9-15-69: 19 Ks not enough for 'Lefty'

Before he became a superstar with the Philadelphia Phillies, Steve Carlton toiled for the St. Louis Cardinals and lost 4-3 to the New York Mets on Sept. 15, 1969, despite striking out a record 19 batters.

Ron Swoboda spoiled Steve Carlton's 19-strikeout performance Sept. 15, 1969, with a pair of two-run homers, giving the New York Mets a 4-3 victory over St. Louis.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  There were countless examples of the New York Mets living right in the summer and fall of 1969. Luck? Maybe some, but also seizing the opportunity. The Mets -- who'd finished ninth in the 10-team National League the year before and last in five of their previous six years of existence -- were definitely a carpe diem team, a team of destiny, in their Amazin' world championship year of 1969.

  A vivid example of this took place the night of Monday, Sept. 15, before 13,086 fans at St. Louis' Busch Stadium. Cardinals left-hander Steve Carlton, in the third full season of a 24-year Hall of Fame career, struck out 19 batters, at the time a post-1900 record for strikeouts in a nine-inning game. The Mets committed four errors.

  Yet the Mets won, 4-3. How did that happen?

  Well, when the Mets weren't whiffing, they were going 9-for-17 (a .529 average) on balls put in play, using an all right-hand hitting lineup. The Cardinals didn't score any runs in the four innings the Mets committed errors.

  And Ron Swoboda, later one of the Mets' World Series heroes with a sensational backhanded catch in Game 4, swatted a pair of two-run homers to make the difference.

  Swoboda's first blast came with Don Clendenon aboard on a walk with none out in the fourth inning. That came after the Cardinals had taken a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the third when Vada Pinson singled  to drive in Curt Flood with one out. Mets center fielder Tommy Agee prevented another run when he gunned down speedster Lou Brock at the plate after Brock had walked and reached second on Flood's single.

  Swoboda's final blow came with one out in the eighth, his ninth and final homer of the season, and put the Mets up by the final margin of 4-3. It came with Agee aboard after a leadoff single.

  Swobody's two-homer game was his first since his rookie year of 1965, when he totaled a career high of 19 homers. He credited seven-time NL homer champion Ralph Kiner with honing his batting eye to face Carlton, he of the biting slider.

   “I had been hot and cold as a batter before this game. In a time before specialized hitting coaches, Mets broadcaster Ralph Kiner took me into the batting cage the day before," Swoboda told Richard Cuicchi in an article he wrote for the Society for American Baseball Research's Games Project. "He worked with me by setting up the pitching machine with the wheels going in opposite directions, allowing simulated sliders. Kiner kept asking me about my swings against those sliders in the cage, ‘How does that feel?’ Fortunately, I was able to get to a better place before having to face Carlton.”

  Swoboda in the eighth answered the Cardinals' two-run fifth that had nudged them ahead. Again, St. Louis' top of the order had come to the fore. With two out, leadoff hitter Brock singled and stole second, Flood drove him in with a single, and after a single by Pinson put runners at first and second, Joe Torre put the Cards up 3-2 with another single.

  (Brock's steal was the first of two on the night, No. 51 and 52 in a season of 53 that led the NL for a fourth straight season. This was his eighth theft crowns in nine seasons en route to a final total of 938, best of all time at the time and second now to Ricky Henderson's 1,406.)

  Tug McGraw, who'd relieved starter Gary Gentry after the sixth, got the win with three innings of shutout relief, allowing one hit and one walk while striking out three in improving his record to 8-3. (McGraw finished 9-3 with 12 saves and a 2.24 ERA, signaling his emergence as a top reliever with 27 and 25 saves in 1972 and '73, each NL runner-up marks.)

  The Cardinals threatened with one out in the ninth when Phil Gagliano, pinch hitting for Carlton, reached on an error by third baseman Ed Charles, and Brock walked. But the Tugger ended the game by retiring Flood on a fly out to center and Pinson on a grounder to short. Coming into their final at-bats, Flood was 2-for-4 and Pinson 3-for-3 with a walk.

  The Cardinals got seven hits out of their top three hitters, with Hall of Famer Brock at 2-for-4 joining Flood and Pinson with multi-hit games. Jerry Grote joined Swoboda in going 2-for-4 for the Mets.

  Gentry, a 22-year-old rookie who was the Mets' No. 3 man this year behind Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman and 11-11 coming in, allowed three runs, all earned, and seven hits in his six-inning stint, walking one and striking out three.

  Carlton's line was four runs, all earned, nine hits and two walks allowed, and of course the 19 Ks as he fell to 16-10.

  Carlton struck out the side in the first, second, fourth (after Swoboda's first homer) and the ninth. His first five outs and five of his first six were strikeouts. He struck out a batter at each of the Mets' lineup slots, led by Amos Otis with four at No. 2. When he wasn't giving up homers to Swoboda, he was striking him out his other two times up. Otis was Carlton's final victim in the ninth.

  When Otis was dispatched for No. 19, Carlton passed the 18 mark of Bob Feller (1938), Sandy Koufax (1959 and 1962) and Don Wilson (1968) for most post-1900 whiffs in a nine-inning game.

   “I decided to go all-out for the record. I wanted it badly then,” Carlton told the St. Louis Dispatch's Bob Broeg, back when he was talking to reporters.

  Carlton did this despite feeling feverish all day and suffering from a sore back that required painkillers for him to suit up. And he had to wait out a 26-minute rain delay before the game and a 54-minute delay in the first inning.

  "Lefty" finished the season 17-11 with a 2.17 ERA and was ninth in the NL in strikeouts with 210. He had his first 20-win season two years later, a historic 27 in 1972 on the last-place Phillies, en route to a final mark of 329-244 with a 3.22 ERA and four Cy Young Awards.

  The 19-strikeout game was the second of 16 he had of 13 or more, including three of 16 -- in 1967 (a loss), 1970 (a no-decision) and 1982 (finally a win). He had five strikeout titles in his career and finished fourth all time with 4,413. For a while late in his career, he and Nolan Ryan were trading the all-time mark before Carlton faded and Ryan kept going on and on and finished with 5,714.

