Not-so-magic Royals moments, '14 Series: KC stopped short

Enos Slaughter has rounded third and is headed for home in the eighth inning of Game 7 of the 1946 World Series. Slaughter  scored what proved to be the game-winning run in the St. Louis Cardinals' victory over the Boston Red Sox. (YouTube screen grabs)

Alex Gordon is headed toward third, and Kansas City Royals coach Mike Jirschele signals for him to hold up with two out in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. The San Francisco Giants twice mishandled Gordon's single, opening the possibility that Gordon might score on the play.  But he stayed at third, and the Giants got the third out to win the World Series.

By Phil Ellenbecker 

  Alex Gordon didn't get a chance to do his Enos Slaughter impersonation.

  Slaughter of the St. Louis Cardinals famously raced home from first base, running through third-base coach Mike Gonzalez's stop signal, according to some accounts, to score what proved to be the game-winning run on a double by Harry Walker (that probably should have been scored a single) in the eighth inning of Game 7 of the 1946 World Series.

  Gordon of the Kansas City Royals paid heed to his third-base coach's stop sign on his two-out, opposite-field single to left-center field, which was misplayed into a possible trip around the bases, in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2014 World Series in Kansas City.

  When Gordon stayed, the score stayed at 3-2 Giants, and Madison Bumgarner then retired Salvador Perez on a can-of-corn foul pop-out to third baseman Pablo Sandoval for out No. 3. That gave the San Francisco Giants their third World Series title of the decade on Wednesday, Oct. 19, while leaving the Kansas City Royals 90 feet short of extending the game and keeping hopes alive of their first World Series title since 1985. This was also the Royals' first trip to the playoffs since 1985.

  A main topic in the Series aftermath was Bumgarner's brilliance. Coming on at the start of the fifth inning for his first relief appearance of the season, three days after notching his second victory of the Series with 117 pitches, Bumgarner held the Royals scoreless on two hits, walking none and striking out four in his 68-pitch, five-inning stint to get the save. That gave him a Series ERA of 0.43 over 21 innings.

  The other main topic was whether Royals third-base coach Mike Jirschele should have sent Gordon. The Giants' outfielders had looked shaky in their handling of Gordon's hit, which came on an 0-1 count, and the way Bumgarner had been pitching, this might have been their best chance at tying the game.

The diagram follows the path of the penultimate play of the 2014 World Series between Kansas City and San Francisco. After Alex Gordon singles (1), the ball gets by Giants center fielder Gregor Blanco (5) and is kicked by left fielder Juan Perez (6), allowing Gordon to advance to third. That's where Gordon stayed as the Giants beat the Royals 3-2 in Game 7. (ESPN.com illustration) 

Alex Gordon follows through after connecting on a pitch from Madison Bumgarner for a single in the bottom of the ninth inning with two out in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. (YouTube screen grabs)

Gordon's hit gets by San Francisco Giants center fielder Gregor Blanco for an error.

The ball gets away from Giants left fielder Juan Perez after he kicked it while trying to retrieve Gordon's hit. The Giants' mishandling of the hit allowed Gordon to advance to third on the single. But that's where he stayed as the Giants beat the Kansas City Royals 3-2 in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series.

  Charging center fielder Gregor Blanco was caught in no-man's land on Gordon's hit, deciding whether or not to go for the catch.The ball skipped by him to the Kauffman Stadium wall, and an error was charged to Blanco. Left fielder Juan Perez gave further pause when he kicked the ball away a few feet down the warning track trying to retrieve it. He sent a one-hop throw to shortstop Brandon Crawford in short left-center. And then Crawford gave the ball back to Bumgarner, because Gordon, who'd stumbled going around second base, wasn't going anywhere, once he saw Jirschele stopping him at third.

  Gordon is no speed demon, but he had stolen 12 bases during the regular season and was considered a good base runner. On the other hand, with Perez up to bat, the Royals had the man who'd made their Cinderella run through the postseason possible by delivering the game-winning hit in their 12-inning, 9-8 wild-card victory over Oakland back on Sept. 30. And he'd a homered off Bumgarner in Game 1 -- the only run in the Series that Bumgarner had given up.

  If the Royals had sent Gordon and he'd been a dead duck at the plate, they'd have looked rather foolish.

  “I was starting to get a little nervous,” Bumgarner told The New York Times, as quoted in a Society for American Baseball Research Games Project article by Tony Valley. “He can run a little bit, and that’s a big outfield. I just wanted someone to get it and get it in, which they did in plenty of time. But it was a little bit nerve-racking.”

  Asked whether he could have scored on the play, Gordon told Tim Kurkjian at espn.com,, "No, I couldn't have." (For a deep dive into this play, read Kurkjian at https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/12485525/mlb-penultimate-pla.)

