Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (45 page)

And then there was the money. Being with the Yankees created an expectation that there would almost always be a World Series check. It was not a casual matter for many, if not most, of the players. These were men who had to secure low-skilled jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. For them, the World Series check was the difference between a comfortable winter and a hard time. Hank, like the other veterans, tried to instill in the rookies the importance of playing the best they could to win games and keep those series hopes alive. (“Don’t mess with my money,” Bauer would invariably instruct the new players.) But Hank was not selfish when the Yankee players gathered in the clubhouse to allocate the World Series pot and was willing to give a fair share to rookies and other players who had not been with the club for the entire season. “When it came World Series time to vote shares,” Richardson remembered, “he would always encourage his teammates to be generous with the young players on the team.” (Richardson, for one, was with the club for only two weeks in 1955 and still received a one-third share. “Hank was behind that,” he later told me.)

However much he nurtured relationships with his teammates, Bauer had one gripe with the Yankees—Stengel’s platoon system. In those first days with the club, the Yankee manager used Bauer interchangeably in left field with Gene Woodling, who had been named the Minor League Player of the Year by
The Sporting News
in 1948. Gene was a left-handed batter, and Stengel was prone to use him against right-handed pitchers while saving the right-handed Bauer for left-handed pitchers. That approach reflected conventional wisdom, but there were occasions when the Yankee manager’s logic defied scrutiny. (There was the time in Detroit when Bauer had gone three for three, with two home runs and a double in a game against the Tigers. With the game tied 5-5 in the eighth inning, Stengel sent Woodling up to pinch-hit for Hank as he was walking toward the batter’s box. “When I saw Woodling come up,” Bauer later said, “I was going to saw his leg off.” Instead, he trudged back to the dugout full of anger and sat down on the bench. Stengel rambled over to his sulking outfielder and, without fanfare, said, “I thought you had reached your quota.”)

Hank did not hide his distaste for the platoon system, and so, when later asked what he thought about the Yankee manager in his first days with the club, Bauer had a quick response: “I didn’t care for him.” But there was a method to Stengel’s madness. He understood what would keep his players motivated. “Now you can take that feller over there,” the manager said to a sportswriter shortly after Bauer had joined the Yankees. “I got him so mad, sittin’ on the bench, that he wanted to hit me with a bat. He wanted to play every day. He wanted to show me. Well, he showed me pretty good.”

Bauer eventually understood—and came to appreciate—Stengel’s approach. “At the time,” he later explained, “I thought he was wrong, and so did Woodling. Stengel used psychology on both of us. He kept us mad. When we did get into a game, we’d bust our asses to stay there.” But that was the older, more mature Bauer. In 1949 and the early 1950s, the frustration would often hamper constructive dialogue between manager and player. Especially because Casey was not always good at remembering his players’ names.

One incident was particularly telling. “I was on the bench, burnin’ up,” remembered Bauer, “because Casey insisted on platoonin’ me. I’d get so mad at him that I’d go to the far end of the dugout next to the watercooler. I didn’t trust myself to sit near him, and I’d stay as far away as possible.” But Stengel knew he was there, and late in the game Bauer caught the Yankee manager looking at him. Hank knew the reason. A pinch hitter was needed. Suddenly he heard Stengel’s voice. “Woodling,” the manager yelled. “Grab a bat.” Bauer said nothing and watched as Stengel waddled down the dugout toward the watercooler until he was standing in front of his sometime right fielder. “Woodling, grab a bat,” Stengel repeated. Bauer looked up at his manager and said, “I ain’t Woodling.” To Stengel, that was irrelevant. “Okay, Bauer,” Casey responded. “Grab a bat.”

For all the platooning, Bauer was still able to play in 103 games in that 1949 season and compile a respectable record with only 301 plate appearances—ten home runs, forty-five runs batted in and a .272 batting average. Hank’s record improved dramatically in 1950, when he played in 113 games. He raised his batting average to .320 while hitting thirteen home runs and driving in seventy runs.

Hank could certainly be proud of his performance in 1950. More important, he knew it warranted a substantial increase in his annual salary of $10,000. So he was not happy when general manager George Weiss sent him a contract for the 1951 season with only a $1,500 raise. Hank thought he deserved more.

