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From left, Dave Philley, Bobby Shantz and Eddie Joost are pictured in the Philadelphia Athletics locker room after a victory in 1952. Joost went 3-for-4 as the A's defeated the New York Yankees 8-6 on Sept. 26, 1954, in the team's final game in Philadelphia. (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)
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By Phil Ellenbecker
The Athletics rode out of Kansas City on a high note in 1967, crippling the Chicago White Sox's American League pennant hopes by sweeping the ChiSox in a twinight doubleheader in the final week of the season. The A's were gone to Oakland in 1968.
The Athletics of Philadelphia, likewise, ended their tenure in that city in a positive fashion by defeating the five-time defending world champion New York Yankees 8-6 on the final day of the 1954 regular season. To quote the Wilbert Harrison hit song to come in 1959, the A's were "going to Kansas City" for the 1955 season.
While similar on the surface, the way the A's left Philly compared with the way they left K.C. must be taken with a grain of salt.
While the White Sox had everything to play for when they took on the A's that Wednesday night in 1967, Sept. 27 at Kansas City, the mighty Yankees had nothing to play for ---especially compared with their five previous seasons -- when they took the field that Sunday afternoon in 1954, Sept. 26 at Yankee Stadium.
Despite the fact they'd won 103 games, more than in not only their five previous championship seasons but their most since 1942, this edition of the Yankees had to settle for second, eight games behind the 111-game winning Cleveland Indians. They'd pretty much eliminated themselves by losing both ends of a doubleheader to Cleveland on Sept 12, dropping them 8 1/2 back. So despite winning eight of their past 10 games coming into this final Sunday, they were definitely playing out the string.
So excited were the Yankee faithful that only 11,670 showed up to watch Sept. 26, which was still 9,638 more than had come out two days before.
So with nobody really caring anymore, Yankees manager Casey Stengel decided to have some fun by fielding what he called a "power lineup." It had Mickey Mantle moving from center field to shortstop, which he'd played in the minor leagues with Independence in 1949 and Joplin in 1950. It had Yogi Berra moving from catcher to third base. It had Bill "Moose" Skowron moving from first base to second.
For the record, Mantle, who hit 27 homers in 1954, had switched from center to short in three earlier games, for a total of four innings. He'd played one inning at short in 1953, and would play two more games there for a total of two innings in 1955. And that was the major league career of Mickey Mantle at shortstop. This was his only career start at the position.
For Berra, who hit 22 homers and won the second of three AL MVP awards in 1954, this was his first and only game in the majors at third.
Skowron, who hit .341 with seven homers in 87 games in a platoon role as a rookie in 1954 but would hit as many as 28 homers in a season, had played one inning at second base earlier in the year. But after he started at second this day, that was it for him at this position.
Stengel didn't pull any shenanigans with his other positions and batted Mantle and Berra in their usual No. 3 and 4 spots, while Skowron hit sixth. Player shuffling was kept somewhat to a minimum by both sides and the teams settled down to a competitive game, with the Athletics keeping an upper hand and giving pitcher Art Ditmar his first major league victory.
Lifting the A's to the win were four RBIs out of their leadoff spot in the batting order. Pete Suder went 2-for-4 in the game, his two-run single off Tommy Byrne in the second giving Philly the early lead. Joe DeMaestri pinch hit for him in the seventh and delivered another two-run single that pushed the margin to 8-5.
Skowron, who went 3-for-5 on the day, tripled in Irv Noren, and Lou Berberet drove in Skowron with a ground out, tying the game at 2-2 in the Yankees' half of the second against Ditmar. For Skowron it was his ninth triple, which would be a career high.
An error by Ditmar on a ball hit back to him by Noren allowed Mantle to score from second, giving the Yankees their only lead at 3-2 in the third.
The A's came back with three in the fifth for a 5-3 advantage. Vic Power led off with a triple, and back-to-back doubles by Eddie Joost and Gus Zernial and a single by Bill Renna scored Power and Joost.
For Joost it was his second hit in a 3-for-4 day.
Renna drove in his second run the next inning, plating Suder with a sacrifice fly off Jim Konstanty, who'd relieved Ditmar at the start of the inning. That made it 6-3 A's.