Nip and tuck  

  The ninth-inning drama capped a back-and-forth Series in which neither team had been up by more than one game. The run differential after six games was 26-25 in San Francisco's favor. It matched teams who'd taken similarly paths to get here -- neither was a division winner; each had to win a wild-card play-in game. And once they got past that first one, they just kept winning, until they met each other. Kansas City swept in both the divisional and championship rounds of the American League playoffs, becoming the first team in major league history to win their first eight postseason playoff games. San Francisco lost only one game in each of its two NL playoff series.

  Game 7 followed the Series' see-saw nature as the Giants took a 2-0 lead in the top of the second inning, the Royals tied it in their half of the second and the Giants moved ahead by what proved to be the final margin in the fourth. (The Giants were visitors by virtue of the AL having won the All-Star Game, giving the AL team home-field advantage in the Series under the rule in play at the time.)

San Francisco Giants second baseman Rob Panik makes a diving grab of a grounder up the middle by Kansas City's Eric Hosmer  with no outs in the bottom of the fourth inning of Game 7 of the 2014 World Series.  (YouTube screen grabs)

Panik has flipped the ball with his glove to second base, where shortstop Brandon Crawford will catch it to force out Lorenzo Cain (lower left) advancing from first.

Hosmer dives into first as Giants first baseman Brandon Belt stretches to catch the throw from Crawford. Hosmer is called safe on the play, but it is overturned on replay review, resulting in a double play. San Francisco held on to its 3-2 lead, and that's the way the score remained as the Giants won the World Series.  

The key play?

  While Gordon's trip around the bases and Bumgarner's final face-off with Perez were the ultimate pivot points, the game may have swung on a dazzling play by Giants second baseman Joe Panik and an ensuing replay decision in the fourth inning, with the Giants up 3-2.

  Lorenzo Cain singled leading off Kansas City's fourth against former Royal Jeremy Affeldt, and Eric Hosmer followed with a hard dribbler up the middle on which Panik made a diving, back-handed stab. Panik glove-flipped to shortstop Brandon Crawford to force Cain, and Crawford relayed to Brandon Belt at first in a double-play attempt.

  A diving Hosmer arrived at first at about the same time as Crawford's throw. Safe, first-base umpire Eric Cooper signaled. Royals at first and second, nobody out.

  But no. Giants manager Bruce Bochty challenged Cooper's ruling, and it was overturned on replay review.

  (St. Louis Cardinals fans might see some karmic reckoning in this. The last time the Royals had been in the playoffs, they beat the Cardinals in the 1985 World Series with the help of a blown call in Game 6, 23 years before the installation of a replay review system.)

Here comes the Bum

  So now it was two out and nobody on. Billy Butler grounded out to Crawford to end the inning, and here came Bumgarner, and there went the ballgame for the Royals.

  Well, not exactly. The Royals' first hitter to face Bumgarner, Omar Infante, flared an opposite-field single to right and moved to second on Alcides Escobar's sacrifice bunt. Nori Aoki followed with another base-hit bid, inside-outing a 2-1 pitch to left, but Perez made a running backhanded catch about five feet from the foul line. Cain then struck out, and Bumgarner set the Royals down 1-2-3 the next three innings. He had retired 13 straight batters before Gordon's hit in the ninth.

  Bumgarner's mastery was part of an overall dominant performance by the bullpens after the early scoring. Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland combined for 4 2/3 shutout innings and nine strikeouts for the Royals.

  The relievers figured to play a prominent role, as neither team had one of its top guns ready at the start. So it was their No. 3 starters who drew the nod in a rematch of Game 3. For the Giants, it was Tim Hudson, who'd given up three runs in 5 2/3 innings in their Game 3 loss. Royals manager Ned Yost went to Jeremy Guthrie, who'd given up two runs in five innings in getting the Game 3 win.

Matching runs early

  The Giants drew first blood off Guthrie in the second inning after Sandoval was hit by a pitch, and Hunter Pence and Belt followed with singles to load the bases, both hits coming with two strikes. Michael Morse scored Sandoval with a sacrifice fly on a liner to Aoki in right, and Crawford followed with a sacrifice fly to Cain in center to plate Pence.

  The Royals matched that in their half of the second against Hudson. Butler led off with a single to center and scored on Gordon's line double to right, part of a 2-for-3 night for Gordon. After Perez was hit by a pitch, Gordon moved to third on Mike Moustakas' fly out to Perez in left. Infante lined out to Blanco in center, but Gordon was able to tag up and tie it.

  Esbobar followed with a single to left, putting runners at first and second and prompting Bochty to summon Affeldt. Crawford fielded a grounder from Aoki to force Escobar and get the Giants out of the inning.

  (Hudson's 1 2/3 innings was the shortest stint for a Game 7 starting pitcher since Bob Turley was yanked with no outs and one on for the New York Yankees in the second inning in 1960.)

  The Giants scratched out what proved to be the game-winning run in the fourth. Sandoval led off by slapping a bouncer up the middle to Infante that the second baseman bare-handed while backpedaling into the grass. He slipped backward and two-bounced his throw to first, allowing Sandoval to reach with a single. Pence followed with a single to center. Belt's fly out to left sent Sandoval to third.

