Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (41 page)

That might have been enough to start a relationship, but there was one complication. Joan was already engaged to someone else. And then another stroke of good fortune (at least for Joan and Gil): a group of friends wanted to see the singer Jane Frohman one evening at a theater in New Jersey. Joan’s fiancé was invited, but he was a physician who had an internship at a hospital, and his presence was required in the emergency room that night. So Joan went alone—and spent much of the evening talking with Gil. Telephone calls and other excursions followed, and Joan Lombardi soon had a new fiancé. She and Gil were married on December 26, 1948, and continued to live with Joan’s parents in Brooklyn until that summer of 1950.

However much she may have disliked Gil’s long absences on road trips, Joan was not unhappy being married to a Brooklyn Dodger. “We were family,” she later said of her relationship with the other Dodgers and their wives. That closeness was especially important during those times when the team left town. “When the boys went on the road,” Joan remembered, “we’d get together and play bridge or go to the theater or keep in touch with each other. It was absolutely wonderful.” And it was never better to be a member of the Dodger family than on October 4, 1955—the day the team won its first World Championship against the Yankees.

There was nothing that Gil and Joan had ever experienced that could compare with the excitement and tumult of Brooklyn when they returned to their home that afternoon from Yankee Stadium, where the seventh game had been played. Joyous fans clogged the streets and wanted nothing more than to touch one of their heroes (Hodges having driven in both runs in the Dodgers’ 2-0 victory). “We had to have a police escort,” Joan remembered, “and they had to form a human chain for almost two blocks for us to get into our house.” They walked in the front door, flush with the exhilaration of the victory and looking forward to the celebration that night at a Brooklyn hotel, only to see their six-year-old son, Gil Jr., sitting in front of the family’s black-and-white television set. “Daddy,” the young boy exclaimed upon seeing his father, “you’re just in time to watch
Ramar of the Jungle
.”

It was a request that Gil Hodges could not refuse. Because, however much he basked in the Dodgers’ success and his own accomplishments, it all took a backseat to his family—which ultimately included three daughters in addition to Gil Jr. (“As much as I like my job—and I can’t imagine having one that I would like any better,” Hodges would say years later when he was manager of the New York Mets, “the job still runs a distant second to my wife and children.”) Joan was equally committed to her husband and would devote untold hours after his death in trying to have him inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame (pointing out to anyone who would listen that her late husband’s statistics and accomplishments compared favorably with those of other first basemen who had made the grade).

For a time after that World Series victory in 1955, there was still much in Gil’s performance to justify Joan’s later crusade on his behalf. Although his batting average dipped to .265 in 1956, Hodges’ presence was a major factor in the Dodgers’ ability to win the National League pennant—thirty-two home runs and eighty-seven runs batted in. So there was reason to believe that Hodges could help the team duplicate its feat in 1955 of beating the Yankees in the World Series.

Joan Hodges is no doubt anxious as Gil Hodges waits for Don Larsen’s next pitch at Yankee Stadium in the eighth inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. With the count at two and two, Larsen knows he has to get the ball over the plate. Berra calls for a fastball, but as soon as it leaves his hand, Larsen is full of fear. “Unlike the previous fastball,” he later recalled, “this one was mediocre at best.” Then he sees the large shoulders of the Dodger first baseman whip around and hears the “sickening thud” as the bat squarely meets the leather-bound sphere.

The ball zooms off of Hodges’ bat in a low line drive toward third base. There is a momentary gasp in the stands as fans sense that Hodges may be the first Dodger to reach base. But Andy Carey is there. He reaches down, his glove just above the infield dirt, and snares the ball. Not sure whether he has trapped the ball or caught it, the Yankee third baseman fires it to Joe Collins at first to remove any doubt—but the third-base umpire has already ruled that Carey caught the ball before it hit the ground. (Carey would later wonder whether he made the right move in throwing to first base—and thus creating doubt in the umpire’s mind whether he had in fact trapped the ball instead of catching it. “My God,” Carey said to himself, “what if I’d thrown that sucker away!”)

Sandy Amoros now steps into the batter’s box with two outs. After taking a strike, the Dodger left fielder hits a short fly ball into center field, which Mantle catches with ease. Radio listeners hear the roar of the crowd as Bob Wolff says with obvious excitement, “He’s got it.”

Larsen walks off the mound toward the dugout, and Vin Scully tells his television audience, “Thus far we’ve seen the greatest pitching performance I’ve ever seen. Don Larsen has retired twenty-four consecutive batters.”

16

A
ugust 2, 1955, was probably the only day in baseball history when a home run saved someone’s life. A fan in Asbury Park, New Jersey, sat down in his living room on that day and turned on Channel 11 on his television set to watch the evening game between the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians at Yankee Stadium. It was, to be sure, an important game. The Yankees were tied with the Indians for second place in the standings, only one game behind the league-leading Chicago White Sox. Tommy Byrne, the Yankees’ colorful thirty-five-year-old southpaw, was slated to face the Indians’ Early Wynn, another thirty-five-year-old veteran who, along with teammate Bob Lemon, had led the American League in victories in 1954 with twenty-three, and had already beaten the Yankees three times in the 1955 season.

On the first pitch of the game, Indian outfielder Al Smith slammed a triple and then scored on a sacrifice fly. But the Yankees tied the score in the bottom of the first when Joe Collins, the Yanks’ thirty-four-year-old first baseman, drove a ball into the lower right-field stands for a solo home run. And there the score stood for the next nine innings. Each team had opportunities to break the tie, but neither could bring a runner home.

Yankee second baseman Jerry Coleman started off the bottom of the tenth inning with a fly ball to right field that was caught for the first out. Collins, blue eyed and six feet tall, stepped into the batter’s box. He no doubt wanted to duplicate his earlier home run, but success required more than a strong will. Collins understood that. As much as he would have liked to succeed, his performance at the plate in 1955 had been less than spectacular.