Charlene typed a letter for Hank stating that the raise was insufficient and that more money would have to be added to the offer. Weiss ignored the letter, plus two others that Bauer sent, and on each occasion returned the contract with the $1,500 raise. After the return of the third letter, Hank received a call at his Kansas City home. It was George Weiss. “How would you like to fly to New York at our expense?” the general manager asked. “I want to talk to you about your contract.”

Bauer had never been in Weiss’ office at Yankee Stadium, and he was impressed by its size. He also took note of the general manager’s refusal to look him in the eye during the discussions. But no matter—the salary was the only issue that counted. Weiss tried to explain why Hank should be satisfied with the proposed salary. To carry his point, Weiss made a comparison to DiMaggio (whose .301 batting average for the 1950 season was actually nineteen points below Bauer’s average). “You know the reason we pay DiMaggio $100,000?” Weiss rhetorically asked Bauer. “Because he puts people in the ballpark.” The explanation may have been compelling in the general manager’s mind, but Hank was not persuaded. “Mr. Weiss,” he replied, “Joe DiMaggio is the greatest player I ever saw or hope to play with. But he’s not ten times the player I am.” Weiss tried to but could not really disagree. Eventually Bauer got a raise of $6,000—a considerable sum for the former pipe fitter.

The salary increase proved to be a good investment for the Yankees. Over the next four years, Bauer never batted below .293, had as many as seventeen home runs but never fewer than ten, and was selected for the American League All-Star team in three of those years (1952, 1953, and 1954). But statistics were only a part of the story. Stengel marveled at Bauer’s ability “to do everything right in a tough situation.” (There was the game at Yankee Stadium in 1955 when Tiger shortstop Harvey Kuenn slammed a pitch from Bob Turley into right center field toward the scoreboard more than four hundred feet from home plate. “Hank couldn’t quite catch up to the ball,” Turley remembered. “But somehow, God only knows how, he got close enough to tip it with his bare hand—and flip it right into Mickey Mantle’s glove. Hank crashed into the scoreboard, bounced off, and trotted back to right field.”) And so, when a sportswriter asked Stengel to identify the three best players he ever managed, the old man rattled off the names of DiMaggio, Berra, and Bauer. Hank was startled when he learned of his manager’s response. “Me?” he inquired. “What the hell about Mantle and those guys?” “No,” Stengel replied. “You. You gave 110 percent every time you were in the lineup.”

Bauer’s contribution to the Yankees’ success was all the more remarkable because he was usually the team’s leadoff batter—a position generally reserved in those days for players with little power and an ability to get on base with singles or walks. Bauer himself was perplexed by his position in the lineup, and one day he posed the question to his manager while the two of them were sitting in the dugout. “First of all,” said Stengel, “you can lead the game off with a home run” (and Hank would in fact hit eighteen leadoff home runs in his career). “Second,” Stengel continued, “you could lead the game off with a double. Or you could score from first base on an extra-base hit. And you could break up a double play to keep the inning alive. And if you score a run in the first inning, it changes the whole complexion of the game.” The explanation was, in effect, a testament to Bauer’s drive and versatility.

Hank did not appear to be losing any of those skills as he approached his mid-thirties. His batting average dipped to .278 from .294 in 1955, but he slammed a career-high twenty home runs. In 1956 he hit twenty-six home runs and drove in a career-high eighty-four runs (although his batting average dropped to a career low of .241 in 147 games—the most he had played in any season). And he embarked on a seventeen-game World Series hitting streak in 1956 that would surpass the record of any other player. (Bauer also established a record of sorts of by getting picked off first base twice in the last two games of his streak during the 1958 World Series. “Mr. Bauer has been picked off more often than a tablecloth,” said sportswriter John Lardner, “and twice as often as the average toupee.” After watching Hank hit a home run that won the seventeenth game, Lardner drew an obvious conclusion: “This goes to show that when Hank runs right around the bases, instead of stopping at first, he can make a lot of trouble.”)