Bullpens take over

  Yost was now ready to go early to his bullpen rotation that had been so reliable in the regular season. Herrera, who had been the Royals' seventh-inning guy, now came on in the fifth, and on his third pitch he surrendered a single to right by Morse for the go-ahead run.

  Herrera retired the next two batters and skimmed through the next two innings before giving way to Davis. K.C.'s eighth-inning man came in one inning early and struck out three of the first four batters he faced. Sandoval doubled with two out in the eighth, making him 3-for-3 in the game, but Pence, who'd been 2-for-3 to that point, grounded to Infante for out No. 3. 

  Then Holland came on in his usual ninth-inning role, only this time not in a save situation (second in AL in saves this year with 46). He added two more strikeouts to the total of 12 Royals pitchers had on the night.

  Affeldt emerged as the winning pitcher in his first decision in four Series appearances, with 2 1/3 innings of shutout relief in which he allowed one hit. He had a 0.00 ERA in 5 1/2 Series innings, giving him 22 consecutive scoreless innings in the postseason, the second-longest streak in history behind New York Yankees Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera.

With two victories, a save and a 0.43 ERA, San Francisco's Madison Bumgarner was the obvious choice for MVP in the Giants' triumph over the Kansas City Royals in the 2014 World Series. An mlb.com article rated Bumgarner's pitching performance as the best ever in a World Series, and a Men's Journal article rated him the most dominant postseason pitcher of all time.

Historic on the hill

  Ultimately, the difference was Bumgarner with a Series pitching performance for the ages. With his two wins, one save and 0.43 ERA, Bumgarner put together what was ranked as the best overall Series by a pitcher of all time in a 2015 mlb.com article.

  "Had Madison Bumgarner never toed the rubber in Game 7 for the Giants against the Royals, his two victories earlier in the Fall Classic likely would have earned him Series MVP honors anyway," David Crawford Jones wrote. "But in tossing five shutout innings on the road in Game 7, Bumgarner authored the most impressive relief performance in Fall Classic history. By the end, Kansas City had mustered just a .127 batting average off Bumgarner. Royals skipper Ned Yost described the experience as 'hopeless.' "

  When you add in his earlier performance in the playoffs, on top of what he'd accomplished in the World Series and playoffs before 2014, you have someone who in a Men's Journal article was rated the most dominant postseason pitcher of all time.

  "The 6’5″, 250-pound wood-chopping farm boy from North Carolina has made the case that he’s the best postseason pitcher of all time," Matthew Jussim wrote. "No matter the situation, the game, how much rest he has, Bumgarner will take the ball and put up zeros ... 'MadBum' put up a record-breaking performance for the Giants during the 2014 playoffs, helping the team win the World Series over the Kansas City Royals by posting a 4-1 record with a 1.03 ERA (third-lowest ever in a single postseason), 45 strikeouts in 52.2 innings (the most ever). Over five World Series games in his career, Bumgarner has a ridiculous 0.25 ERA."

  And yet, just as the Royals were looking "hopeless" against him, Gordon was able to plug the gap, with some help from the Giants, and make it exciting -- almost Enos Slaughter-like.

  But he and the Royals were stopped short -- maybe for the best. It could have been one of the most thrilling plays in World Series history -- or a real dud.

  And in the end, Bumgarner made it an anticlimactic finish by subduing Perez on a routine pop-out, although Perez did extend that at-bat to a 2-2 count.

How it ranks

  In two listings ranking all World Series Game 7s, from mlb.com and the New York Post, the 2014 Giants-Royals game was rated 11th in each. The 1946 game in which Enos Slaughter made his mad dash to home was rated 13th by mlb.com and 15th by the Post. (1960, Pirates 10-9 over Yankees was mlb.com's No. 1; 2016, Cubs 8-7 over Indians in 2016 was the Post's No. 1.)

Kansas City's Alex Gordon is 90 feet away from scoring the tying run after singling and advancing to third base on an outfield error with two out in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. Looking on is San Francisco third baseman Pablo Sandoval. Sandoval caught a foul pop by Salvador Perez for the third out as the Giants won 3-2.

More on 'the play'    

  As noted above, Kurkjian gives a richly detailed account of the events surrounding Gordon's ninth-hitting hit in a 2015 article at https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/12485525/mlb-penultimate-pla. That tells you all you need to know, but here are some highlights:

  -- Kurkjian set the stage thusly: "The second-to-last play of the 2014 World Series had so many moving parts, so many storylines, elements and ironies, all wrapped up in a frantic, 12-second run from home to third base by the Kansas City Royals' Alex Gordon with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of a one-run game, the seventh of the World Series," he wrote.

