that here in 1955, the entire west coast (California, Oregon and Washington) set the clocks back to standard time on September 25th, while most of the rest of the country are still on daylight savings time until the end of October.
As a result, the west coast is 4 hours behind New York for the next month. Personally, I found this fascinating. And for baseball fans in the west, the games will almost certainly all be finished well before noon. It’s going to be the World Series for breakfast each day.
Tickets for $2 in Yankee Stadium
For fans in New York who want to go to Yankee Stadium to see game 1 live today, tickets are still available in the outfield bleachers. They will be on sale at 8am ET at a price of $2.10 each. A crowd of well over 60,000 is expected in the stadium today as the giant ballpark has a capacity of 67,000.
No Seats Available for Game 3 in Ebbets Field
In contrast, when the series moves cross-town to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn for game 3, no tickets will be available as the tiny “band-box” park seats only 34,000 and is already sold out.
Should All the World Series Games Be Played in One of the Larger New York Stadiums?
With only half the seating capacity of cavernous Yankee Stadium, and only 60% of the seating capacity of the Polo Grounds, many New Yorkers have questioned whether the series games should be played at Ebbets Field at all.
On August 2nd, a shocking article by Dick Young appeared in the New York Daily News in which Dodgers’ owner, Walter O’Malley, indicated he might favor playing World Series games in a larger New York ballpark:
Following up on the O’Malley article, on August 13th, when the Dodgers had a 15 game lead in National League, The New York Daily News shared letters from readers who were responding to a question the Daily News had posed about the World Series venue, “Would you like to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play their World Series games at the Polo Grounds or Yankee Stadium instead of Ebbets Field?”
While the topic may seemingly have sounded heretical to die-hard Dodgers fans, the small sample size of Dodgers fans’ responses published in the Daily News favored the Dodgers moving their World Series games to one of the bigger New York ballparks.
Here were a few of the responses from DODGERS FANS:
Ultimately, no serious discussion took place about moving the World Series games away from Ebbets Field.
Practice at the Other Team’s Park
One oddity of the subway series is that each team had an opportunity to practice at the other team’s park.
Yesterday, the Yankees practiced at Ebbets Field. 2nd baseman Billy Martin showed his contempt for the tiny ballpark referring to it as “a cracker box,” according to Joseph Sheehan of the New York Times. Ebbets has some of the shortest fences in the majors, with straightaway centerfield at just 393 feet. This helped the Dodgers become the only team in baseball this year to hit over 200 home runs. They hit 119 of their 201 home runs at home at Ebbets Field.
The 165 pound Martin, who hit just 1 home run all season, blasted a ball into the left field stands in one of his first swings.
Jim McCulley of the Daily News reported, “The Yankees were again amazed by the short fences in Flatbush.”
Meanwhile at Yankee Stadium, where the Dodgers were working out, the team focused mostly on fielding. Game 1 starter Don Newcombe reportedly worked out harder than any of the other Dodgers’ players. McCulley noted that Newk, “spent almost an hour running. He did wind sprints from 11:45 to 12:30 to get himself in top physical condition.”
The Mick Might Miss the Series
The biggest news from the practice sessions is that Mickey Mantle is unlikely to play in the World Series. The Mick tore a muscle in the back of his right thigh last week. He now has a blood clot, and he can’t run. He told Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News, “I’m not hopeful of playing in the series - at least in the first two at the Stadium.”
Taking Mantle’s place in center field will be Irv Noren, the Yankees regular left fielder. Noren hit .253 this year with 8 home runs. Mantle in contrast hit .306 and led the American League with 37 home runs. Mantle, striking fear in opposing pitchers, also drew a league leading 113 walks, which gave him an American League best .431 On Base Percentage, 100 points higher than Noren.
Starting in the other outfield positions for the Yankees will be Hank Bauer in right field and a rookie, Elston Howard, in left field.
Today will be the first time in Yankees history that in the 1st game of a World Series they don’t have in their outfield either Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle.