   After Carlton's 19 K game, seven more pitchers would match or exceed that including two games apiece by Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson. Clemens twice struck out 20, tying him with Max Scherzer and Kerry Wood for best in nine innings. Johnson had games of 20 and 19, both in 1997. His 19-K game was a 4-1 loss, the only 19-K plus game on the wrong end of the score besides Carlton's. Tom Cheney has the overall record of 21 strikeouts in 16 innings in a 2-1 win for Washington in 1962. Two other pitchers had 19 K games in 1884.

  As for the 1969 Cardinals, they were third in the NL after the games of Sept. 15, 10 games back of the Mets after back-to-back pennants. They finished fourth, 13 games back. This was the beginning of a period of transition for St. Louis, which won three pennants and two World Series titles in the 1960s but wouldn't win a pennant again until 1982. After losing to Detroit in the '68 Series, the Cardinals traded '67 MVP Orlando Cepeda for Torre, and acquired Pinson from Cincinnati. Tim McCarver and Flood were gone after '69  when they were traded to the Phillies, although Flood refused to report and sued baseball. He lost his antitrust case but paved the way for free agency in the mid-1970s.

  Meanwhile the Mets, who five days before had taken the National League Eastern Division lead from the Chicago Cubs in the middle of 10-game winning streak that was stopped Sept. 14, led Chicago by 4 1/2 games after Sept. 15 and finished 8 ahead of the Cubs. Chicago had led from the first day of the season before being overtaken by the Mets. And then a New York sweep of Atlanta in the first-ever NL divisional playoffs. And then a 4-1 triumph over the mighty Baltimore Orioles (109 regular-season wins, most since the 1961 New York Yankees) in the World Series.

  Truly Amazin.' And the events of Monday, Sept. 15, fit right into this Cinderella tale.

   

    Sources: The basic play-by-play came from the Retrosheet account of the game at https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B09150SLN1969.htm. Further detail came from the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project article on the game by Richard Cuicchi at https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-15-1969-cardinals-steve-carlton-sets-record-19-strikeouts-mets-swoboda . Information on single-game strikeout leaders came from Wikipedia entries at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_single-game_strikeout_leaders and https://www.google.com/search?q=most+strikeouts+in+an+extra+inning+game&oq=most+strikeouts%2C+ext&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.6801j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 . Wikipedia also provided information on AL pennant winners at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_League_pennant_winners. Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and SABR Biography Project sites, as well as baseballreference.com. 

The Fluctuating '40s

With his majestic swing, Ted Williams had four of the top six hitting seasons in major league baseball in the 1940s, according to a point system used by the author. This despite missing three full seasons because of military service.

Stan Musial did plenty of rounding the bases in the 1940s with four of the top 10 hitting seasons in the major leagues. He was the only player to break through Ted Williams' grip on the top six.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  "Fluctuating '40s' is kind of a lame title, but Fabulous had already been taken by the '50s, and fluctuating is somewhat descriptive of the 1940s. There was certainly fluctuation with the players, with World War II taking away a large chunk of them, including many of baseball's very best. And there was also a lot of ebb and flow put up in the numbers by the players, whomever they were. Some of that had to do with WWII itself and cutbacks made in the U.S.

  Because of a shortage of rubber supplies A.G. Spalding & Bros., which manufactured balls for Major League Baseball, was forced in 1942 to replace the baseball core’s natural rubber shell with less-elastic balata, the same substance used to make the hard outer shell of golf balls. Hank Greenberg led the American League in homers with 41 in 1940, but by 1944 the league-leading total had dropped to Nick Etten's 22. Vern Stephens led the next year with 24. And even after crude rubber baseballs returned in 1946, Ralph Kiner hit only 23 homers to lead the NL in 1946. Yet Kiner hit 51 and 54 to lead the NL in 1947 and '49. So homers were back by the end of the decade.

  Some dives in numbers can't really be explained by the equipment or the comings and goings of players. With all the players back in 1946, Bob Feller struck out 348 batters. At the time that was the second-highest post-1900 total in major league history, one behind Rube Waddell in 1904. Yet despite leading the league in Ks the next two years, Feller's totals dropped to 196 and 164.

  So anyway, on with my decade-by-decade look at the best players of each 10 years and the best individual seasons by those players. I've already covered the '50s, '60s and '70s.

   Now here's my disclosure notice: The “study” consisted of pulling out a Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia and looking over the listing of league leaders in several categories for each year. The top five were listed in some instances, the top four in others – don’t ask me how that line was drawn. The major categories almost all included the top five. In a couple instances just the top three were listed. Sometimes just two. I think a large number of players tied had something to do with less than four, and space limitations may have come into play. I gave five points for the top ranking, four for second and so on down. Where just four were listed, it went 5-4-3-2. If there was a tie, I divided the total number of points between the rankings by the number of players who were tied. Example: Three players tied for second – 4+3+2=9 divided by 3=3 points for each player.

  The categories: hitting -- batting average, total bases, hits, runs, slugging average, RBIs, walks, doubles, homers, steals, homer-percentage, triples; pitching  – winning percentage, saves, hits/nine innings, strikeouts/nine innings, ERA, strikeouts, shutouts, innings pitched, wins, complete games, walks/nine innings, games pitched.

  What I came up with I think gives a fairly representative presentation of the top players and seasons. There are enough categories included to give a balance between the counting stats that reward durability and reliability and the rate stats that address pure performance. Offense takes in power, speed, batting eye and contact; pitching -- power, control, durability and dominance (i.e., shutouts). Mind you, the numbers, other than the rankings I assigned, don’t matter here, just how the players ranked in comparison with their peers. Which I think is the best way to rate players, how they rate relative to others. The 54 homers Kiner hit to lead the NL in 1949 don't matter any more than Etten's 22 to lead the AL in '45. They were simply the best over their peers in that particular year in that particular category.

Bob Feller,  who lost three full years and most of 1945 to military service, had at three seasons in the top 10 among major league pitchers in the 1940s, including the top mark in 1940.

Hal Newhowser had three of the top 10 pitching seasons in the major leagues in the 1940s, tied with Bob Feller for the most top 10s.