 

Hank Bauer is not thinking about a World Series hitting record as Don Larsen gets ready to pitch in the top of the ninth inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. For his part, Larsen is trying to stay calm, but it is not easy. He walks around the mound and picks up the rosin bag. (“It suddenly felt,” Larsen later said, “like it weighed fifty pounds.”) He then returns to the pitching rubber, glares down at Yogi Berra’s sign, and gets ready to throw the first pitch to Carl Furillo.

The Dodger right fielder fouls off the first two pitches for a two-strike count. Yogi throws a new ball back to Larsen. The Yankee hurler steps off the mound and turns his back to home plate as he rubs the ball. After another quick grab of the rosin bag to keep his right hand dry, Larsen resumes his place on the pitching rubber. After missing the plate for a ball, Larsen throws two more pitches which Furillo fouls off. Furillo steps out of the batter’s box momentarily, and, when he returns, Larsen is ready for the next pitch—a slider that the Dodger right fielder swings at and hits. It is a high fly ball that drifts toward the right-field stands. Bauer—only a few feet from the cinder path that circles the perimeter of the stands—keeps his eyes on the ball. There will be no basket catches or other dramatic flourishes from the Yankee right fielder. He holds both hands up and, after what seems like an extraordinarily long time, pulls the ball in for the first out. (Later, Larsen will tell Bauer, “I didn’t think that damn thing was ever going to come down.”)

Roy Campanella gets comfortable in the batter’s box as the crowd roars its approval for the first out. “Our strategy with the great Dodger hitter,” Larsen later explained, “was to pitch him inside, even though I had retired Campanella on two outside pitches in both the third and sixth innings.” The first pitch conforms to that strategy—a fastball on the inside corner. But Larsen and Berra have to wonder whether they made the right choice. Campanella swings hard and sends a high fly ball that hits the facade at the top of the stadium in foul territory. A slight variation of the pitch or the swing could have made it a home run.

It is a tremendous display of power that Berra takes into account in calling the next pitch. Larsen throws a fastball toward the outside of the plate. The Yankee pitcher anticipates that it will be called a ball, but Campanella swings and sends a harmless ground ball to Billy Martin. The Dodger catcher is thrown out with ease, and there are now two outs. The noise of the crowd reaches a new crescendo as fans realize that Don Larsen is only one out away from doing what no other pitcher in baseball history has ever done.

It is then that Dodger manager Walter Alston turns to Dale Mitchell to pinch-hit for Sal Maglie.

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W
ith the count of one ball and two strikes, the Dodger pinch hitter has his eyes focused on the ball as it speeds toward the plate.

Dale Mitchell’s appearance in Yankee Stadium at that pivotal moment in baseball history represents a true rags-to-riches story. He had grown up poor—“dirt poor,” as one of his sons remembered—in Colony, a town in western Oklahoma that the son recalled being little more than “a wide spot in the road.” There young Dale shared a small one-room wooden shack with his mother, his sister, and, when he deigned to appear from one of his frequent bouts with the bottle, his father. (Many years later, after he had become an All-Star outfielder in the American League, Mitchell drove his family to the home of his childhood, and, while they all sat in the car and stared at a pile of wood in the otherwise barren field, Mitchell’s younger son Bo asked his father what he was looking at. “That was my house right there,” Mitchell responded.)

Dale was blessed with superior eye-hand coordination and good physical attributes, eventually carrying almost two hundred pounds on a six-foot-one-inch frame. It was a combination that enabled him to excel at sports, and his considerable athletic skills were evident when he attended high school in nearby Cloud Chief, Oklahoma. He was a forward on the school’s varsity basketball team. He ran on the varsity track team and set a record at a state conference by running the hundred-yard dash in 9.8 seconds. And he played the outfield for the school’s varsity baseball team. By the time he graduated from high school in 1940, Dale had twelve varsity letters.

The left-handed Mitchell was only a junior in high school when he caught the eye of Cleveland Indians’ scout Hugh Alexander. In other circumstances, Alexander would have waited until Dale had graduated before approaching him with an offer. But the boy had unusual talent, and the Indian scout did not want to risk the chance that another team would sign him. A conversation was held, a meeting was arranged with the parents, and a seventeen-year-old Dale Mitchell was signed to a professional baseball contract with the Cleveland Indians in 1939.