Oddsmaker Predictions
Despite missing Mantle, the oddsmakers have installed the Yankees as a 13 - 10 favorite to win the World Series.
Perhaps there is a feeling that no matter who puts on the pinstripes, the Bronx Bombers will still defeat “Dem Bums.”
The Yankees have beaten the Dodgers every time they’ve faced off in the Fall Classic - in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953.
The Dodgers have NEVER won a World Series title in their franchise history. They are 0 for 7 in prior World Series appearances.
The Yankees have won the Fall Classic 16 times in their franchise history. And since 1927, the Yankees have won 15 of the 16 times they’ve been to the World Series, losing only during the war in 1942.
National Sportswriters Concur - The Yankees Will Win
An AP poll of 49 baseball sportswriters this week found that 31 pick the Yankees to win the World Series over the Dodgers. 2 of the writers pick the Yankees in a sweep.
Al Wolf of The Los Angeles Times explained the strong sentiment towards the Yankees is due to the history books, “The Yanks are favorites simply from force of habit. They have played in 20 World Series and won 16 of them, the last seven in succession… The Dodgers have never triumphed in seven tries.”
Wolf also noted that Dodgers’ ace Don Newcombe has not beaten the Yankees in the World Series, losing the first and fourth games in 1949.
NOTE: Newcombe was serving in the Korean War and didn’t play in the 1952 and 1953 World Series against the Yankees.
YANKEES - Finished the Season Like Champions
Another factor favoring the Yankees is that they finished the season like champions.
After leading the American League by a small margin most of the summer, the Yankees had relinquished the top spot to the Chicago White Sox at the end of August, and found themselves locked in a heated 4-team battle in September.
On September 13th, the Yanks were 2 games behind the defending league champion Cleveland Indians.
The Yankees proceeded to win 8 straight and 10 of their final 12 to lock up the pennant. Thus, the Yankees come into the series as a hot team.
DODGERS - September Swoon
In contrast, the Dodgers, who had one of the greatest starts in major league history at 22 - 2, and clinched the National League pennant earlier than any team ever on September 8th, had nothing left to play for in the final 3 weeks of the season and experienced a September swoon, winning just 6 of their final 16 games.
The Boston Globe’s, Roger Birtwell, penned a piece in which he posed the question, “Will the 1955 Dodgers be like the Red Sox of ‘46?” He went on to explain, “Both made a stampede of the early stages of the race. The ‘46 Red Sox won 21 of their first 24 games. The ‘55 Dodgers won 21 of their first 23… and during the last third of the season neither club did very well.”
The point of the piece, as all readers in Boston surely knew (and so it wasn’t stated) is that the Red Sox lost the 1946 World Series, and clearly Birtwell thinks things don’t bid well for Dem Bums here in ‘55.
DODGERS - Slumping Stars and Sore Arms
But even more concerning about the Dodgers is that their two superstars during the first two-thirds of the season, when they built their insurmountable National League lead, Duke Snider and Don Newcombe, both finished the season poorly.
On August 5th, when Snider hit 2 homers to reach 38 for the season, there was serious talk about him challenging Babe Ruth’s halllowed record of 60 for a single season. The Duke had reached 38 in 108 games and that was 7 games AHEAD of Ruth’s pace, as the Babe had not reached 38 homers until his 115th game.
In addition, Snider was a legitimate triple crown threat, leading the league in home runs and RBIs, and was 3rd in batting average. In the rivalry among great New York center fielders between Willie, Mickey and the Duke (Willie Mays of the Giants, Mickey Mantle of the Yankees and Duke Snider of the Dodgers), the Duke was clearly at the top in the summer of 1955.
Meanwhile Don Newcombe was having a sensational and unprecedented season. On August 1st, Newcombe had a record of 18 - 1 with a 2.95 ERA. Only one other pitcher had ever started a season with a better record through their first 19 decisions. Rube Marquad had started 19 - 0 for the Giants in 1912.