  And for historical perspective, Kurkjian noted that of the 14 Game 7s in Series that were decided by one run (it's now 15 with the 2016 Cubs win), the only one that ended with an out being made on the bases was in 1926, when Babe Ruth was thrown out trying to steal second.

  -- Crawford was known for having a strong, accurate arm, and he was confident he could have executed the relay to erase Gordon at home.

  "I have thrown guys out at home from much deeper than where I was, and they were much closer to home," he said.  "If they had sent him home, I think he would have been out by a lot."

  That's the way Jirschele saw it.

  "I am just watching to see whether Crawford secures the ball," the third-base coach said. "If he does, there is no way I could send him. If it short-hops him and bounces away, I can keep Alex going. But Crawford has an above-average arm and is an accurate thrower. There was no way I was going to let the World Series end with our runner out at home plate by 20 feet."

  And yet, there was doubt when the ball continued to stay alive in the outfield as the Giants stumbled after it.

  "Then I kind of kicked the ball and I thought, 'Oh my God, he might score!' " Perez said. "I wasn't sure how fast he really was, and I thought there was a chance he would score."

  Crawford: "When I saw Perez not picking up the ball, that's when I had my 'Oh (----) moment.' I thought, 'Are we really going to have a play at the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game of the World Series?'"

  The play was a topic of discussion long after the last out.

  "When I went home (to Omaha, Nebraska) after the season, it was the first question that I was asked by everyone I met: 'Do you think you could have scored?'" Gordon said. "After a while, I stopped them before they even finished the question and said, 'No, I couldn't have.'"

  But we don't know, do we? So we are left with this quandary as expressed by Kurkjian.

  "It could have been one of the greatest endings to any World Series in history," he wrote. "It could have been the worst ending to any World Series in history." 

Sources:

Play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2014/B10290KCA2014.htm and  https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-29-2014-bumgarners-heroics-lift-giants-world-series-win-game-7

Gordon's hit: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/12485525/mlb-penultimate-pla 

Top Series pitching performances: https://www.mlb.com/news/best-pitchers-in-world-series-history/c-151792826 and http://blog.sliderdomination.com/7-greatest-world-series-pitching-performances/  

Top postseason pitchers: https://www.mensjournal.com/sports/mlb-playoffs-top-5-most-dominant-postseason-pitchers-all-time/

Top Game 7s: https://www.mlb.com/cut4/ranking-the-39-world-series-game-7s-c260328338 and https://nypost.com/2017/11/01/the-incredible-the-drought-and-duds-ranking-all-world-series-game-7s/
Video: 2014 World Series, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJmwofDYOeo and 1946 World Series, https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=enos+slaughter+mad+dash
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com. 

Top World Series pitching performances

Player                             Team                              Year    W-L  SV   ERA

1. Madison Bumgarner   San Francisco Giants      2014   2-0    1    0.43

2. Christy Mathewson     New York Giants             1905    3-0    0    0.00

3. Bob Gibson                 St. Louis Cardinals         1967    3-0    0    1.00

4. Randy Johnson           Arizona Diamondbacks   2001   3-0    0    1.04   

5. Grover Alexander       St. Louis Cardinals          1926   2-0    1    1.33

6. Mickey Lolich              Detroit Tigers                   1968   3-0    0    1.67

7. Sandy Koufax             Los Angeles Dodgers      1965   2-1    0    1.38

8.  Jack Morris                Minnesota Twins              1991   2-0    0    1.17

9.  Rollie Fingers            Oakland A's                      1974   1-0    2    1.93

10.  Bret Saberhagen     Kansas City Royals          1985   2-0    0    0.50

  Source: mlb.com, Sept. 26, 2015

Most dominating postseason pitchers of all time

1. Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco Giants

2. Mariano Rivera, New York Yankees

3. Andy Pettitte, New York Yankees

4. John Smoltz, Atlanta Braves

5. Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles Dodgers

Source: Men's Journal  

Swoonin' A's, 9-16-55: Short, sweet 16 as hometown teen debuts

Alex George was 16 when he made his major league debut with his hometown team, the Kansas City Athletics, on Sept. 16, 1955. He played in four more games the rest of the season, but never again in the big leagues.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  Six months into their first year in the American League in Kansas City, the Athletics didn't need the sideshow attractions with which owner Charlie Finley tried to bring in fans during the 1960s. No mechanical rabbits popping up behind home plate to deliver balls to the umpires, no sheep grazing in the outfield, no mules for mascots, etc.

  People were excited enough just to have major league baseball in town, the A's having moved this year from Philadelphia. Good attendance was practically guaranteed night in and night out at Municipal Stadium.

  That was the case Friday night, Sept. 16, as 29,875 showed up for a meaningless late-season game between the A's and Chicago White Sox. It was the last home series of the year for Kansas City.

  But a move the A's made that night smacks of the attention-grabbing '60s.

  With two outs in the eighth inning and Kansas City gliding toward a 13-7 victory, manager Lou Boudreau sent Alex George up to bat for shortstop Jerry Schypinski.

