Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (33 page)

The change in accounting had no impact on Andy’s eating habits, and his teammates continued to marvel at Carey’s ability to eat large quantities of food without seeming to gain any weight (which he attributed to a schedule of constant workouts). “He could eat,” said Hank Bauer, who roomed with Carey and vividly remembered Sunday-night dinners at a New York City restaurant where Carey would consume a five-pound steak with soup, salad, half a dozen eggs, plus dessert. Tony Kubek was equally impressed when he ate with the third baseman. “Carey would order unbelievably,” said Kubek. “And I thought to myself: Where’s he putting this? Because he wasn’t fat.”

However much he liked food, Carey was not one to spend long evenings carousing with his teammates. He did not smoke or drink and often went to sleep early. (Years later, when Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Hank Bauer decided to patronize New York’s nightspots to celebrate Billy Martin’s twenty-ninth birthday, Carey declined the invitation to join them. “Sure as hell,” he said to himself at the time, “something will go wrong and I’ll get my name in the newspaper.” A prescient thought. Bauer—who was later accused of assaulting a patron at the Copacabana in the early-morning hours of that evening—came back to the apartment saying, “Oh, I’ve got some problems, roomie.”)

There was a certain irony in Carey’s distaste for New York’s high life. He was one of the more eligible bachelors on the Yankee club, and it could not have been entirely surprising when the press began to report in early 1955 that the Yankee third baseman was dating Lucy Ann McAleer, the twenty-two-year-old budding actress who had appeared under the name Lucy Marlow in shows and movies (including
A Star Is Born
with James Mason and Judy Garland).

The relationship evolved from Andy’s friendship with heavyweight boxer Rocky Marciano. During the season, Carey and Bauer would often travel to the Grossinger’s resort in New York’s Catskill Mountains after a Sunday-afternoon game and stay there until Monday evening or Tuesday morning. Many times they would encounter the boxer from Brockton, Massachusetts, who lived nearby and often frequented Grossinger’s facilities. In due course, the famous fighter found himself playing softball or having dinner with the Yankee players. When Marciano made a trip after the 1954 season to Big Bear, the Southern California ski resort, Carey made arrangements to meet with him. But there was an unexpected change in plans. Marciano had to return to the East Coast, and Carey wound up going to a play that featured Marlow. He was taken with this slim brunette. The evening was followed by letters, telephone calls, and, soon enough, dinners and excursions (including tours of San Francisco Bay on the boat that Carey had built in the off-season).

The couple was married on October 6, 1955, in Hollywood’s First Methodist Church. The honeymoon was a trip to Hawaii to join the New York Yankees on an exhibition tour in the Pacific Islands and Japan. It was an eye-opening experience for the newly married man. He led the team in home runs with thirteen (hitting three home runs in a game on three different occasions).

The exhilaration of all those home runs was difficult to suppress. Andy came into the 1956 season believing that he could duplicate that performance in Yankee Stadium. But it was not to be. The Japanese parks were smaller and the American League pitchers much more sophisticated. Carey finished the season with a .237 batting average and only seven home runs in 132 games. Stengel was not happy. “I need more punch and more steadiness at third base,” he later told one sportswriter. “I wish Carey could go back to his 1955 form.”

 

As he waits for Sal Maglie’s pitch to begin the bottom of the sixth inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series, Andy Carey is surely eager to vindicate Stengel’s decision to keep him in the lineup. The third baseman swings hard at Maglie’s first pitch and sends a low line drive over second base into center field for the Yankees’ second hit.

Don Larsen lumbers up to the plate and is greeted with cheers and sustained applause from the fans. (“Listen to the crowd,” Bob Wolff tells his radio listeners.) The Dodgers assume that Larsen will try to lay down a sacrifice bunt to move Carey into scoring position at second base. Jackie Robinson moves in from third and positions himself at the edge of the infield grass. But Larsen fools his adversaries—he does not square around to bunt but swings hard at Maglie’s first pitch and sends a foul ball into the lower box seats just beyond the Dodger dugout on the third-base line. The threat of a bunt remains, however, and Robinson resumes his position on the infield grass as Maglie throws a second pitch. This time Larsen does square around to bunt, but Robinson watches as the ball rolls foul just outside the third-base line.

