The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron (24 page)

Still, these were difficult words to accept, coming from Burdette, a man with a reputation for little love toward black players. Henry respected Burdette’s professionalism, his toughness on the mound, and his commitment to protect his hitters from headhunters like Maglie and Larry Jackson of the Cardinals, but he would never speak of Burdette warmly as a man. In 1955, Burdette knocked Campanella down twice during an at bat in a game at County Stadium, calling him a “black motherfucker” in between dustings. With Campanella in the dirt, Burdette called out, “Nigger, get up there and hit.” After Campanella struck out, he rushed the mound, clearing the benches.

Brooklyn hadn’t held sole possession of first place since April 28, and yet here they were, poised to steal the golden goose at the end. In the opener, a Tuesday night sellout at Ebbets, Maglie gave up a homer to Mathews in the second and another to Adcock and stifled the Milwaukee lineup in between for nine innings. Buhl didn’t even make it into the fifth, chucking the ball around the ballpark. Seven walks in three and two-thirds got him the quick hook from Haney, and the two teams were tied at 83–55 apiece.

In terms of failure, Burdette topped Buhl in a quick turnaround the next afternoon, getting yanked after recording just two outs. But this game, with the fall air and cigar smoke intermingling around the old ballpark and Fred Haney chomping on his fingernails, turned into a September classic. The Braves trailed 3–0 after the first, with Don Newcombe, leading both leagues in wins, on the mound for Brooklyn. But big-pressure games and Newcombe did not often mix well, and Newcombe lasted but an inning himself, and the score was tied 4–4 after two. Milwaukee led 6–4 when Mathews doubled and Adcock
(again)
bombed a two-run homer in the sixth. Del Crandall wafted one into the seats in the seventh to make it 7–4.

But the Dodgers chased Conley and Taylor Phillips in the seventh, the old hands not quite ready to relinquish their pennant. It started with two singles and a run-scoring twelve-hopper by Pee Wee Reese, and a walk to Duke Snider. In came Buhl, once the Dodger killer, who it Robinson in the elbow to load the bases. On the next pitch, Sandy Amoros tied it on a two-out, two-run error by Danny O’Connell.

Now tied at 7–7 and with Haney reaching a fever point, Bruton’s single scored Adcock in the eighth. A redeemed Buhl would get the win in relief, but not before Crone sweated out the ninth, with Robinson singling, with two out, before Amoros ended the game on a grounder.

The Braves led Brooklyn by a game. Henry had gone three for five. All season long, the personality of the Braves had been defined by Spahn, Mathews, Adcock, and Logan. The frustrations of reaching the pennant had been illustrated by Perini. Henry was only twenty-two, and while he had been the team’s most consistent player, he had not yet affected the pennant race with a defining moment. The Braves left Brooklyn and took the train to Philadelphia, checking into the Warwick Hotel on Seventeenth Street between Walnut and Locust, a block from Rittenhouse Square. Henry and Felix Mantilla grabbed a cab to the ballpark, where Henry took over an epic doubleheader against the Phillies.

Jack Meyer, the twenty-four-year-old Phillies pitcher (who would die of a surprise heart attack in 1967), was throwing the game of his life, shutting out the Braves through six innings. With the Braves trailing 2–0 in the seventh, Henry doubled in O’Connell to cut the lead in half and then scored to tie it. In the twelfth, Thomson from left field erased a streaking Puddin’ Head Jones at the plate to preserve the tie.

In the thirteenth, Meyer—still in the game—retired the first two batters before making the critical mistake of hitting O’Connell (career average: .260). Henry stepped to the plate. Up until that point, Meyer had pitched twelve and two-thirds innings, had given up only six hits (Henry had one) and two runs (Henry scored one and drove in the other). The Phillies manager, Mayo Smith, did not blink, nor did he offer even a token look to the bull pen, not during these tough-guy days, when starting pitchers (even in the thirteenth inning) finished the game they started. The bull pen was empty. Meyer worked Aaron gingerly, outside and low, until Henry laced a rocket down the right-field line. O’Connell raced home from first and Aaron stood on third with a lead-taking triple. All Bob Trowbridge—who himself had pitched eight innings of scoreless relief—had to do was finish off the bottom of the thirteenth, which he did easily.