  So here's how the players and their numbers panned out:

Top 10 pitching seasons

1. Bob Feller, 1940, 46

2. Hal Newhowser, 1945, 45

3. Mort Cooper, 1942, 42

4 (tie). Harry Brecheen, 1948, Hal Newhowser, 1944 and Bob Feller, 1946, each with 40

7. Hal Newhowser, 1946, 39

8. Ewell Blackwell, 1947, 38 1/2

9. Bob Feller, 1947, 36

10. Spud  Chandler, 1943, 35 1/2

  Bob Feller, who lost three full years and most of 1945 to military service, and Hal Newhowser each had three seasons in the Top10, each with two in the top four. Feller had the best season with 46 in 1940, followed by Newhowser's 45 in 1945. However, if you were to assign points on their top 10 rankings (10-9-8 and so on down), Newhowser with his added seventh-place finish would edge Feller with his ninth, 19-18.

  (It should be noted that Newhowser didn't miss any seasons because of military service. He was classified 4-F, unfit for duty because of a heart valve abnormality, although he tried to slip through military screening.)
  Feller and Newhouser each had two seasons leading all major league pitchers in points.

  Sticking within the leagues, Feller and Newhouse naturally led the AL with three seasons in the top 10, Newhouser's all within the top five and Feller's all within the top six. Feller led the league in points for four seasons, two straight twice in '40-41 and '46-'47. Newhowser led in '44 and '45 for the other multiple-season leader.

  Mort Cooper was the lone NL hurler with multiple Top 10 seasons with two. He had the top NL mark of the decade with 42, which ranked third overall. He and teammate Harry Brecheen were the only pitchers to break through Feller and Newhouser's dominance of the overall rankings, with Brecheen's 40 in 1948 tying for fourth place. Cooper and Bucky Walters tied for most league-leading seasons with two apiece, Cooper's coming back-to-back in '42-43.

Top 10 hitting seasons

1. Ted Williams, 1949, 47 1/2

2. Stan Musial, 1948, 45

3. Stan Musial, 1949, 43 1/2

4. Ted Williams, 1942, 42 1/2

5. Ted Williams, 1947, 42

6. Ted Williams, 1946, 40

7. Tommy Holmes, 1945, 39 2/3

8. Stan Musial, 1946, 38 1/2

9. Snuffy Stinweiss, 1945, 38

10. Stan Musial, 1943, 35 1/2

  Ted Williams, despite missing three full seasons because of military service, had four seasons in the top 10, all in the top six, led by his 47 1/2 in 1949. Although most known for being the last to eclipse a .400 batting average with .406 in 1941, his '41 season of 35 doesn't quite crack the list. Despite his dominance in the decade, Williams won only two American League MVP awards, in '49 and '46. In his fourth- and fifth-place Triple Crown seasons of 1942 and 1947, he finished second in '42 to Joe Gordon (270 points, 12 first-place votes to 249 and 9) and was nosed out in '48 by Joe Dimaggio (202-8 to 201-3). In 1948, Williams never a favorite of the writers who vote for the awards, was left off one ballot entirely.

  Stan Musial, who lost one full season to military duty, tied Williams with four top 10 seasons and was the only player to break through Williams' grip on the top six, placing second and third in 1948 and 1949. His 45 points in 1948 was the runner-up total. He fell one homer short of a Triple Crown in 1948. Of his top 10 seasons, Musial won MVP awards in '43, '46 and '48. He finished second in '49 to Jackie Robinson (264 points and 12 first-place votes to 226 and 5).

  Tommy Holmes, seventh with 39 2/3 in 1945, and Snuffy Stirnweiss, ninth with 38 also in 1945, were the only non-Williamses or Musials to crack the top 10.

  League-wise, Williams had six top-10 AL seasons, including five of the top six. Musial had five in the top 10 NL, including four of the top five. Williams, obviously, had the most league-leading AL seasons while Musial topped the NL with four league-leading campaigns. The reason he didn't have five was because Bill "Swish" Nicholson topped him 32-31 in 1944.

  Sources: Listings for the top five each year came from  "The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Official Record of Major League Baseball, Macmillan. Information on wartime baseballs came from  https://www.history.com/news/the-rubbery-history-of-the-baseball.   

10-1-67: Bosox dream delivered

Carl Yastrzemski capped a Triple Crown season by going 4-for-4 in the Boston Red Sox's 5-3 victory over Minnesota on Oct. 1, 1967, that clinched them their first American League pennant since 1946.

Cy Young Award winner Jim Lonborg pitched a complete-game seven-hitter, allowing only one earned run, in Boston's    5-3 American League pennant-clinching win over Minnesota on Oct. 1, 1967.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  Much ado was made of the night of Sept. 28, 2011, the close of that year's regular major league baseball season, headlined as "Best. Night. Ever" in a Sports Illustrated article (https://www.si.com/vault/2011/12/12/106139348/best-night-ever). Four games were played that night with do-or-die implications, for the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays.

  But here's the thing. All that night's drama resolved only who was going to make it into the postseason, which meant at one least more round, possibly two for teams to get past before even making it to the World Series. Of the survivors that 2011 night, the Cardinals won both their division series and championship series to advance to the World Series, while the Rays were eliminated in the division series.

  Before 1969, only one team out of eight (before 1961) or 10 (1961-68 American League, 1962-68 National League) moved on to the postseason -- the one and only World Series. These were true pennant races, and when they came down to the final day of the regular season, it was truly do-or-die baseball.

  And there was perhaps was never so much doing or dying going on as in the 1967 AL pennant race. Of the 10 most dramatic pennant races in history recounted in a Baseball Egg article by Dan Holmes (http://baseballegg.com/2012/09/22/the-nine-most-dramatic-pennant-races-in-baseball-history/ ), six involved two teams, three involved three and one involved four -- AL '67 with the Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins and Boston Red Sox.

