Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (11 page)

In retrospect, both Carey and McDougald realized that fate had played a role in catching Robinson. “I was in the right place at the right time,” Carey later acknowledged. But another key factor was Robinson’s age. “We would have never gotten Robinson out,” Carey added, “if the game would have been played two or three years earlier when he still had his speed.”

Dodger first baseman Gil Hodges steps into the batter’s box as Larsen retrieves the ball from his infielders and prepares for his next pitch. Now thirty-two, Hodges is still regarded as the strongest man on the Brooklyn team, and he has also wielded a powerful bat up to that point in the series, hitting .500 (seven hits in fourteen at bats) and driving in eight runs (only one behind the World Series record set by former Yankee first baseman Lou Gehrig). Larsen’s first pitch is a fastball that misses the plate, but the second pitch is a fastball that catches the outside corner. Hodges swings hard but misses. With the count even at one ball and one strike, Berra proceeds to call for two sliders on the next two pitches. Hodges sees the first one called as a strike by Pinelli and then swings and misses on the second, giving Larsen his third strikeout.

Sandy Amoros, the Brooklyn left fielder who hits from the left side, follows Hodges to the plate. A twenty-six-year-old Cuban native with dark skin, Amoros is only five feet, seven inches tall but weighs 170 pounds and is powerfully built. He also wiggles the bat in the air before a pitch is thrown, a habit that seems to underscore his ability to hit the long ball despite his small size.

Larsen works the count to two balls and two strikes against the Dodger batter. He then throws a slider, and Amoros hits a high pop fly that drifts toward shallow right field. Bauer races in at full speed as the ball proceeds to drop, but it is clear that he will never get there in time. In the meantime, second baseman Billy Martin begins backpedaling, keeping his eye on the ball, and at the last second puts his glove up, catches the ball, and falls over backward—but holds his glove high to show the second-base umpire that he has not dropped the ball. Amoros is out, and Larsen begins his slow walk back to the Yankee dugout.

4

Y
ankee catcher Yogi Berra steps into the batter’s box to start the bottom of the second inning as Sal Maglie glares at Roy Campanella for the sign. Although he stands only five feet, eight inches tall, Berra weighs about 195 pounds and is a power hitter who holds the American League single-season record for home runs by a catcher (thirty), having turned the trick twice—once in 1954 and again in 1956.

Maglie knows he has to keep the ball on the outside corner of the plate to prevent Berra from pulling the ball to right field. But even if he succeeds in keeping the pitch away from Berra’s preferred power zone, Maglie recognizes that the Yankee catcher is capable of driving the ball down the left side of the field as well. Stationed in left field, Sandy Amoros knows about Berra’s propensity to pull the ball and moves toward left center field. But he too knows all about Berra’s ability to hit a pitch down the left-field line. He has only to recall that memorable moment from last year’s World Series.

It was October 4, 1955, a sunny and warm fall day and, for the 62,465 fans at Yankee Stadium, one filled with tension. After facing the Yankees in five previous series beginning in 1941—and losing every one of them—the Brooklyn Dodgers were on the verge of winning their first World Series Championship. The cry in Brooklyn had always been “Wait until next year,” and it finally appeared that “next year” would soon arrive.

The Dodgers were ahead 2-0 as the Yankees came to bat in the bottom of the seventh inning. Brooklyn manager Walter Alston, eager to increase the lead, had sent the left-handed George Shuba to the plate to pinch-hit for second baseman Don Zimmer, a right-handed batter, in the bottom of the sixth inning. No one could doubt Alston’s judgment. Bob Grim, a right-handed pitcher, had come in to relieve Yankee starter Tommy Byrne, a southpaw, and conventional wisdom dictated that a left-handed batter would have more success against a right-handed pitcher than a right-handed batter. But Shuba failed to get a hit, and, when the Dodgers returned to the field, Alston needed to find a replacement for Zimmer at second base. He therefore moved Junior Gilliam, one of the Dodgers’ more versatile players, from left field to second and told Amoros to play left field.

