Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (54 page)

 

Dale Mitchell retired after the 1956 season and soon became president of Martin Marietta’s lime and cement division in Denver. Even then, however, he could not escape the embarrassment of that strikeout in Don Larsen’s game—although he soon realized that, as Pee Wee Reese had predicted, it gave him a place in baseball history that had unanticipated benefits.

The occasion was the construction of a new shopping mall in the Denver area. It was a big project, one that could greatly advance the financial success of Mitchell’s company. The problem was the general contractor. He had selected another company to provide the cement and would not give Martin Marietta a chance to submit a bid. To Mitchell, that was unfair. He assumed the fix was in for the other company, but he was not prepared to accept defeat without a fight. Talking to the general contractor in Denver had proved fruitless, so he placed a call to the Las Vegas office of the development company’s president—Del Webb, until recently one of two principal owners of the New York Yankees (which had been sold to CBS in 1964).

When the secretary answered the telephone, Mitchell asked for Mr. Webb and was put through immediately. When Webb got on the line, Mitchell began by identifying himself, but Webb cut him off. “I know who you are,” he said. Mitchell then explained that the Denver contractor would not provide Martin Marietta with the opportunity to bid. “We’re being shut out here,” he said. “We can’t bid. All we want to do is bid.”

Mitchell wanted to believe that Webb would give Martin Marietta that chance to bid. After all, Webb had been a part of the same world of professional sports that had been Mitchell’s life for eleven years. He, more than most, surely understood the importance of open competition. But Webb had a different perspective—one that caught Mitchell off guard. “Well, you know,” the former Yankee owner responded, “you made me a lot of money with that strikeout.” There was a pause and then Webb said, “The job’s yours and we’re even.” So Mitchell had more than an opportunity to bid—he had the contract.

There were other unexpected consequences from Dale’s contact with the world of baseball after retirement. There was no better example than the time when the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Tulsa—where Mitchell had been relocated by Martin Marietta—invited him to moderate a discussion at a luncheon for high school athletes and their fathers. Mitchell immediately invited his friend Allie Reynolds, another Oklahoma native who had achieved fame as a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees. Mitchell decided that he would like to invite Ted Williams as well but realized there was one complication—Williams did not like Reynolds, and Mitchell could not help but wonder whether it would be too much risk to put both of them on the same dais.

The family talked about it at great length, and finally Mitchell decided that he should invite the former Boston Red Sox slugger. After all, Ted Williams was one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. It would not be fair to deprive these young boys and their fathers of Williams’ presence because he disliked another player. The invitation was duly conveyed, and Williams accepted—perhaps in part because Mitchell did not tell him that Reynolds would also be there.

To minimize the possibility of any conflict, it was arranged that Mitchell would sit immediately to the right of the podium with Reynolds on his right. Williams would be seated on the other side of the podium. It seemed like a reasonable solution to a potential problem, but it failed to account for Williams’ keen eye and volatile personality.

The luncheon started off well enough, but Williams was late. He strode in from the back of the gymnasium where the lunch was being held and took his seat on the left side of the podium. As he was eating lunch, Williams caught sight of Reynolds. The reaction was immediate. He leaned over across the back of the podium—not realizing that the microphone was on—and said to Mitchell, “Who invited that cocksucker?” As Williams’ question reverberated around the high gymnasium walls, all conversation in the room came to a halt—and the students and their fathers learned something new about life in the major leagues.

Despite the embarrassment of that moment, the interludes with former players were a welcome complement to a life that had most of what Mitchell could have wanted—a good job, a country club membership, and a loving family. But the signs of a dangerous change were evident—especially in retrospect. Mitchell had little exercise except walking on a golf course, and his weight ballooned from the 195 he maintained with the Indians to 220. The lack of exercise was compounded by his continual pipe smoking and by a daily intake of vodka and other alcohol after work, at the club, and with dinner.