  George was 16 years, 385 days old, 5-foot-11, 170 pounds, and had just been signed by the A's, whose minor league teams had all finished their seasons. He is listed as the sixth-youngest to play in a major league game since World War I. Three of them, including the youngest — 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds — made their debuts during World War II, when teams were desperate to fill rosters vacated by men in the service.

  A left-handed batter and right-handed thrower, George had been a four-sport superstar at Rockhurst High School in suburban Kansas City, Missouri, then spent the summer of 1955 playing in the local Ban Johnson League. He'd received an $18,000 bonus spread over two years. According to a 2016 article by Chuck Hildrebrandt for the Baseball Research Journal, that mysteriously fell outside the "bonus baby" rules of the time that stated if a first-time amateur received a bonus over $4,000, he had to be placed on the team’s big-league roster for two seasons. Yet here the A's were wasting no time in throwing him to the major league wolves when suppposedly they didn't have to.

  (Hildrebrandt's was the only citation I could find of sidestepping the bonus rule. According to a 2016 Kansas City Star article by Rich Sugg, as quoted by Bradford Lee at royalsreview.com, the deal was $10,000 spread over two seasons, with three years of spring training guaranteed. Sandy Koufax is an example of a player who had to stay with the big club because of bonus rules. He, too, made his major league debut in 1955 and never ended up going down to the minor leagues.)

  “It’s all a strange circumstance,” George told The Star of his decision to sign. “Everything was spur of the moment.”  

  When George came up to bat, he faced Al Papai, the last of five White Sox pitchers on the night, who also happened to be pitching his final inning of a four-year career in the major leagues. White Sox catcher Sherm Lollar offered some help to George. 

  “You ever see a knuckleball?” Lollar asked George, according to The Star.

  “No,” George replied.

  “That’s all this guy throws. So now you know what’s coming.”

  “I get into the batter’s box, and I've got to tell you, my knees are shaking so hard, maybe he felt sorry for me,” George told The Star, referring to Lollar's "advice."  

  After fouling off a few pitches, George struck out. He then took the field at short for the top of the ninth and had to be on his toes, for with one out Chico Carrasquel sent a ground ball at him that he handled, and he got out No. 2 by going to Vic Power at first base. Then, with runners at second and third bases, he recorded out No. 3 when he speared a line shot by "Jungle Jim" Rivera that appeared headed for a base hit.

  As George was heading off the field he flipped the ball to Power, and Power gave it right back. George doesn’t know what happened to the ball from his debut, but he’ll never forget the exchange, he told The Star.

  So that was the ballgame, and a few days later that was it for George's major league career. He appeared in four more games the rest of the season, got to bat 10 more times, struck out six more times, got one hit and drew one walk. In the field he had six putouts, five assists and one error at shortstop.

  He never again appeared in a major league game. He started the next season in Class D ball, probably where he should have started 1955, and spent eight seasons in the minor leagues, seven in the Athletics’ organization. George kept showing promise. He rose as high as the AA level, and four times he reached double figures in homers. George's best season in pro ball was 1958 with Class C Pocatello, when he hit .282 with 23 homers and 90 RBIs.

  But by age 23, surgery on his right shoulder had sapped his throwing strength, George had started a family, and he figured his time was up. He quit baseball at age 23, in 1963, after hitting .207 in 136 games with York, a Double-A Washington Senators farm club. 

  “It wasn’t too difficult to walk away,” he said.

10 days in the majors

  Since we don't have much to cover, here's a closer look at the rest of Alex George's major league career after the night of Sept. 16:

  --Sept. 18, in Kansas City before 31,034, Athletics defeated Chicago 8-1. George again pinch hit for Schypinski in the eighth inning and again struck out. He got an unassisted putout in the ninth off the bat of Earl Battey.                                                                                             

  (Schypinki himself was a one-and-doner, playing in 22 games this season and never again in the big leagues.)
  --Sept. 19, at Detroit, Tigers won 4-0. George got his first start that night at Briggs Stadium and went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts before being pinch hit for in the seventh.  At short he recorded two putouts and one assist.
  --Sept. 20, at Detroit, Tigers won 7-3. George was back in the starting lineup and this time played the whole game. He also got his first and only major league hit. He led off the game by beating out a drag bunt toward third base for a single off Duke Maas. He was put out at second on Gus Zernial's inning-ending double play grounder to third. He walked against Jim Bunning leading off the ninth and was forced out at second on a fielder's choice grounder to first by Tom Saffell.
  In his other three trips to the plate he struck out twice and hit into an inning-ending force play.
  At short he tallied three assists and two putouts, committed one error and turned one double play.
  The twin killing was of the unusual variety. With one out in the fourth and Al Kaline at third and Bill Tuttle at first, Ray Boone hit a grounder to second baseman Schypinki, who flipped to George to get Tuttle at second. Kaline was out at home on a play that went George-to-first baseman Harry Simpson-to catcher Billy Shantz, according to retrosheet.org's play-by-play.
  So George can say that he was involved in an inning-ending double play that put out a future Hall of Famer in Kaline at home. And he drew a walk from another future Hall of Famer in Bunning.
  His error came on a ball by Chick King leading off the third.
  --Sept. 25, at Chicago, White Sox win 5-0: After all that excitement the Tuesday night of Sept. 20, George sat down for the series finale with Detroit the next night, and for the first two games of a season-ending series at Chicago.
  However, he had one last "hurrah" in Sunday's season finale. Again, he subbed for Schypinki at short, replacing him in the field in the bottom of the seventh. He came up in the next inning, with one out, and again struck out. He had no chances in the field.
  And such was the short major league life of Alex George.