With two strikes, Robinson assumes that Larsen will abandon any attempt to bunt (because the risk of a foul ball—and a strikeout—are too great). The Dodger third baseman has a brief conference with Maglie on the mound and then takes his position—but this time well behind the third-base bag. As he does so, Larsen steps out of the batter’s box for a brief moment to take the sign from third-base coach Frank Crosetti.

Once again the Dodgers have made the wrong guess. As soon as Maglie goes into his motion, Larsen squares around to bunt and now lays down a perfect sacrifice in front of the plate. Campanella pounces on the ball and, having no play at second base to catch Carey, throws the ball to second baseman Jim Gilliam, who is covering first base for Gil Hodges (who has charged the plate in an effort to field Larsen’s bunt).

Hank Bauer steps into the batter’s box with a chance to increase the Yankees’ lead. And he does not let the opportunity pass. After taking a called strike on Maglie’s first pitch, the Yankee right fielder drives a ball between Robinson and Pee Wee Reese into left field for the team’s third hit. As Carey races around third base for home plate, Sandy Amoros fumbles the ball briefly and then throws it to Reese at second base to make sure that Bauer does not advance. Carey scores easily with the Yankees’ second run.

First baseman Joe Collins follows Bauer to the plate, and he keeps the rally alive with a line drive to right center field that Duke Snider cannot catch. Snider grabs the ball on one hop and throws it into second base as Bauer races safely into third. The crowd is alive with anticipation as Mickey Mantle moves toward the batter’s box with teammates on each of the corners and only one out. He can put the game on ice with another hit—perhaps another home run that would give the home team a 5-0 lead.

Dodger manager Walter Alston recognizes the risk as well, and he trudges out to the mound for a conference with Maglie. Robinson and Campanella join the huddle and, after a few minutes, Alston starts back to the dugout but then returns to the mound for a few more words. As he does so, Reese comes in from shortstop, and the umpires direct Robinson back to third (because, under World Series rules, only one infielder is allowed to join a conference at the mound). When Alston finally returns to the Dodger dugout, the noise in the stadium escalates, and, as Bob Wolff tells his listening audience, “the crowd certainly is whooping it up.”

After taking Maglie’s first pitch for a ball, Mantle swings mightily at a curveball just above the knees—and misses. But he catches the next pitch and rips a hard ground ball down the first-base line that pops into Hodges’ glove. The Dodger first baseman steps on the bag for the second out and then fires the ball to Campanella to nail Bauer, who is racing for home. Bauer sees immediately that he is a certain out and tries to retreat to third base, but the Dodgers have him cornered. A rundown ensues until Robinson finally tags the Yankee runner out for a double play to end the inning. “How about that one?” Wolff excitedly screams into the microphone.

13

J
im Gilliam could no doubt remember the moment at will. It was the fifth inning of the seventh game of the 1965 World Series, and he was playing deep behind the third-base bag when Zoilo Versalles, the Minnesota Twins’ shortstop, stepped into the batter’s box. The Dodgers and the Twins had each won three games. Determined to capture the world championship, Los Angeles manager Walter Alston had turned to southpaw Sandy Koufax to pitch his team to victory in the deciding game.

Koufax had enjoyed another brilliant season—twenty-six victories, a 2.04 earned run average, and a new National League record of 382 strikeouts—and he had already performed well in this series (pitching a complete game shutout and then giving up only one earned run in a losing effort in his second outing). By the fifth inning of the seventh game, the Dodger hurler held a 2-0 lead, but the Twins had runners at first and second bases, and, more critically, Gilliam knew that Koufax didn’t have “his good stuff.” That increased the pressure for him to protect the third-base line against an extra-base hit—a real possibility if Koufax threw a curve, a pitch that the right-handed Versalles could pull to the left side of the field.

Gilliam could also appreciate the ironies of his situation. He had joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1953 as a second baseman. To make room for this new infielder, manager Charlie Dressen moved Jackie Robinson from second to third and benched Billy Cox, who had previously been the Dodgers’ regular third baseman. Cox made no secret of his resentment at having been pushed aside for two black players. And yet, twelve years later, here was Gilliam, playing the very position that was at the center of that long-ago controversy.