The nightcap at Connie Mack Stadium went twelve innings, with Spahn pitching the whole dozen. The game stayed 2–2 until the eleventh inning, Spahn and Robin Roberts, two future Hall of Famers, trading ground balls for pop flies, when Aaron led off the inning with a home run. Spahn couldn’t close the deal, giving up a two-out, two-strike home run to Ted Kazanski (batting average at the time: .211; career average: .217). In the twelfth, Spahn reached third—he had been on base all five times—and Aaron rocked a game-winning sacrifice fly off of another old pro, old Aaron antagonist Curt Simmons.

Now the lead was two, with thirteen games remaining, but only Spahn could win a game. The Dodgers took a one-game lead after Burdette (three and two-thirds), Buhl (three), and Conley (one and one-third) all failed to get out of the fourth inning and the Braves lost all three, two to the Phillies and one to the Giants. On September 25, Spahn won his twentieth, eliminating the Redlegs with a complete-game six-hitter, 7–1. Still, the Braves led by a game—91–60 to the Dodgers 90–61—with two left to play.

The venue was St. Louis. The wobbling Buhl and Spahn were scheduled to pitch, with Burdette slated for the finale.

BRAVES OPEN WITH CARDINALS
⁸⁰
TONIGHT WITH CHIPS DOWN
IN TIGHT PENNANT RACE

Three is magic number in closing series;
Buhl to start against Tom Poholsky

By Bob Wolf of the
Journal Staff

S
T
. L
OUIS—
Operation Pennant is at hand. Tonight, against the fourth-place Cardinals, the Braves will enter the final phase of their campaign…. Three is the magic number.

The Braves lead the second-place Dodgers by one game with three to play. Any combination of Milwaukee victories and Brooklyn defeats adding up to three will now decide the race.

Perini and Quinn flew in for, as the
New York Times
put it, “the kill.” Buhl, in complete free fall, didn’t retire a single batter. After two hits and two walks, Haney wasn’t taking any chances. The only batter who did make an out, Don Blasingame, did so by getting thrown out while trying to steal second. By the end of the first inning, St. Louis led 3–0.

The Braves clawed back—home run number thirty-eight by Adcock in the second, two doubles, a single, and a sacrifice in the fifth to tie it at 3–3—but Milwaukee was undone by a case of the shakes. In the first inning, Musial pushed a roller to no-man’s-land between Adcock at first and Dittmar at second. But when Jack Dittmar fielded the ball, he looked to first, to find it unoccupied. Buhl was late to the bag. Dittmar made a desperation flip—high and late—that went for an error.

In the sixth, Bobby Del Greco singled home a run to break the tie. With the bases loaded and one out in a one-run game, Blasingame bounced an inning ender to Adcock, who threw home for the first out. But Crandall rushed his throw, wide of the bag and low past Adcock. Del Greco scored to make it 5–3.

The Crandall error cut even deeper, when Bruton led off the eighth with a double and Aaron drove him in. The Braves went quietly in the ninth; the final score was 5–4, Cardinals.

Only Spahn remained. He took the mound at Sportsman’s Park, determined to carry his team to the World Series. On the mound was Herm Wehmeier, 11–11 on the season and going nowhere, but no insignificant figure in the drama. Six weeks earlier, it was Wehmeier who had beaten Burdette in ten innings, on the same day ending Henry’s twenty-five-game hit streak.

A special train, dubbed the “Pennant Express,” darted from Milwaukee to Union Station, carrying four hundred eager Braves fans.

Perini liked his chances after Bruton stepped in, with one out in the first, and homered to left, but the remaining two hours and forty minutes were nothing less than torture by baseball. Everything Wehmeier threw came in clear and flat. No suspense, no blinding fastball. The game went twelve innings. In nine of them, the Braves put a man on base, but only one, Henry, passed second base. Aaron stood on third, with two out in the eleventh, but was left to watch the season disintegrate before him. He had singled in the sixth and was exterminated with another double play by Mathews.

Robert George Del Greco, born April 7, 1933, in Pittsburgh, grew up in the Hill District of the city. He was a playground star when he hit his one-in-a-million shot: a tryout with the Pirates. By 1952, he would be the youngest player in the major leagues, playing as a nineteen-year-old for his hometown team. He would play nine seasons for seven teams, including two stints with the Phillies. In no season would he come to bat more than one hundred times and hit better than .259. But Bobby Del Greco could catch the baseball.