Alex George talks in 2014 about his brief major league career with the Kansas City Athletics. George went into sales and sales management with local radio and television after his eight-year professional baseball career was over. 

George the Jayhawk

  According to a 2014 Shawnee Mission Post article by Dan Blom, George passed on football scholarship offers from Big Eight schools but was set to play baseball and basketball at the University of Kansas and was enrolled as a freshman there, with classes two days away from starting, when he got a call from the A’s. They wanted to sign him to a contract and have him finish the season with them. “I never have been accused of thinking too far ahead,” George says of his decision to sign with the A's.

  George, who went into sales and sales management in local radio and television after his baseball career was over and retired to the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village in Kansas, recalls a basketball coach at KU introducing him to another new arrival on campus that fall -- the legendary Wilt Chamberlain.

Trying out shortstops

  George was one of four shortstops trotted out in 1955 by Boudreau, who knew a little bit about the position having put together a Hall of Fame career at short. Joe DeMaestri played 123 games there, while Schypinski and Jack Littrell played 22 apiece and George five.  By the next year only DeMaestri remained, and he went on to become an All-Star and led American League shortstops in fielding percentage in 1957 and 1958.

  (DeMaestri's Society for American Baseball Research biography doesn't mention him being injured in 1955, but he didn't play in any games after Aug. 30.)

Not the batboy

  According to the Post article, DeMaestri stuck up for George in a humourous way when George first showed up in the A's clubhouse.

  "When George found his locker at Municipal Stadium that first day, he remembers a player asking infielder Joe DeMaestri if the new kid was the batboy," Blom wrote. "DeMaestri, George recalls, told the other player that George was actually joining the team: 'I think the batboy’s older,' Demaestri said."

Embraced in K.C.

  The crowds of 29,875 and 31,034 the A's drew in George's first two games, in their final home series of the season, were indicative of the warm reception the A's received in their first year in K.C. Their attendance for the year was 1,393,095, second in the American League behind the mighty New York Yankees' 1,490,138 and an average of 18,330 a game.

  “I thought it was great that the Athletics moved to Kansas City,” DeMaestri said in his SABR biography written by  Joseph Wancho. “The fans who watched us in Municipal Stadium were polite, win or lose. They couldn’t have been happier. They were knowledgeable about baseball because for years they had supported the Yankees’ minor league team, the Kansas City Blues. They were so excited to get a major league team, and we had a lot of pride being that team.”

Home cooking

  George caught a feel for that baseball vibe at Municipal, where the legendary Negro League team the Monarchs also played, as a boy growing up in the Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri. It's understandable that he'd bite at the opportunity to sign with the hometown team and play for them at such an early age.

  "My dad would pack us in the car and we would drive down Brooklyn Avenue, past the ballpark during a game and you could hear, you couldn’t see what was going on but you could certainly hear the fans," he recalled in a 2014 article written by Sam Zeff for the KCUR public radio station website. "There’d be 10 or 15 other cars that would just be driving back and forth past the stadium."

  Besides the fact that he was a hometown boy, adding to the Athletics incentive to sign George and play him right away, from a publicity standpoint, was the fact  that George's father was a something of a sports entrepreneur in town, and later would become a founding father of the Kansas City Sports Commission, according to The Star.

  While George doesn't shy away from talking about his brief major league career, he can't help but wonder what might have been if he hadn't been thrown into the fire so early.

  “When I think back on it, if I had come in two or three years older, it might have made a big difference,” George told The Star. “I was a 16-year-old kid who didn’t look like he was 18 or 19. I was just a 16-year-old, moving along.”

  And yet, George has something to treasure, even if it lasted just over a week.

  "If you’ve played baseball at any level, you understand how difficult the sport is," Zeff wrote in the KCUR article. "We get lulled into a false sense watching today's big leaguers hit 95 mph fastballs. When you’ve stood in that box and faced a live pitcher, you know how difficult it is. And Alex George was doing it at 16 years of age."