It proved to be a critical maneuver. Johnny Podres, the Dodgers’ twenty-three-year-old starting pitcher, had done well up to that point, but it soon appeared that he was tiring. After getting the first batter out, Billy Martin walked and Gil McDougald bunted safely for a hit. The tying runs were on base as Yogi Berra stepped to the plate. Fearing that Berra would pull the ball if he connected, Alston moved all the outfielders to the right. Amoros was almost in straightaway center field, with center fielder Duke Snider in right center field and right fielder Carl Furillo hugging the line. But Berra caught a pitch on the outside of the plate and lifted a high fly toward left field. “When he first hit it,” Podres later recalled, “I picked up the rosin bag by the pitcher’s mound, and I said, ‘Well, there’s an out.’” But then he looked up and saw the ball slicing toward the left field line—with the outcome uncertain.

Amoros already knew what Podres now realized—that the ball could drop in for a hit and at least two Yankee runs to tie the game. Amoros was a speedy runner. (“Little Flying Ebony,”
The Sporting News
had called him.) And so, when he saw Berra’s fly ball drifting toward the left-field foul line, Amoros did what he did best. “I run like a hawk,” he later said in his broken English.

As he raced toward the left-field foul line, Brooklyn fans and players alike worried that Amoros would shy away from the nearby fence and miss the ball. But Amoros displayed no fear. Just before he reached the stands at full speed, he stuck out his right hand (because he was left-handed) and watched the ball drop into his glove. Over in the nearby Dodger bullpen, pitcher Billy Loes watched in alarm, thinking that Amoros might juggle the ball and drop it. “Hold on to that damn thing!” he screamed to his teammate.

But Loes had no reason to be concerned. Amoros held on to the ball, pivoted, and fired a bullet to shortstop Pee Wee Reese, who was waiting by the third-base line and yelling for the left fielder to throw him the ball. Reese then turned and fired a perfect peg to Gil Hodges at first base to double up McDougald, who had already raced from first base beyond second on the assumption that Berra’s fly ball would drop in for a hit.

The inning over, the Dodgers were energized and the Yankees deflated. Podres completed the next two innings without difficulty, and, amidst the celebrations that ensued, the team as well as the press agreed that Amoros’ remarkable catch made the difference. It was, said
The Sporting News
, a “$100,000 catch” that “will not be forgotten as long as the World Series is played.” Reese, who played in every one of the World Series in which the Dodgers faced the Yankees between 1941 and 1956, said that being the middle man in the play “was the biggest kick I got out of seven World Series.” And in a 2003 review of a hundred years of World Series play,
The New York Times
called Amoros’ catch one of the “ten greatest moments” in World Series history. For his part, Amoros, the epitome of modesty, simply said, “Lucky, lucky, I’m so lucky.”

It was not, however, luck. It was a reflection of skills and dedication that Amoros had been honing since his early days in Cuba. Home was Matanzas, a city located about sixty miles east of Havana near the north shore of Cuba. His father, an itinerant laborer, died when Edmundo (not yet known as Sandy) was three and left little money to his wife and six children. The mother was dedicated to doing what she could for her children and took a job in a local textile mill. But Edmundo had no interest in working in a factory or in pursuing education when he got older. His only interest was baseball. And he was good at it.

The young boy played for his local school at first and then moved on to amateur baseball leagues in Cuba. He played second base for his province and distinguished himself as one of the best players in the league, leading his team to a national championship that was played in Havana. His talents (including a spree of six home runs in seven games) led to his selection for the Cuban All-Star team, and, at the age of eighteen, Edmundo was on his way to Guatemala to play in the Caribbean World Series (where he compiled the top batting average of .450).

It was all a wondrous journey for a teenager who had never traveled outside of Cuba, but Edmundo had a dream—to play baseball in the United States. And he knew it was a dream that could come true. Jackie Robinson had already broken the color barrier, and Minnie Minoso, another black Cuban who had been Edmundo’s hero as a young boy, would soon nearly win (and in the eyes of some, should have won) the American League’s Rookie of the Year award in 1951.