The consequences proved to be almost catastrophic. On October 8, 1974—the eighteenth anniversary of his strikeout in Larsen’s perfect game—Dale suffered a massive heart attack that required bypass surgery. He was only fifty-three, but the damage to his heart was considerable and impressed on him the need for some changes in his lifestyle. Still, old habits could not be easily changed. He could lose some weight. But he would not abandon his pipe. And he would not, maybe could not, limit his drinking.

Mitchell no doubt wanted the life that he had enjoyed before the heart attack, but it was not to be. Margaret succumbed to cancer in 1976, and that changed almost everything. He was devastated emotionally and was now forced to spend much of his time alone. In search of company—and perhaps the camaraderie he had enjoyed with the Cleveland Indians and the Brooklyn Dodgers—Mitchell would frequently wander by the country club and down three or four drinks in the afternoon before or after golf or while watching card games in the clubhouse. And then the drinking would continue in the evening.

None of that benefited his health, and he had another heart attack in 1980. The heart damage was again considerable, and he was forced to retire from Martin Marietta. That was followed by another episode in 1982, and the doctors were sure that Dale Mitchell did not have long to live. “The doctor called me aside,” Dale Jr. remembered, “and said, ‘All his arteries are blocked and there’s nothing we can do. He could live an hour and a half or he could live ten years.’”

Other people might have made dramatic changes to increase the odds in their favor. But not Dale Mitchell. He continued his pipe smoking, remained committed to his daily drinks, and even took on a new wife named June. His children were now on their own—Dale Jr. as a bank president in Oklahoma City, Bo as director of development for the University of Colorado’s Athletic Department, and daughter Lana, his youngest child, as an elementary school teacher in Oklahoma. But he continued to stay in close touch with them and to make the most of whatever time he had left.

January 4, 1987, was a Sunday. The Denver Broncos were in a play-off game that would ultimately lead to the Super Bowl, and Bo had promised his dad that he would call him from home at halftime. But then Bo and his son were given tickets to the game. They made arrangements to travel from Boulder to Denver and then, as they were leaving the house, Bo felt “this supernatural tap on my shoulder” to call his father in Tulsa. Bo knew he would not be able to call him from the stadium, and he wanted to fulfill his promise to make the call. So he returned to the house, called his father, and explained that he was calling early because he and his son were now going to attend the game instead of watching it on television. They talked about the game and, as they closed the conversation, Bo heard himself say, “I love you, Dad.” “Well,” his father responded, “I love you too.” It was the last time that Bo Mitchell ever talked with his father.

The next morning Mitchell awoke, sat up in bed, and asked June to get him a glass of milk. She retreated to the kitchen, but when she came back with the glass of milk, she saw that her husband had fallen back on the pillow, the victim of his last heart attack at the age of sixty-five.

As he was laid to rest in Cloud Chief, the place where it all began, people eulogized Dale Mitchell from many quarters around the country. But as he might have predicted—and often feared—he was remembered most not for his achievements over an eleven-year baseball career but for that one plate appearance on October 8, 1956. As the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
observed, Mitchell had an impressive .312 batting average over those eleven years but was “best known for making the final out in Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.”

EPILOGUE

T
here may, of course, come a time when another pitcher hurls a perfect game in a World Series. Even so, Don Larsen’s remarkable accomplishment will remain a unique occurrence in baseball history.

It was, to begin with, a very different time. Baseball was
the
national pastime, the dominant sport of America (even though no major-league teams were located west of St. Louis). Growing up in Livingston, New Jersey, I remember rushing home from school to watch the Yankees on television (because most of the games at that time were played during the day instead of at night), and nothing could compare to the excitement of the World Series. Kids would bring transistor radios to school, and some sympathetic teachers would even bring in a small television set with rabbit ears and a grainy picture so that the class could keep abreast of developments (because, again, all the World Series games were played during the day).