  Three teams were tied for first place and the fourth was a half-game back Sept. 18, and going into Wednesday of the final week the four were within 1 1/2 of each other. Then the White Sox went into the tank, losing five straight to 10th-place Kansas City and sixth-place Washington. But the other three were at each other's throats right to the final hours. Boston and Minnesota met in a regular-season finale in Boston tied for the league lead, while because of previous rainouts Detroit, a half-game out, had to host a doubleheader with California. The Tigers needed a sweep to force a playoff with whatever team won in Boston. The Tigers split, leaving it all up to the Red Sox and Twins, before 35,770 (capacity listed at 33,524 at the time) on Sunday, Oct. 1.

  And the Bosox, who'd placed ninth the year before and hadn't had a winning season since 1958, captured the pennant for the first time since 1946 with a 5-3 win. Their season was dubbed "The Impossible Dream" (a popular song from the 1965 hit musical "Man of La Mancha"), and they capped it in true fashion with a five-run sixth inning to overcome a 2-0 deficit.

  Triple Crown winner Carl Yastrzemski, who'd hit a three-run homer the day before in a 6-4 Red Sox win, continued a phenomenal late-season tear in which he batted .522 (23-for-44) by going 4-for-4 with a run scored and 2 RBIs. But sharing hero honors on this day was Cy Young winner Jim Lonborg, who threw a complete game seven-hitter and gave up only one earned run.

  It was Lonborg, who'd gone 0-3 against the Twins in '67 coming into the game, who got the Red Sox started in the sixth with a bunt single. From the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project article (https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-1-1967-red-sox-complete-impossible-dream: “The bunt was my own idea,” he told The Associated Press. “It was the first thing I thought about when I went to the plate.”

  The Red Sox loaded the bases on back-to-back singles by Jerry Adair and Dalton Jones, and Yastrzemski broke up Dean  Chance's shutout and tied the game with a single to center field that scored Lonborg and Adair. Jones made it 3-2 Red Sox as he beat out shortstop Zoilo Versalles' throw home on Ken Harrelson's high bouncer. That brought on Al Worthington in relief of Chance, the 1964 Cy Young winner who went 20-13 in 1967. Worthington uncorked a pair of wild pitches that brought Yaz around. After George Scott struck out and Rico Petrocelli grounded out, Reggie Smith reached on a misplay by first baseman Harmon Killebrew, allowing pinch runner Jose Tartabull to score and make it 5-2.

  The Twins cut the margin to 5-3 in the eighth on singles by Killebrew, Tony Oliva and Bob Allison with two out. Killebrew scored on Allison's hit, but Yaz, making up for an earlier transgression in the field, gunned down Allison trying to stretch his hit, sending the Twins back into the dugout two runs shy.

  After a leadoff infield single by Ted Uhlaender in the top of the ninth, Lonborg got Rod Carew to hit into a second-to-first double play. (Carew, a career .328 hitter with seven batting titles, beat out Smith for '67 AL Rookie of the Year with a .292 average, but on this day went 0-for-4 out of the No. 7 slot in the lineup.)

  Pinch hitter Rich Rollins popped up to a backpedaling Petrocelli at shortstop to end the game. Lonborg, who completed a 22-9 season with a 3.16 ERA, nearly had his shirt torn off by Red Sox fans in the postgame celebration.

Delirious Boston fans at Fenway Park nearly rip the shirt off pitcher Jim Lonborg's back after the Red Sox clinched their first American League pennant since 1946.

  The Red Sox, who were led that year by Dick Williams in the first season of a 21-year Hall of Fame managerial career, then went into their locker room to await the result of the twin bill nightcap in Detroit. The Angels won 8-5, sending Boston into the Series. 

  Earlier on Oct. 1, the Twins took a 2-0 lead with unearned runs with two out each time on errors by normally sure-handed fielders. Killebrew, after he'd walked, scored on a throwing error by Scott after Oliva doubled to left in the first. After Cesar Tovar walked in the third, he scored when Yastrzemski committed an error on Killebrew's single to left.

  The Red Sox got only one runner into scoring position and hit into two double plays before knocking out Chance in the sixth.

  Yastrzemski went 7-for-8 in the final two games to finish the season at .326 with 44 homers and 121 RBIs.

  Yaz and Lonborg continued their success in the Series, a rematch of the 1946 Fall Classic won by the Cardinals 4-3, this one won again by St. Louis 4-3. Yastrzemski batted .400 with 3 homers and 5 RBIs. Lonborg won Game 2 (5-0) and Game 2 (3-1) before being bested in Game 7 by Bob Gibson, as the Cardinals won 7-2. Lonborg had a 2.62 ERA in the Series.

  Gibson was the main reason the Cards prevailed. He won three complete games, one a shutout, and had a 1.00 ERA. This gave him five straight complete-game wins in the Series, coming on top of the Cardinals' 4-3 triumph over the Yankees in 1964. Gibby added two more complete-game wins in 1968, giving him seven in a row, before falling to Mickey Lolich and the Tigers 4-1 in Game 7.

  As for the Red Sox, their 1967 season sparked a love affair that's continued virtually unabated since. They drew a record 1,727,832 to Fenway that year, almost doubling their attendance from the year before and their highest since 1960, Ted Williams' last year. They've been above 1 million ever since, and above 2 million for the most part since 1977.

  As for the product on the field, although the Bosox stumbled a bit after '67, they were back in the World Series in 1975, and since '67 they've won 10 division titles and made 17 postseason appearances, six in the World Series. After more Fall Classic frustration in 1975 and 1986, they've won their past four Series, starting in 2004, their first world title since 1918.

  And it all really and truly started with the Impossible Dream of 1967. It wasn't a mirage.

   Sources: The basic play-by-play was provided by the Retrosheet account at https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1967/B10010BOS1967.htm. Filling in the details was the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project account at  https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-1-1967-red-sox-complete-impossible-dream. A long-form view of the game and the season can be found at https://slkelly.org/2017/06/04/the-year-the-impossible-was-not-just-a-dream/?fbclid=IwAR0t_PdsAwE5NfiDmEVarb_FtBt1YQIm27ZCg8wVJ0fH9VVtoVyKzWzHWqo
More background was provided by a pennant race roundup at http://baseballegg.com/2012/09/22/the-nine-most-dramatic-pennant-races-in-baseball-history/ , and various sources on the Retrosheet and SABR Biography Project sites, as well as baseballreference.com. 