By then, Edmundo had already completed his first two years of professional baseball, playing left field for the Negro league’s New York Cubans in the United States. But his break came in Cuba while playing in the winter leagues in 1951. Al Campanis, a would-be Dodger player and a scout for Walter O’Malley, saw Amoros play while Campanis was managing another team in the Cuban league. Amoros was one of the league’s leading hitters, but the first quality Campanis noticed was the young outfielder’s speed. “I saw him hit a ball on one bounce to the second baseman,” Campanis later remembered, “and nearly beat it out. That opened my eyes.” In due course, Amoros was signed to a Brooklyn contract and shipped off to the club’s farm team in St. Paul, Minnesota, for the 1952 season.

Despite his small size, Amoros made people take notice of his power. In an early season game at the team’s home field of Lexington Park, the St. Paul Saints’ manager, Clay Bryant, asked Amoros to pinch-hit in the tenth inning with the winning run on first base. Amoros sent a 450-foot drive to left center field that would have gone for an inside-the-park home run if Bryant had not stopped him at third after the winning run had crossed the plate. The drive—identified by the press as “one of the longest triples in Lexington Park history”—was surprising to Bryant and other observers not only because of Amoros’ size. It was that much more amazing because the ball seemed to fly off Amoros’ bat with “what appeared to be a flick of the wrists.”

The hard-hit triple was not an aberration. Amoros tore up the American Association League with a .337 batting average and nineteen home runs. The local press began to refer to him as “the batter with the miracle wrists” and “a second Willie Mays.” The Dodgers also took notice and, at the end of August 1952, Bryant was told to send the young player up to the parent club to help the team win a pennant (which they did).

By this point it was no longer Edmundo. Bryant and his players saw a resemblance between Amoros and featherweight boxing champion Sandy Saddler. The name Sandy was affixed and the name Edmundo was soon forgotten. One personal characteristic, however, remained unchanged: Amoros spoke little English and relied on teammates with fluency in Spanish to communicate with other people. The language barrier prevented Amoros from developing any close relationships on the Dodgers and often created difficulties when he tried to manage the daily rituals of life. (Duke Snider recalled that Amoros ordered pie à la mode in restaurants with great frequency because it was one of the few things he could say in English.)

However difficult it made the daily tasks of life, the language barrier could not conceal Amoros’ buoyant personality. Almost always there was a smile, a laugh, and a playful attitude (which would be displayed in any number of ways, perhaps by his coming to the park on a hot summer day in a straw hat and a heavy overcoat or smoking one of the large Cuban cigars he favored). “Sandy is always smiling when he hits or when he doesn’t,” said one of his teammates from the minor leagues. His fellow Dodgers agreed. “He was always smiling,” Johnny Podres recalled, “and never complained about anything.” Even the landlady from whom he later rented an apartment in Brooklyn was impressed by his cheerful demeanor. “He’s always very happy,” she told an inquiring reporter. “He just drives up in his car and jumps out, says hello and greets everybody. You can never tell what happened to Sandy at the ballpark by looking at him when he comes home.”

Unfortunately, home did not mean Brooklyn after the 1952 season. He had been used only sparingly in that final pennant drive, and management decided that Sandy needed some additional experience before he could stay with the parent club. So the young Cuban was sent to Montreal for the 1953 season. Amoros performed well, leading the league with a .353 average and, with twenty-three home runs, again demonstrating the ability to hit with power. Fielding was another matter. In his first season at St. Paul, the sportswriters had called him “one of the best left-field flyhawks in Lexington Park in a dozen years,” and no one could doubt Amoros’ speed in chasing down fly balls. Making judgments on how to play a hitter and what to do with the ball after he retrieved it was a different issue, and some wondered whether Amoros could do better.

Still, Amoros’ prospects for joining the Dodgers in 1954 seemed bright—especially because the team’s new manager was none other than Walter Alston, who had managed Amoros at Montreal. Sportswriters speculated that those prospects were that much brighter because Amoros had achieved a .421 batting average during spring training.

Alston did not share reporters’ upbeat assessment of the young Cuban’s talents, saying that “Amoros needed more minor league experience.” “He has been a streak hitter as long as I’ve known him,” the new manager opined. “When he’s hitting, he’ll hit anybody, right or left and hard throwers or soft throwers. And when he’s not hitting—why, anybody can get him out.” While many had earlier touted Amoros’ fielding, Alston found fault with his performance, saying that he sometimes failed to get a good jump on a fly ball and that he often threw to the wrong cutoff man in the infield.