He would hit .215 for his career, and that weekend in St. Louis, along with Herm Wehmeier, he became one of the most infamous characters in Milwaukee baseball history. His two hits in winning the opener broke the 3–3 tie and gave the Cardinals insurance. Playing behind Wehmeier, he made eight putouts in center, dousing every rally with his glove. He chased down a vicious drive by Aaron in the eighth. In the ninth, Mathews led off with a bomb to deep center. Del Greco turned to the wall, racing straight back 422 feet to center, the longest part of the old yard. At the very worst, even a plodder like Mathews would have wound up on third, giving the Braves two chances to play for the pennant without even needing a hit … and yet Del Greco snared the ball. The pain multiplied when Adcock followed with the single that—had it not been for Del Greco—would have sealed at least a play-off with the Dodgers. Next up was Dittmar, who screamed a liner into the right-center alley that might have scored a run … but Del Greco ran it down.

With one out in the twelfth, Musial doubled. Rip Repulski hit a smash to Mathews, who was not sure he had a play anywhere but thought he could at least keep the ball in front of him. But, at the last instant, the ball caromed over his right shoulder and rolled fatally down the left-field line. Mathews gave a helpless half chase, feverishly at first and then with heartbroken steps as Musial careened around third to score the winning run, and wipe out the season.

The next day, the Dodgers swept the Pirates. For the next half century, the final weekend of the 1956 baseball season would haunt members of the Milwaukee Braves. Johnny Logan, the little tinder-box of a shortstop, would remember each sequence where they stared the pennant in the eye, cradled and caressed it, only to see the unlikely Del Greco snatch it away. Spahn, with his eaglelike confidence, would live for forty-seven more years, and would pitch nine more years, win 160 more games, pitch in the World Series twice, face fellow Hall of Famers Gibson, Koufax, Drysdale, Ford, and Marichal. And yet Herm Wehmeier, who would finish a thirteen-year career in 1958 with a career record of 92–108, was the one name he would never forget. On the eve of the World Series, when the Yankees would defeat the Dodgers yet again in seven memorable games, the
Journal
ran a story under Bob Wolf’s byline, with a headline that pleaded for an explanation.

WHAT HAPPENED TO BRAVES?
⁸¹
MANY ANSWERS POSSIBLE

Fade Out of Burdette, Buhl Placed
Heavy Burden on Warren Spahn

Why didn’t the Braves win? Wherever you go these days, the same questions are asked.

And the answers? … One explains the loss of the pennant.

Failure to play even .500 ball after Labor Day is the first thing that meets the eye….

Had the Braves gone just one game over .500 during that time, they would have tied for the flag.

The story went on to say, “With Adcock and Mathews not hitting, Henry Aaron, the new batting champion, was the only member of the one-two-three-punch that hit consistently.” For the first time in his career, Henry played a full season of pennant-tight baseball, and he did not disappoint. He did not flinch against the Dodgers, and proved the difference in two extra-inning games in Philadelphia, games without margin. There was not a moment during the pennant chase where Henry succumbed to the pressure. When the Braves soared to the lead in July, Aaron hit .424. When they were gasping in September, Henry hit .357. Against the top two teams in the league, Aaron hit the best: .350 against Cincinnati, .409 against Brooklyn, .450 at Ebbets Field. He had three hits in the epic between Spahn and Wehmeier.

The papers would devote many column inches and thousands of words to the bitter end of the season, to Burdette’s fade and Buhl’s September fizzle, but the totality of what was lost that season was best summarized by the man often ridiculed the most for saying the least.

“In 1956,”
⁸²
Henry Aaron said years later, “we choked.”

*
If anyone ever needed proof where Charlie left his heart, it was provided by the choice of his final resting place. Following his death in 1983, his widow received permission from the Cubs to spread his ashes over the Wrigley Field outfield. The Cubs heartily agreed and the widow Grimm did just that.

*
And then Durocher signed on to manage the Cubs. In 1969, the Cubs appeared headed to their first World Series since 1945, holders of a nine-game lead over St. Louis and a nine-and-a-half-game lead over New York on August 15, only to lose the division to the Mets by eight games. Durocher would manage five more seasons and would never again come so close to a pennant.