9-29-59: Dodgers top Braves once again

From left, Hank Aaron, Wes Covington and Felix Mantilla in the Milwaukee Braves locker room in 1957. Two years later, Mantilla's throwing error from shortstop let the winning run in as the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Braves 6-5 in 12 innings to win the 1959 National League tiebreaker playoff.

Mantilla replaced Johnny Logan at shortstop after the four-time All-Star was knocked out of the game while completing a double play in the seventh inning. He was carried off on a stretcher.

Norm Larker knocked Logan out of the game while breaking up a double play and had two hits in the Dodgers' 6-5, 12-inning victory that won them the National League pennant on the way to a World Series title.

By Phil Ellenbecker  With two World Series titles, five pennants and two near pennants, the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers rank as the team of the 1950s in the National League.
 But the Milwaukee Braves weren't far behind, winning one World Series, two pennants and tying for another. And finishing second, third, second and second in the four years preceding their pennants of 1957 and 1958. The three years they finished second they were behind the Dodgers, and in 1956 they were one game out.
  The Braves lost out on one last chance of putting their stamp on the '50s when the Dodgers defeated them 6-5 in 12 innings in Game 2 of the 1959 tiebreaker playoffs Tuesday, Sept. 29 at the Los Angeles Coliseum. That gave Los Angeles, which had finished two games out of the cellar the year before in their first year in LA,  a sweep of the series en route to a world title they won by defeating the Chicago White Sox in the Fall Classic.
  The '59 NL playoffs, brought about when the Dodgers and Braves each finished the regular season 88-64, were perhaps decided in the bottom half of the seventh inning of Game 2. That's when the Dodgers' Norm Larker threw a body block on Braves shortstop Johnny Logan trying to break up a double play. Logan successfully completed the twin killing but was hurt on the play and carried off on a stretcher.
 Larker, who had emerged as a top hitter this year with a .289 average, was also known as a hard-nosed player.
 "If he isn't killing you with his bat, he's hurting you on the basepaths with his fierce running," said an article on Larker in Baseball 1961 magazine, the year after he'd finished runner-up in NL batting with a .323 clip.
  Felix Mantilla moved over from second base to take Logan's spot. Logan, a four-time All-Star, was one of the most accomplished shortstops in the game during the 1950s, three times leading NL shortstops in fielding  percentage in the early part of the decade. He fielded .975 with 18 errors in 138 games at short in 1959 and .965 over 1,380 games at short in a 12-year career.
  Mantilla fielded .929 with eight errors at short in '59 and .951 over 180 games at short in an 11-year career that was about evenly divided between short, third and outfield when he wasn't playing second base.
  So the Milwaukee defense was compromised after Larker took out Logan, and indeed Mantilla committed two errors over the final five innings after taking over at short. The first didn't cost the Braves. The second was fatal.
  With two out in the bottom of the 12th, the Dodgers put runners at first and second with a walk to Gil Hodges and a single to left field by Joe Pignatano off Bob Rush. When Carl Furillo grounded up the middle, Mantilla threw wildly, allowing Hodges to score the winning run.  "Furillo hit a ground ball past the mound and over second base," Harold Friend wrote in an article for Bleacher Report. "Mantilla fielded the ball. He probably had no real chance of getting Furillo, but he made a desperate throw toward first base that hit the Dodgers' first-base coach (Greg Mulleavy). Hodges scored the run that gave the Dodgers the pennant." “When the ball came over the pitcher’s head, I thought I could pick it up and step on the bag," Mantilla said in an article by Rick Schabowski at the Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project website. "When I got it, I was past the bag and I knew I had to throw to first. I never thought of not throwing to first because I could’ve gotten him with a good throw. I was off balance when I threw, and that’s why it bounced away.”   Braves manager Fred Haney said of Mantilla, “He did the only thing he could, he didn’t make a bad play. He was lucky to stop the ball at all.”
  Furillo was credited with a single on the play but no RBI.   The two teams squeezed out of bases-loaded jams to take the game into the 12th.
  In the top of the 11th, Eddie Mathews, who'd homered earlier in the game, drew a walk from Stan Williams with one out and was forced at second on a grounder to short by Hank Aaron. Aaron advanced on a passed ball by Pignatano. After an intentional walk to Joe Torre, pinch hitter Al Spangler filled the bases by looking at an unintentional walk.
  But Williams escaped by drawing a fielder's choice grounder to short from pinch hitter Joe Adcock.
  Pignatano was hit by a pitch and Furillo reached on a bunt single to put runners at first and second against Joey Jay for Los Angeles leading off its half of the 11th. After Jay got Maury Wills and Ron Fairly to both to fly out to left, Jim "Junior" Gilliam, the league leader in walks that year, coaxed a base on balls to put runners at first, second and third.
  Rush relieved Jay and got Charlie Neal, who'd tripled and homered in his first two at-bats, to ground out to third.
  Williams retired the Braves in order in the top of the 12th and earned the victory, evening his record at 5-5. Rush took the loss and finished the year 5-6.
  The extra-innings drama capped a topsy-turvy game in which the Braves were in control much of the way. It took a three-run ninth for the Dodgers to stay alive.
  Los Angeles loaded the bases with back-to-back-to-back singles by Wally Moon, Duke Snider and Hodges starting the inning. Don McMahon, who finished second in the NL in saves and first in games finished in '59, relieved starter and league-leading 21-game winner Lew Burdette and surrendered a two-run single to left by Larker. That made the score 5-4.
  McMahon then gave way to Warren Spahn, the third-winningest left-hander of all time and tying teammate Burdette that year for the league lead in victories. He was pitching in relief for the fourth time of 1959. Furillo delivered a sacrifice fly to right, bringing in Hodges with the tying run. After Spahn gave up a single to Wills that put runners at first and second, Jay came on and got out of the inning by coaxing a fielder's choice grounder by pinch hitter Ron Fairly and a fly out by Gilliam.