But Marquard had not done what Newk had at the plate. Marquard was a better than average hitter for a pitcher, and was hitting .220 when he won his 19th game.
But Newk was simply hitting off the charts in 1955. On August 1st, Don Newcombe had a batting average of .384. And that was good enough to lead the National League for all batters with more than 85 at bats.
Yet both Duke and Newk had meltdowns over the last 6 weeks of the campaign. Snider hit just 4 homers after August 5th to finish with 42. And he hit only .279 in September.
Newk, who looked like he could have become the first pitcher since Dizzy Dean in 1934 to win 30 games, had a record of just 2 - 4 in the final 2 months of the season. He developed a sore arm in September and had to miss a couple of starts and did not look sharp in any outing after mid-August.
In addition, several other Dodgers’ pitchers have sore arms as well. One of them, Carl Erskine, beat the Yankees in game 3 of the 1953 World Series with a record 14 strikeouts. But Dodgers’ manager, Walter Alston, believes he can perhaps get 1 game out of Erskine’s arm in the 1955 series and that will force Alston to use some of his younger pitchers who are untested on the World Series stage.
One sportswriter, John Fox, sports editor of the Binghamton Press, suggested that the Dodgers should give 19 year old Sandy Koufax an opportunity to pitch in the series. Koufax, whose contract bonus size required him to be on the Dodgers’ roster, per league rules, started 5 games for the Dodgers and 2 of them were gems, a 2-hit, 14 strikeout shutout on August 27th and a 5-hit shutout on September 3rd.
But as Fox noted, Alston has already wasted Koufax’s gifted left arm by having him pitch 2 days of heavy batting practice trying to simulate the Yankees’ expected lefty starters Whitey Ford and Tommy Byrne that the Dodgers’ will see in games 1 and 2.
DODGERS Advantages
The Dodgers do have some potential major advantages.
The Dodgers are loaded with right-handed power. 138 of their major league leading 201 homers were hit by righties. The right-handed domination was so strong that National League teams rarely pitched lefties against the Dodgers. During 1955, only 8% of all Dodgers’ at bats were against left-handed pitchers. And the Dodgers had a .536 slugging % against those lefties vs. .440 vs. righties.
So clear was the adage that you can’t pitch lefties against the Dodgers that the Milwaukee Braves held out Warren Spahn, one of the greatest lefty pitchers in history, and in the prime of his career in 1955, from pitching a single inning against the Dodgers in 1955. Spahn pitched in 39 games in 1955, totaling at least 3 against every one of the 6 other clubs. But he never pitched against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955.
The Yankees have a conundurm, since their best starting pitchers, Whitey Ford and Tommy Byrne are lefties. This is a seemingly huge advantage for Brooklyn. However the crafty Yankees’ manager, Casey Stengel, plans to start Ford and Byrne in games 1 and 2 at Yankee Stadium, where he expects the righty power of the Dodgers will be neutralized by the vast distances of the left field fences in Yankee Stadium.
The other Dodger advantage is simple run production. Brooklyn was the only team in the majors to average more than 5 runs per game at 5.6. The Yankees averaged 4.9.
The Dodgers’ number 3, 4, 5 and 6 batters pose a more fearsome group than any other team in baseball can put together. Take a look at their stats:
HRs RBIs Avg
42 136 .309 Duke Snider
32 107 .318 Roy Campanell
26 95 .314 Carl Furillo
27 102 .289 Gil Hodges
And the Dodgers also have the best pinch-hitter in baseball in, wait for it… Don Newcombe. That’s right, their ace pitcher was also the major leagues’ best pinch-hitter in 1955. Newcombe batted .381 as a pinch-hitter.
The Dodgers have one more intangible advantage in the multi-talented Jackie Robinson that was pointed out by Harry Grayson, sports editor of the Newspaper Enterprise Association in his syndicated article:
It’s going to be a fascinating World Series. Game 1 is today. As The Sports Time Traveler I will be listening to the radio broadcast of the game and reading the stories in the papers tomorrow.
I can’t wait!