The teams were different as well. The reserve clause gave the owners an unchallenged ability to control the fate of the team’s players. And if the player had talent, he was not likely to see a contract with another team for long time—if ever. Of the nineteen men who played in that fifth game of the 1956 World Series, fifteen had never played for any other team. That stability was due in no small part to the considerable skills of those who played in that fifth game. Seven of the nineteen players who were on the field that day were later inducted into the Hall of Fame (and another one—Gil Hodges—probably should have been). And fifteen of those nineteen players had been selected for their league’s All-Star team at some point.

The reserve clause may have unfairly limited a player’s options to seek better pay with another team, but the clause had the incidental benefit of creating a camaraderie that would be difficult to duplicate in an era of free agency where a player can periodically test the marketplace for his skills. Young men usually came up the ranks through the club’s minor-league system and then spent most of their careers with the same teammates. They would not only see each other on the field or in the dugout during games but also spend considerable time with each other traveling by train to the opposing teams’ ballparks. There they learned to accept and, for the most part, enjoy each other’s company and tolerate each other’s idiosyncrasies. “We truly felt like a family, always pulling for each other,” Yogi Berra said of his days with the Yankees. Those same sentiments were echoed by Duke Snider in the memoir he later wrote. “Most of all,” Duke explained in the introductory chapter, “I want to tell you about our closeness as a
team
, a group of young men mostly in our 20s who were destined to make history, some individually, but all of us as a team whose members genuinely cared for each other.”

However much they may have cared for one another, these men were all tough competitors. For most, it was a matter of necessity. Few had a college education, and most had no real prospects for employment that would pay them anything close to what they were making on the baseball diamond. And so success was not merely a matter of winning a game. It was a matter of economic survival.

The unwritten rules of the game reflected that focus. Baseball was not nearly as civilized then as it is today. It was much more a theater for combat than an arena for competition. There is no better illustration than the knockdown pitch. It could be a ball thrown near the batter’s head. Or perhaps an inside pitch close to the batter’s legs. And on occasion it might even be a pitch that would sail behind the batter’s head. Whatever the location, it was a pitch designed to keep the batter off balance. Because a comfortable batter was a batter more likely to get a hit.

Sal Maglie was one of the more notorious—and successful—practitioners, but he was hardly alone. Joe DiMaggio, whose career began in 1936 and ended in 1951, well remembered the pitchers’ proclivity to throw knockdown pitches as he watched the Cardinals Mark McGwire chase the single-season home run record in 1998. “Just look at those pitches,” the Yankee Clipper complained to confidant Morris Engelberg at one point during that season. “Right down the middle. It’s like batting practice. If Bobby Feller were out there, or Allie Reynolds, he wouldn’t be smacking those homers. They would dust him off, throw him inside, throw at his head. He wouldn’t have been allowed to hit so many homers in my day.” But if the pitcher did come in with a knockdown pitch, the batter would often find some way to retaliate. They might (like Carl Furillo did with Maglie) “lose” their grip on the bat and let it sail toward the pitcher’s mound. Or they might (like Jackie Robinson did with Maglie) lay down a bunt on the first-base side and then barrel into the pitcher when he tried to field the ball.

Free agency, better training, closer scrutiny by the press, and, most of all, the constant glare of television have transformed baseball in many ways. Players are much more mindful of proper etiquette on the field. But the game still draws millions of fans to ballparks every season and that many more fans to video channels distributed mostly by cable and satellite (with most games now played in evening prime time). It still has its challenges. It can still be imbued with excitement. And I would like to think that recapturing that special moment in the fifth game of the 1956 World Series will not only shed some light on the history of the game and the men who played it but also help explain the allure that the game still holds for millions of fans.

This book has been a wondrous journey. Baseball has always been a passion of mine, surpassed perhaps only by my joy in writing. And so there was much to be said for a project that enabled me to marry those two interests. Over the last six years, I have had the pleasure of being able to delve into memories that remain forever fresh by talking with players who were for so many years merely images on a television screen, reminiscing with family members about other players who are no longer with us, and conversing with others who share a similar interest in the sport.