He knew the reason. In a game against the White Sox earlier in the season, he had decided to go from first base to third on a single, and, when he saw that the ball might beat him to the bag, he decided to try a headfirst slide. It was not a good decision. “Instead of diving into the bag,” Collins later recalled, “I go straight up in the air.” The result: he landed hard on his shoulder a few inches from the bag—and was easily thrown out. He could recover from the embarrassment of a bad slide but not from the ensuing pain in his shoulder.

The injury made it difficult for Collins to swing, and, by the time the 1955 season ended, his average had dropped to .234 (from .271 in 1954). Still, he told no one of his injury. “Because,” he said simply, “then you don’t play.” And—more than anything—Joe Collins wanted to play.

Casey Stengel could not be unhappy with that perspective. On that muggy August evening in the House That Ruth Built, Collins’ home run was the only reason the Yankees were still in the game. And so Stengel watched as the heavyset Wynn fired a pitch to the Yankee first baseman in the bottom of the eleventh inning, but the ball never reached the catcher’s mitt. Collins swung and sent the ball sailing into the right-field stands for another home run—and a Yankee victory.

Satisfied with the outcome, the Asbury Park fan turned off the television set and wandered from his living room into the kitchen for a late-night snack. Minutes later, an out-of-control automobile crashed into the fan’s living room at high speed and, as one newspaper later reported, reduced it to “kindling.” Everyone agreed—if the fan had still been sitting in that living room and watching the Yankee game, he would have been killed. But Joe Collins spared him from that fate. (And the thankful fan excitedly called the Yankee office the next morning to make sure Collins knew that.)

Collins’ role as a savior was nothing new to the Yankees. In ten seasons with the club, he never batted .300, never hit as many as twenty home runs, never drove in a hundred runs, and never led the league in any offensive category. But he was a highly regarded member of a team that won six World Championships and eight pennants in those ten seasons. “The statistics never did quite reflect Collins’ contributions to the Stadium tenants,” said Arthur Daley in
The New York Times
shortly after Collins retired in 1958. “He spaced his hits judiciously and had the reputation of being formidable in the clutch.” Bobby Brown, who played third base for many of Collins’ first years with the Yankees, agreed. “He was the kind of guy,” said Brown, “who, in big games, could surprise you with a home run or another key hit.”

Collins no doubt hopes he can add to that reputation as the Yankees circulate in the dugout in the bottom of the eighth inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. He will be the third batter of the inning, and the Yankee first baseman would surely like to get another hit against Sal Maglie—not only to help the Yankees increase their lead but also to vindicate Stengel’s decision to have him play first base instead of Bill Skowron, the club’s other first baseman.

True, since Collins was a left-handed hitter, conventional wisdom would dictate that, all things being equal, the Yankee manager should have played him against the right-handed Maglie instead of the right-handed Skowron. But things were not equal. Skowron, known to his teammates as “Moose,” had more power at the plate than Collins and was a far more consistent hitter. His record for the 1956 season—twenty-three home runs, ninety runs batted in, and a .308 batting average—far surpassed Collins’ performance (a meager .225 batting average with seven home runs). Indeed, in all his years with the Yankees, Collins
never
had a season like Skowron had in 1956.

There was no surprise, then, when Stengel picked Skowron to play the first series game. But the former football player failed to get a hit in four trips to the plate. It may have been just one of those days, but Stengel was not pleased, and Moose found himself sitting on the bench for the second, third, fourth, and fifth games while Collins assumed chores around first base. The change may have made sense to Stengel, but Skowron was mystified. “I was hot,” he later confessed.

It was not the first time that Joe Collins found himself on the field while someone else sat in the dugout: he never knew how to stop trying—no matter how impressive the competition.

It all began in the lower-income neighborhoods of Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the 1930s. Joe Kollonige grew up with his brother and sister on the south side of town, which was heavily populated by immigrant families from Poland and Russia. His father, George Kollonige, did what he could to support his wife and children, but it was not easy to make ends meet in the Depression by selling baskets and bags to farmers in the nearby communities. Those early experiences gave Joe an incentive to think about a life that might bring him something more than what his father had.

Baseball was the key. Joe had a talent for the game. But, at five feet, nine inches tall and 135 pounds, he was too small to play for his high school team when he turned fifteen. Mother Nature then intervened. Joe had a growth spurt the next year and soon stood close to six feet (but did not gain much weight). At the age of sixteen, Joe began to play baseball with a semipro team from nearby Minooka. He soon caught the eye of a Cleveland Indians scout and was asked to work out with their local farm team in Wilkes-Barre. But Joe was a Yankee fan at heart and, as luck would have it, his father knew one of the local Yankee scouts. A conversation was held, a decision was made, and, without knowing the details, Joe was invited to practice with the Yankees’ Binghamton farm team, which was also training in Wilkes-Barre.

He did well enough in that practice to receive a contract for $75 a month to become a professional baseball player. It was not much money, but Joe was only sixteen and the Depression was in full swing. Hopes for a better future—not to mention jobs—were in scarce supply. So the teenager took a leave from high school to play Class D baseball with the Yankees’ Butler farm team in the Penn State League.

Joe was one of the youngest—if not the youngest—player on the team. And he was the smallest player vying for the first baseman’s job. “Of course,” he later recalled, “me being sixteen years old, about five feet, 10½ inches, 135 pounds, and looking at about six or seven monsters of six foot, three inches, 220 pounds, I say to myself, ‘What am I doing here?’—knowing that they’re only going to keep one first baseman.” But stay he did and, as he remembered with satisfaction, “the other eight were shipped home.”