Sources:

Alex George's major league debut: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1955/B09160KC11955.htm  

George biographical info: https://sabr.org/research/sweet-16-year-old-players-major-league-history, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki, Alex_George_(baseball), https://shawneemissionpost.com/2014/10/30/prairie-villages-alex-george-played-major-league-ball-kansas-city-athletics-16-year-old-33366/, https://www.kcur.org/sports/2014-10-24/kansas-city-is-baseball-crazy-now-but-you-shouldve-seen-1955, https://www.royalsreview.com/2018/7/18/17578792/the-ten-best-baseball-players-from-the-kansas-city-area and https://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/article212804199.html

Career statistics: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=george001ale  
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com. 

9-26-61: Reds' Lynch-pin delivers pennant

Jerry Lynch, who set a record for pinch homers in 1961 with five, didn't homer in the pinch but certainly delivered in the clutch with a two-run shot that in the eighth inning that put the Cincinnati Reds ahead in their pennant-clinching 6-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Sept. 26.

Frank Robinson, the 1961 National League MVP, stated his case on Sept. 26 with a two-run homer that tied the game in the Cincinnati Reds' 6-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs that clinched the Reds' first pennant in 21 years. Robinson also scored the Reds' final run and finished the game 2-for-4 with two RBIs and two runs scored.

By Phil Ellenbecker

 It wasn't Lynch in the pinch, but it was most certainly timely.

 Jerry Lynch, who set a single-season record for pinch-hit homers with five in 1961, clubbed a two-run dinger in the eighth inning that snapped a 3-3 tie Sept. 26 of that year as the Cincinnati Reds clinched their first National League pennant in 21 years. Lynch's homer made the difference in a 6-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on a Tuesday afternoon.

  Lynch, also the all-time leader in pinch homers with 18, started on this day in left field and was 0-for-3 when he came to the plate in the eighth with two outs and Vada Pinson on first via a single. On a 2-2 count, Lynch sent a pitch far over the right-field bleachers off Bob Anderson for his 13th homer of the season.

  “Don’t worry, Pete, I’ll get one," Lynch had promised coach Pete Whisenant before coming to bat, according to Jim Brosnan in "Pennant Race," his diary of the 1961 Reds season. "Hit it on the fists or something.” 

  Also quite timely was a two-run homer the inning before by Frank Robinson, the 1961 NL MVP, which tied the game at 3-3. Robby's 37th homer of the season came after Gordy Coleman led off the inning with a walk.

  And penning an almost-perfect closing script for the clincher was "The Professor," Brosnan, known both during and after his playing days as an author but also a pretty fine relief pitcher, especially this season. Brosnan struck out two batters in a 1-2-3 Chicago ninth to finish with three innings of one-hit shutout relief. Brosnan had pitched for the Cubs from 1954 to 1958

  After Robinson tied the game in the seventh, he tried to do the Cubs a favor by committing an error in the bottom half of the inning with two out, allowing Ernie Banks to reach second base. But Brosnan, who'd come on at the beginning of the inning, struck out George Altman and relatively breezed the rest of the way, an infield single by Ron Santo in the eighth the only blemish on his victory-earning outing.

  Brosnan improved to 10-3 in his seventh appearance of the year in which he went three or more innings. His four strikeouts were a season high. He would finish the season at 10-4 with a 3.04 ERA and 16 saves, good for third in the NL. But he hadn't been so great against the Cubs coming into this game -- 0-2 with an 8.37 ERA in eight appearances.

  “'My God, I could lose three games to these guys!' I thought," wrote Brosnan in "Pennant Race," a follow-up to "The Long Season," his diary of the 1959 season. "For once, however, I knew I had good stuff. My slider was fast and sharp, the best I’d had all year."

"The Professor," Jim Brosnan, was known as a writer both during and after his baseball playing days, but his pitches spoke loudly on Sept. 26, 1961. He threw three innings of shutout relief to nail down the Cincinnati Reds' pennant-clinching 6-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs, his former team. He also drove in an insurance run in the ninth inning.

  Robinson added to his MVP case and Brosnan helped his cause in the ninth. Robby doubled leading off and scored an insurance run on a single by Brosnan off Glen Hobbie. Robinson went 2-for-4 on the day with two RBIs and two runs scored. He'd finish the season hitting .323 (sixth in the league) with 37 homers (third) and 124 RBIs (second).

  The Cubs led 3-0 through five innings. They grabbed the early advantage in the first against Bob Purkey when Altman doubled in Don Zimmer. Zimmer had singled, advanced to second on a passed ball by Reds catcher Johnny Edwards and went to third on Banks' ground out.

  Edwards, having trouble with the deliveries of knuckleballing Purkey, committed another passed ball that allowed Altman to third. But Purkey knuckled down to get Billy Williams on a fly for the third out.

  Chicago upped the lead in the fifth with a small-ball rally that included a single to left field by Anderson, back-to-back infield singles by Richie Ashburn and Zimmer, and an error by shortstop Kasko on a ball by Banks that allowed Anderson to score. Altman then drew a bases-loaded walk for his second RBI, Ashburn crossing the plate to make the score 3-0.