  But it took some nifty defense from Aaron in right field to keep the Dodgers from winning it right then and there. Gilliam took Aaron to the fence, but Bad Henry "loped over to the fence, stuck up a glove and speared it with one hand as if it were fungo practice," as reported by Murray Olderman in the 1960 issue of Sports All Stars Baseball magazine.

   Milwaukee jumped on top right away on Torre's two-run single with one out in the first. After the Dodgers answered with a run on Neal's triple and Moon's single in their half of the first, Burdette singled in Logan to make the score 3-1 in the second. Mathews made it 4-2 with his solo homer off LA starter Don Drysdale in the fifth, countering Neal's solo shot in the fourth.

  Mantilla, who emerged with the Boston Red Sox with 30 homers in 1964 and an All-Star selection in '65, gave the Braves a 5-2 advantage in the eighth with a sacrifice fly off Chuck Churn to score Del Crandall. Crandall had tripled with one out.
  (Churn was pitching his 25th game in a three-season major league career, which ended with a two-thirds inning stint in the World Series that year in which he yielded two earned runs).
  The Braves might have missed Logan's bat as much as his glove. Before he was knocked out he'd gone 2-for-3 with a line-out in his other at-bat. Joining him with multi-hit games for Milwaukee were Mathews and Aaron, each 2-for-4. Aaron was the NL batting champ that year at .355 while Mathews led in homers with 46.

   Moon went 3-for-6 for the Dodgers. Neal (soon to be a World Series hero with a .370 average and two homers), Hodges and Larker added two hits apiece.

  For the Braves, this was their final hurrah as a prime contender in the NL in Milwaukee. They finished second next year but seven games behind Pittsburgh, then placed fourth, fifth, sixth and sixth through 1965 before they were headed to Atlanta.
  The Dodgers, meanwhile, after recording the worst pennant-winning record until division play began in 1969, were just getting started on the Left Coast as a top power. After beating the White Sox in six games in the '59 Series, they slid back the next two years, lost a tiebreaker playoff to San Francisco in 1962 and then won pennants in 1963, 1965 and and 1966, winning the World Series in '63 and '65.

Sources:

Box score and play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1959/B09290LAN1959.htm.

More game info: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1128581-felix-mantilla-threw-the-1959-pennant-to-the-los-angeles-dodgers, http://www.thisgreatgame.com/1959-baseball-history.html, Mantilla's Society for American Baseball Research Biography Project bio at https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/4fd05b60 and articles in Baseball 1961 magazine and Sports All-Stars Baseball 1961, Maco Magazine Corporation.

The name of the Dodgers' first-base coach was provided by a Wikipedia entry at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Los_Angeles_Dodgers_coaches#First_base_coach.  Background was mainly supplied by various sources on the Retrosheet and SABR Biography Project sites, as well as baseballreference.com.

8-6-52: Old Satch spins a gem at 46

Topps couldn't get his named spelled right on his 1952 baseball card, but Satchel Paige put a spell on the Detroit Tigers on Aug. 6, 1952, with a shutout at age 46 for the St. Louis Browns.

Virgil Trucks, who threw two no-hitters and a one-hitter for the Detroit Tigers in 1952, allowed six hits and no runs over nine innings but had nothing to show for it in a 1-0 loss to the St. Louis Browns on Aug. 6, 1952. That was typical of the hard luck Trucks had in a 5-19 season.

By Phil Ellenbecker
  Holy Mother of Methuselah!

  Satchel Paige, that ageless wonder of baseball, may have been at his most wondrously ageless on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 1952, when at age 46, he threw a seven-hit, 12-inning shutout with a major league career-high nine strikeouts in a 1-0 decision over the Detroit Tigers.

  Only 6,162 were on hand at Sportsman's Park to witness one of the few highlights Browns fans had to savor, perhaps the highlight, of their last few years (excepting perhaps the midget Eddie Gaedel coming up to bat in 1951) before they moved out of town after the 1953 season.

  The smattering of fans watching the American League's two worst teams were treated to a pitcher's duel between Paige, by this time existing mainly on guile, and Tigers' flamethrower Virgil Trucks, who was in the midst of one of the most hard-luck seasons in baseball history.

  The teams' major metro newspapers gushed about what they'd witnessed, as told by Gregory H. Wolf in his lively account of the game carried on the Society of Baseball Research's Baseball Games Project website.

  “Never was Paige more tantalizing,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said. “(He) wins games (and) entertains in the process.  He whirled his arm twice in a full windup; sometimes just once. His slow ball ... seemed to hang in the air, as though manipulated by wire.”

  “[Paige] unwound his ancient right arm,” said the Detroit Free Press, and “proved himself the master.”

  Of besting Trucks, the Free Press said of Paige, "He outpitched one of the standouts of the decade."

  The game was decided when Bob Nieman, a career .295 hitter, delivered a two-out, bases-loaded single in the bottom of the 12th to score Bobby Young.

  It's a good thing the Browns managed that run when they did. Otherwise, Paige's masterful performance would have gone as a no-decision. That's because Browns manager Marty Marion pinch hit for Paige in the 12th after Young's leadoff single, a carom off the glove of second baseman Al Federoff, and a sacrifice by Fred Marsh.

  Al Zarilla stepped in for Paige and looked at an intentional walk from Hal White, who'd relieved Trucks after Trucks was pinch hit for in the 10th. Gordon Goldsberry grounded into the second out of the inning on a slow roller, with Young and Marsh advancing to third and second and setting up another intentional walk, this one to Ray Coleman.

  Nieman, who led Browns regulars at .289 in '52 with career highs in homers (18) and RBIs (74) in the rookie season of a 12-year career, then came through with the game-winner, a rope over shortstop Neil Berry's head, ending the game in 3 hours, 1 minute.

Bob Nieman, in his rookie season, singled with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 12th inning to give Satchel Paige and the St. Louis Browns a 1-0, 12-inning shutout of the Detroit Tigers on Aug. 6, 1952. Nieman batted .282 that year and .295 in a 12-year major league career.

  It took every bit of that Old Satch Magic to take the game this far after the Tigers loaded the bases with no outs in the 10th. Cliff Mapes got things started with a double, the only extra-base hit Paige allowed. A walk to Joe Ginsberg and a bunt single by Federoff then soaked the sacks.