The further irony was that Gilliam probably would have selected a different position if he had been given a choice. He could play—and did play—every position in the field except pitcher and catcher over the course of thirteen seasons with the Dodgers, and the position he liked the least was third base. “Those balls come at you pretty fast at third,” he told a sportswriter at one point, “and it’s a case of you do or you don’t.” (When asked by a sportswriter about the most difficult play to make at third, Gilliam had a quick response: “The tough one is the ball that’s hit down the line and over the bag. It has to be back-handed.”) But the Dodgers needed him at third, and Gilliam was a team player who would play wherever the manager wanted.

And that was the last irony. Because Jim Gilliam really should not have been playing anywhere. He had retired from active play after the 1964 season and had accepted a contract to be a coach with the Dodgers for the 1965 season. But John Kennedy, the team’s third baseman, was placed on the disabled list in May 1965, and Alston had only one infielder left—thus placing the manager in a vulnerable position if he decided to have someone pinch-hit for that last infielder. “So,” Alston remembered, “Gilliam kept coming back to my mind more and more.” Gilliam was reactivated for the Memorial Day weekend schedule and, without the benefit of any spring training, began to hit the ball at a .400 pace (and eventually finished the season with a .280 average in 111 games).

With the 1965 World Series hanging in the balance, Gilliam watched as Koufax went into his stretch—knowing that he might be the last line of defense in preserving a Dodger victory. With a high kick, the Dodgers’ ace fired the ball toward the plate. Versalles’ bat met the speeding sphere with a crack and, as one sportswriter later described, sent “a blistering rounder along the third base line.” It had all the earmarks of a double that would even the score. But Gilliam fell to his right knee, backhanded the ball with his glove, picked himself up and scampered to third base to beat the runner to the bag. The Twins’ threat evaporated, and Koufax proceeded to hold the shutout for a Dodger championship.

In the clubhouse afterward, Alston told the press that Gilliam’s grab was “the key play for us,” and one sportswriter called it “the fielding gem of the classic.” The National Baseball Hall of Fame agreed, and, within twenty-four hours, Gilliam’s glove was on display in a glass case in Cooperstown.

Gilliam, wearing number 19 on the back of his uniform, is surely hoping that he can make a different kind of contribution to a Dodger victory as he steps into the batter’s box for the start of the seventh inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. His team needs to get someone on base, and Gilliam has proved to be one of the best leadoff hitters in Dodger history. He set a National League record for rookies with a hundred walks in 1953, and over the years he has invariably been one of the Dodgers’ leaders in on-base percentage. “He’s the best lead-off man I’ve ever had in Brooklyn,” said Charlie Dressen, his first manager. Dressen’s successor agreed. “Jim doesn’t hit homers and his average isn’t high,” Alston later told a sportswriter. “But he gets on base and he can put on the hit and run.”

It was a role that Jim Gilliam could not have envisioned for himself when he was growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, in the 1930s. His father died when he was two, his mother was a housemaid who struggled to make ends meet, and Jim—the only child in the family—was raised by his grandmother.

School was never a priority, and Jim quit after the tenth grade. While money was always scarce, young Jim did not want to spend his spare time in the workforce. “I had one job,” he recalled after joining the Dodgers. “I guess I got $19 or $20 a week as a sort of porter in a five-and-ten-cent store in Nashville.” But that job was short-lived. Baseball was Jim Gilliam’s principal preoccupation from the time he was a young boy. He grew up only a couple of blocks from Sulphur Dell, the historic Nashville park that was home to the Nashville Elite Giants, the Nashville Vols, and other teams in the Negro leagues. “I helped around the clubhouse,” Gilliam later recalled of those early days in Nashville. “They allowed us kids to play there when the club was on the road.”

Jim’s first experience in organized baseball was with the Nashville Vols. When he first arrived, Gilliam started as a catcher, but Willie White, the Vols’ trainer, thought he was better suited elsewhere. “He was a natural from the very start,” White later recalled. “He was fast and could do everything. So I changed him into an infielder quick.” (One of those who also took notice of the youngster’s skills as an infielder was Roy Campanella, who would often travel to the Nashville park with the Baltimore Elite Giants. “I’ve been watching you fielding grounders during batting practice,” Campanella told his future teammate. “You’re gonna be a great ballplayer some day.”)