The Yankees cut it to 6-5 in the bottom of the sixth with the help of some wildness by A's pitchers. After singles by Bob Cerv and Berberet, Ditmar walked pinch hitter Enos Slaughter and Joe Collins. Cerv scored on Collins' free pass, ending Ditmar's day and bringing in Marion Fricano. Fricano promptly uncorked a wild pitch that scored Berberet, but after walking Mantle intentionally he got Berra to hit into a double play to end the inning.
Philadelphia began the seventh with singles by Jack Littrell and Joe Astroth, who went 2-for-5. Fricano moved them up with a sacrifice bunt, and DeMaestri singled them in.
In the bottom of the seventh, for the second time in the game Berberet drove in Skowron on a grounder to Joost at second, making it 8-6 with one out. Berberet was a rookie September call-up and Berra's replacement this day at catcher
But the Yankees couldn't threaten the rest of the way, Joost and Littrell at shortstop turning a double play in the eighth to help Fricano survive a pair of singles.
Fricano picked up the second and final save of a four-year career that would end in 1955. He allowed four hits and one run, earned, in 3 2/3 innings.
Ditmar, a rookie making his fifth major league start, picked up his first win in five decisions. He went 5 1/2 innings, giving up seven hits and five runs, four earned, striking out three and surviving eight walks.
Byrne, a one-time Yankee mainstay who'd had his career rescued when he'd been bought out of the minor leagues from Seattle in September, took the loss and finished at 3-2. He allowed nine hits and five runs, all earned, in his five innings, walking three and striking out four. He went 16-5 next year as the Yankees reclaimed their world title.
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| Bill "Moose" Skowron is shown in the dugout with New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel. Stengel inserted Skowron, normally a first baseman, at second base for the only time in his career Sept. 26, 1954, on the final day of the regular season. Skowron, a rookie, went 3-for-5 in an 8-6 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics. |
As for how the Yankees fared in the field at their unfamiliar positions: Mantle had four assists, two putouts and turned one double play at short; Berra had a putout and an assist at third; and Skowron had five assists, a putout and an error at second. His error wasn't costly.
It's ironic that the A's and Yankees should meet on the final day of the regular season, on many levels. To start with, Kansas City had been a Yankees farm team from 1936 up through this year but would now be the major league home of the Athletics, so many of the players the Yankees employed this day, including Mantle and Skowron, had played in Kansas City for the Blues.
And Power for the A's had been a top Yankee farm product, leading the American Association in hitting in 1953. But the Yankees, who'd been slow to integrate, chose Elston Howard to be their first black player, general manager George Weiss saying Power wasn't "the Yankee type."
And how about that transfer of the franchise from Philadelpia to K.C.? Helping to engineer the sale of the team and the move was none other than Dan Topping, a principal owner of the Yankees and a business associate of Arnold Johnson, who was buying the A's.
So there was already a cozy association between the A's and Yanks before the move, and it just kept on getting cozier, as a steady parade of players changed uniforms between the two teams in the 1950s.
Nine of the players seeing action on Sept. 26, 1954, eventually played for both the Yankees and the A's -- Slaughter, Cerv, Ditmar, Noren, DeMaestri, Renna, DeMaestri, Hank Bauer and Bob Grim.
As for the move to K.C., it did wonders for attendance -- from 304,166 the last year at Connie Mack Stadium in Philly to 1,393,034 the first year at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City.
And for one year it provided a healthy boost in the won-lost column -- from 51-103, lowest for the once-proud franchise since 1920, eighth and last in the AL, to 63-91 and sixth place in '55.
But sixth was as good as it got for the A's in K.C. They were back in eighth at 52-102 in '56, and four more last-place finishes followed in 11 subsequent years before the A's packed up and moved again, to Oakland.
And speaking of the differences between franchise transitions that we spoke of at the beginning of this article, while hard times continued for the A's in K.C, it wasn't long before they'd vaulted all the way to the top in Oakland -- five straight AL West titles from 1971 to 1975 and three straight World Series titles, '71-'73.
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