  Johnny Pesky, picked up from Boston this summer after a standout eight-year career at shortstop and third base with the Red Sox, batted for Trucks and sent a sharp grounder to Young at first, who went home to catcher Clint Courtney for the force-out. Paige, dubbed "Old Mr. Unbelievable" by the United Press," then coaxed another fielder's choice grounder, this one from Johnny Groth going from Jim Dyck on a hard bouncer to third to Courtney. Berry then looked at a third strike, and Satchel had survived.

   “Three very fast, sharp breaking curves,” wrote the Post-Dispatch of Paige's face-off with Berry. “Each one started for Neil Berry’s chest, then broke right over the heart of the plate.”

  "(Paige) broke the Tigers' spirit," the Post-Dispatch said of the way the wily right-hander had squeezed out of the jam.

  Paige, in the longest outing of his major league career, retired the Tigers 1-2-3 in the last two innings as he ran his record to 8-6. He allowed only one runner into scoring position in the first nine innings. Besides the seven hits, he allowed only two walks, displaying what the Free Press described as "unusually bafflng control."

  Paige was helped out by Courtney, who besides going 3-for-5 threw out would-be base stealers in each of the first two innings. It was generally a poor day for base running, as the Browns had a runner caught stealing and picked off and neither team had a successful stolen-base attempt.

  Paige hurt his best chance at getting himself some runs in regulation by hitting into a first-to-catcher-back to first double play on a sharp grounder to Walt Dropo with none out and the bases loaded in the second. The Browns had only one base runner in scoring position after that until the 12th.

  In the postgame aftermath, Paige said, "I told Marty that I had 100 outs in my arm last night and I sure used them all up. I made up my mind that there wasn’t gonna be no morning workout," he continued, making reference to manager’s Marion’s practice of holding early-morning practices after losses.

    "This is the greatest baseball thrill I have had in many years," said Browns owner Bill Veeck, who'd brought Paige into the major leagues at age 42 as owner with Cleveland in 1948 and brought him back, after the Indians had released Paige, in 1951 when Veeck bought the Browns.

  “I was thinking of ‘Old Burrhead’ (Paige’s pet name for Veeck) when I was going through those extra innings,” Paige said of perhaps his biggest booster.  

  Meanwhile, the Tigers' Trucks was left to ponder once again what more he had to do. He allowed six hits, struck out nine and survived six walks in his nine-inning stint as he took a no-decision.

  At least it wasn't a loss, something "Fire" inhaled far too often in a 5-19 season. Amazingly, his five wins included two no-hitters and a one-hitter. In his other two wins, he allowed two hits in 7 2-3 innings and six hits in 9 innings. The Tigers scored 0, 1 or 2 runs in 15 of his starts. (Despite all this, Trucks' ERA was a none-too-sparkling 3.96 on the year.)

  As for Leroy Robert Paige, Old Satch finished the season 12-10 with a 3.07 ERA, his most productive major league season. He  added a shutout on Sept. 9, the last of his four whitewashings in the major leagues. Earlier in the season he had a 27 1/3 scoreless-inning string over 12 relief appearances, May 8-June 11.

  Paige went 3-9 with a 3.53 ERA in 1953, his final year in the majors except for a three-inning scoreless stint at age 59, in a publicity stunt for the Charley Finley-led Kansas City A's in 1965.  Paige had stayed active in the minor leagues after '53, and his last year in organized baseball was 1966.

  The Negro League legend, who most assuredly threw and won more games than anybody in baseball history, went 28-31 with a 3.29 ERA in six years in the majors, with All-Star selections in '52 and '53.

   All in all, a truly amazing career, and perhaps he was never more amazing than on Aug. 6, 1952. 

  

  Sources: The Retrosheet account of the game at https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1952/B08060SLA1952.htm provided he basic play-by-play of this story, enhanced by the detailed account by Gregory H. Wolf  for the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project at  https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-6-1952-satch-turns-back-time-spin-12-inning-shutout-against-tigers. Background was mainly supplied by various sources on the Retrosheet and SABR Biography Project sites. 

9-30-51: Dodgers not dead yet

Jackie Robinson saved the season for the Brooklyn Dodgers on Sept. 30, 1951, with a diving catch with the bases loaded in the 12th inning, and the game-winning homer in the 14th to sink the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-8.

Bud Podbielan picked up the victory with 1 1/3 innings of shutout relief, just his second win in four decisions on the year for the lifetime 25-42 pitcher. 

By Phil Ellenbecker

  Say what you want about how the Brooklyn Dodgers may have choked in 1951, blowing a 13-game lead on the New York Giants at the close of play Aug. 11 and a 4-1, ninth-inning lead on the Giants in the third game of their National League tiebreaker playoff.

  But there was nothing choky about their performance on Sept. 30, the final day of the regular season. With their season on the line and the Giants checking on their progress on a train back from Boston to see whether there would be a playoff, the Dodgers pulled out a 14-inning, 9-8 victory, with Jackie Robinson at the forefront, in what has to rank as one of the Dodgers' best clutch performances ever.

  And considering the seesaw nature of the contest, and the way it extended into the night, this has to rank as one of the all-time regular-season concluding games, with heroic deeds on both sides.

  Most heroic of all was Robinson, four years removed from his historic color-line breaking season and two years removed from an MVP season. If ever there was a performance that proved Jackie's value as a baseball player, period, this was it.

  Robinson decided the game with his two-out solo homer in the top of the 14th inning. He made that possible with a spectacular diving catch up the middle from his second-base position on a line drive by Eddie Waitkus, with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 12th.

  The overtime session was also notable for the yeoman pitching work in relief of aces Don Newcombe for the Dodgers and Robin Roberts of the Phillies. Newcombe, who'd pitched a seven-hit shutout the day before, allowed no runs, one hit and walked none over 5 2/3 innings. He retired six of the first seven batters he faced in extra innings before the Phillies loaded the bases in the 12th.