  Edwards, an eventual two-time Gold Glove winner at catcher, was having a tough time up until then. He'd grounded into a double play his first time at bat.

  But the rookie redeemed himself and broke up Anderson's shutout with a homer starting the Reds' half of the fifth. It was his second and final homer of the season. His first had come back on June 28 in his second game and fourth at-bat in the major leagues -- and it came against the Cubs. 

  Anderson forged on until Robinson's double in the ninth. He took the loss and dropped to 7-10, allowing seven hits and six runs, all earned, in his eight innings. He walked four and struck out one.

  Purkey, a five-time All-Star who would finish the year 16-12 with a 3.73 ERA, allowed five hits and three runs, one earned, in five innings before giving way to pinch hitter Gus Bell. He walked two and struck out two.

  Fireballing Jim Maloney came on in the sixth and struck out two in his one-inning stint before Brosnan came in to slam the door. At this time Maloney was relieving more than starting, but he would emerge as one of the NL's premier power pitchers of the 1960s and would throw two no-hitters and lose another in the 11th inning.

  The game featured many present and future standouts, including five Hall of Famers -- Ashburn, Banks, Williams and Santo for the Cubs and Robinson for the Reds. And many people think Pinson, who went 2-for-3 in the game, belongs in the Hall.

  Williams, who went 0-for-4 in the game, would win NL Rookie of the Year honors for '61 after hitting .278 with 25 homers and 86 RBIs. Santo was just in his second season but began to emerge this year with 23 homers and 83 RBIs while hitting .284.

  The Reds, who'd been picked to finish sixth in the NL in the preseason, according to Tony Valley at the Society for American Baseball Research's Games Project, clinched at least a tie for the pennant with the Sept. 26 win and had the crown to themselves after the Pittsburgh Pirates split a doubleheader with second-place Los Angeles that night. They stood 92-59, 4 1/2 ahead of the Dodgers, and finished the season 93-61, four games up. Their win total was the team's highest since a 100-victory season in 1940 that ended with a World Series title.

  The New York Yankees beat the Reds 4-1 in the 1961 World Series.

  The Cubs were 62-89 after Sept. 26, in seventh place and 30 games behind the Reds. They'd finish 64-90, seventh and 29 back, but 17 ahead of Philadelphia -- but still stuck in the doldrums they'd been in pretty much since reaching the 1945 World Series. From 1947 through 1966 they never finished higher than fifth, MVP awards by Hank Sauer in 1952 and Banks in '58 and '59 among their few bright spots. But with their Hall of Famers in tow they'd rise again with third place or better finishes from 1967 to 1972 under Leo Durocher, yet coming up short of a pennant or division title  -- three times runner-up.

A case for Lynch

  Although the Reds had the league's MVP with Robinson, a 21-game winner in Joey Jay and 19-game winner in Jim O'Toole, and probably the league's best bullpen with Brosnan and Bill Henry (16 saves), Lynch might have been as vital to their cause as anybody. On a per-at bat ratio he was highly effective, hitting .315 with 13 homers and 50 RBIs in 96 games and 181 at-bats. Even more impressive was his .404 average in 47 pinch at-bats. His record five pinch homers included ones back-to-back on April 23 and 26.

  He finished 22nd in MVP voting, but one noted baseball observer thought he might have deserved first. In his "Historical Baseball Abstract," Bill James noted, as quoted in a Baseball Almanac post:

   "He hit over .400 as a pinch hitter (19-for-47), with power and played 44 games in the outfield. His slugging percentage of .624 and 50 RBI in 181 at-bats was a far better rate than Roger Maris had that same season, hitting 61 home runs. More than that, Lynch had big, big hits; game after game, when the Reds were in danger of falling short, Lynch came up with the big hit to put them back in front, and the Reds, picked to finish sixth, won the pennant."

  Lynch was inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame in 1988, and his Hall of Fame page includes this insightful quote on his pinch-hitting philosophy:

  "The good pinch hitter is the guy who can relax enough to get the pitch he can hit. You almost always do get one pitch to hit every time you bat. So you have to have the patience to wait. And then you've got to be able to handle the pitch when you get it."

  And as for how he handled those pitches, Lynch believes he stood with the best of them when it counted most.

  "The best pinch hitter I ever saw, by far, no question, has to be Smoky Burgess. He was gifted," Lynch told Phil Axelrod in a 1994 Baseball Digest article. "But I was the best clutch hitter because I hit 18 dingers. I rang the bell 18 times. Hey, if you don't think you're the best, who will?"

 When Lynch rang the ball yet again Sept. 26, 1961,the Reds could start ringing up the cash registers for World Series tickets. 

Sources

Play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1961/B09260CHN1961.htm  and  https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-26-1961-cincinnati-reds-clinch-first-nl-pennant-21-years

Jerry Lynch biographical info:  https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=lynchje01

Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com.