  Roberts, who'd allowed two earned runs over eight innings in taking a loss the day before, allowed only the earned run on Robinson's homer in 6 2/3 innings. Before Robinson's belt, Roberts had retired 13 of the past 14 batters he'd faced, including 10 in a row.

  But neither of those stalwarts figured in the final decision. Instead it was Bud Podbielan, who got the win when he relieved Newcombe after consecutive walks with two out in the bottom of the 13th. Podbielan coaxed Eddie Pelagrini to fly out to center field to set up Robinson's decisive blow into the left-field stands in the 14th on a 1-1 count, his 18th homer of the year.

  But the Phillies had one last chance in the bottom of the 14th. Podbielan, who got his second win on the year in four decisions, took care of it. After Richie Ashburn (4-for-6 on the day) led off with a single and advanced on Willie "Puddinhead" Jones' sacrifice, Podbielan retired Del Ennis on a pop-up to first and Waitkus on a fly out to center.

  This has to rank as the career highlight for Podbielan, who went 25-42 with a 4.49 ERA in nine years in a major league career that was otherwise distinguished by the franchise-record 13 walks he dealt for Cincinnati on May 18, 1953, in a 10-inning game against, ironically, the Dodgers.

  While Roberts sailed through the Dodgers' lineup, Newcombe needed some help from his defense for the game to keep going.

  In the 11th, after a two-out walk to Granny Hamner,  "Andy Seminick then laced a shot to left-center that appeared to be ticketed for two bases," wrote C. Paul Rogers III in an article for the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project. "Running with two outs, Hamner would have scored easily to end the game, but Andy Pafko in left made a running, game-saving catch to keep the Dodgers alive."

  Then in the 12th, the Phillies loaded the bases on a walk to Roberts, a sacrifice bunt by Pellegrini on which both runners were safe when Roberts beat the throw to second, and an intentional walk to Jones. Robinson then came through by diving to spear Waitkus' smash to the right side of second base, "reaching across his body with his glove hand inches above the ground," Rogers wrote. "He landed hard with the ball in his glove and immediately rolled over and weakly tossed the ball toward second base, as if he were attempting to get a force out there, before collapsing on the infield."
 Before the game settled into a scoreless duel in OT, there had been plenty of offensive fireworks on both sides. The Phillies were mostly in control of a rematch of the Oct. 1, 1950, regular-season finale won by Philadelphia 4-1 in 10 innings in Brooklyn, which clinched the Phillies' first pennant since 1915.

  This time, before 31,755 at Connie Mack Stadium, it took a three-run eighth inning for Brooklyn to survive and make possible the marathon finish.

  Gil Hodges got the Dodgers started in the eighth by beating out a grounder to shortstop for a single out of his No. 7 slot in the lineup. Billy Cox sent Hodges to third with a bloop single just inside the right-field line. Rube Walker, batting for Carl Erkine, the fourth of seven Brooklyn pitchers on the day, drew the Dodgers within 8-7 by doubling deep to left on an 0-2 count, bringing in Hodges and Cox. After Roberts relieved Karl Drews and became the third and final Phillies pitcher of the day, Carl Furillo delivered a single to left that drove in pinch runner Don Thompson and tied the score.

  It appeared early that the Phillies might be easing the train-riding Giants into a pennant by taking a 6-1 lead through three innings. Tommy Brown's leadoff homer and Ashburn's two-run infield single bracketed a four-run second that chased Dodgers starting pitcher Preacher Roe. Phillies starting pitcher Bubba Church's two-run single (Church batted .256 during the season) off Ralph Branca gave them a 6-1 lead in the third.

  Chipping away, Brooklyn drew within 6-5 with a three-run fifth punctuated by Robinson's RBI triple.

  Philly responded with two runs in the fifth including a bad-hop RBI triple by Hamner, one of four three-baggers the two teams combined for in the first five innings.

  In the bottom of the sixth, the scoreboard posted that the Giants had defeated the Braves 3-2, letting the Dodgers know it was do or die.

  Besides Ashburn, others with multi-hit games included Pee Wee Reese, 3-for-6, and Robinson, 2-for-6, for the Dodgers and Hamner, 2-for-5 for the Phillies.

  Other odds and ends from the game:

  -- Roy Campanella's fourth-inning triple was his only three-bagger of the year.

  -- Dick Sisler, the hero of the Phillies' pennant-clinching win over the Dodgers the year before with his three-run homer in the 10th, didn't appear in this game, although he had played in the Phillies' past few games in left field. Ennis was in left this day.

  -- Roberts finished the year with a 21-15 record and a 3.30 ERA after taking the loss for the second straight day. This was the second of six straight 20-win seasons for the hard-throwing right-hander with outstanding control who was the premier pitcher in the NL in the 1950s.

  -- Newcombe finished the year 20-8 with a 3.28 ERA, the first of three 20-win seasons he had in four years. (He missed 1952 and 1953 because of military service).  

  -- Although Roe, who finished that year with a 22-3 record, and Church, who had 15 wins on the year, were the starting pitchers, this game ultimately duplicated the season-ender of the year before with a reverse result. In the 1950 game, Roberts had outdueled Newcombe, with both pitchers going the 10-inning distance and Roberts making his third start in five days. Roberts finished the year 20-11, Newcombe 19-11.

  -- There was some doubt as to whether Robinson actually caught Waitkus' liner up the middle in the 12th.

  "The Phillies to a man thought he trapped the ball," Rogers wrote. "Russ Meyer was so vocal from the Phillies bench that he was almost ejected. Roberts believed that Robinson’s wild toss of the ball from a prone position toward second showed that Jackie thought he had trapped the ball and was desperately trying for a force at second.
   "That offseason Roberts saw Robinson at a winter banquet. He said, 'Jackie, you didn’t catch that ball that Waitkus hit.'
  "Roberts recalled that Robinson grinned at him and said, 'What did the umpire say?' ”

Sources:

The Retrosheet account of the game at retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1951/B09300PHI1951.htm provided the basic play-by-play of this story, enhanced by  C. Paul Rogers III's detailed account for the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project at https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-30-1951-jackie-robinson-saves-day-and-season-dodgers. Background was mainly supplied by various sources on the Retrosheet and SABR Biography Project sites.