After ten years of repeat performances—usually starring Casey and the Yankees—baseball's big show moved west with a new cast of characters. Result: the biggest crowds and richest receipts in Series history

by Roy Terrell

Issue date: October 12, 1959

(Richard Meek)

It was strange, seeing Casey Stengel in a business suit, sitting in the press box, Nine times in the last 10 years the World Series had been Casey's personal show; and now he was in the audience, looking like a drama critic for the Times.

Things were different all around. Comiskey Park is an old ball park, but as far as the Series was concerned it was practically brand-new. If you were a freshly delivered bouncing baby boy the last time the Series was played in Comiskey Park, you're 40 now and you don't remember Joe Jackson and Dickie Kerr.

The Los Angeles Coliseum is old, too—it was the site of the Olympic Games more than a quarter century ago—but major league baseball didn't shoulder its way into this great saucer until last year. California has never before had a World Series closer to it than Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, which is hard by the Mississippi River some 1,600 miles east by north of that notorious left-field screen. And they haven't even had a Series there, in St. Louis, for 13 years.

So, you see, things were different this year.

Comiskey Park is a perfectly ordered, nicely symmetrical stadium that holds 46,550 people at capacity. The Los Angeles Coliseum as a place to play baseball is lopsided, knock-kneed, pigeon-toed and cross-eyed, but it seated 92,294 paid customers last Sunday at the first World Series games ever played there, and that's almost 20,000 better than Yankee Stadium ever did for a Series game.

The Dodgers won the National League pennant only after a weird race in which defeat seemed to come almost as often as victory. The Dodgers did win the games they had to win—especially those three big ones against San Francisco and the two straight from Milwaukee in the post-season playoff—but even so, their victory total was a measly 88. The White Sox, on the other hand, won their pennant by a good 5 games and had the added fame of being the team that stopped the Yankees.

Yet which was the confident, positive, swaggering club? The White Sox clobbered Los Angeles 11-0 but cautiously warned, "It doesn't mean a thing. They didn't win the National League pennant playing like that." The Dodgers squeaked out a 4-3 win in the second game, with the aid of an extravagant dose of luck, yet boasted, "They're not much of a team. They don't scare you. There's four or five teams in our league better than the White Sox."

Oddments continued. The Sox, famous for their speed, were cut down time and again stealing or trying for the extra base. The Sox were known, too, for the double play but the Dodgers were the ones who made the best use of this blunt, rally-killing instrument.

One thing delighted both teams. The attendance at the first four games came to 280,225, and the players, who share in the receipts of the first four games only, had $892,365.04 to divvy up, the highest ever. Amateur mathematicians proclaimed that each winning player's share would amount to something around $12,000.

It was a strange Series. But certainly a profitable one.

Game 1 - Wow! That White Sox Power!

A number of strange things happened. A man stood in line for two days to buy a $2 bleacher seat, then sold it to the passer-by for $10. The first passer-by was a cop on the scalping detail. Roses hung from lampposts all over Chicago, but there wasn't even a strip of bunting inside Comsikey Park itself. The American flag stuck at half mast and remained there all day. To handle an overflow traffic situation, streets around the ball park were made one-way, thereby so confusing and the natives that traffic jammed up for miles. Bill Veeck, the White Sox president, refused to give Lou Perini, the Milwaukee Braves president, any extra tickets to the game because Veeck hadn't been given even one ticket the year before. A handful of musical organizations, led by Jump Jackson's Dixieland band, whanged and tootled their way through the stands, lending an air of hysterical unreality to the whole affair. A kid in the right field stands caught a home run ball and discovered the next morning that he was famous, his face peering happily forth from every newspaper in Chicago. He didn't want to be famous; with an excuse for illness, he was playing hookey from school.

But the strangest thing of all was the ball game itself.

"Keep Aparicio off the bases," Walt Alston had warned his Dodgers, "and we should win." The Dodgers took care of Aparcio, all right, but forgot about the other eight guys on the White Sox and lost 11-0. It was the worst World Series shutout since the Cardinals beat the Tigers 11-0 in 1934 and the worst defeat ever suffered by the Dodgers in a World Series.

Early Wynn, who won 22 regular-season games for the Sox at the age of 39, pitched magnificently. His control was sharp, he was hitting the corners, and he held the Dodgers to six measly singles in seven innings before his elbow stiffened in the cold 60° weather and sent him to the bench. "He wouldn't give us anything down the middle," the Dodgers said, "but he wouldn't walk anybody, either. That old guy knows how to pitch."

Jim Landis hit three sharp singles and Al Smith a pair of line doubles but the day's big man with a bat was Ted Kluszewski. This large collection of muscles hit two home runs and a single, tying a World Series record with five runs batted in. Previously Kluszewski had hit only four home runs all season, but last Thursday little time was spent dwelling upon that; the entire White Sox ball club was out of character from the first pitch.

They didn't steal base, they drew only one walk, they made only one double play. All they did was hit the ball hard. They knocked out Roger Craig, the best Dodger pitcher in those frantic weeks of the National League pennant chase, and they did it in a big way. For a team whose entire offense is supposed to be built around a walk, a stolen base, an infield single and a sacrifice fly, they connected rather well.

The Sox scored two runs in the first inning on a walk, singles by Landis and Klu, and Sherm Lollar's sacrifice fly. At this point the script was holding well. But in the third inning the show got out of hand. With one out, the Sox put eight straight batters on base, scored seven runs and humiliated a Dodger team as those powerful Yankee ball clubs of the past were never able to do.

The Dodgers helped, too. Duke Snider and Wally Moon ricocheted off one another pursuing a fly ball, and Snider was charged with an error. Minutes later Snider was charged with another error (it was a big day for records) when he threw behind a runner rounding second. Naturally, no one was there to catch the ball.

Even this wouldn't have been so bad except that Gil Hodges, who came forth alertly to retrieve the throw, slipped and bounced on the grass. White Sox runners poured across the plate. Then Charlie Neal, at second, took a slow, hopping ground ball and threw to the plate to get a runner heading for home. The ball hit the bat, lying on the ground, or it didn't hit anything—neither Neal nor Catcher John Roseboro nor Manager Alston nor anyone else could say later exactly what did happen—and slithered through Roseboro's grasp, and another run scored.

It was a rather woolly inning. By the time it was over, the Dodgers had figured out why the flag was flying at half mast.

Later, the White Sox were happy but not jubilant; the Dodgers unhappy but not downcast. The game, as both teams knew, was representative of almost nothing.

"They didn't win that pennant over there," said Al Lopez, "by playing like that."

"It was one of those things," said Alston, "that sometimes happen. Maybe it's better psychologically than to lose by 2-1 or 3-2, although I hated to see the ball club look so bad. The spirit on this team has been the best I've ever seen. I'm not worried about them getting very far down."

"The only thing I resent," the Dodger manager continued, "was that nobody told me about all that White Sox power."

And how did Bill Veeck feel about it? "Well," said Veeck, "in the third inning, when we scored seven runs, I almost left. I thought I'd gotten into the wrong park."

Big Klu Does a Real Cadillac Job

It had been several years since Ted Kluszewski was a hero, and for a man used to the headlines, it was a long wait.

Crowds first cheered him as a star Big Ten end at Indiana in 1945, but it was on the baseball field that the cheers were loudest and longest. To fans of the Cincinnati Redlegs, he was Big Klu, a huge man of 240 pounds, with arms like an average man's thighs. For a decade he was their favorite, the greatest home run hitter in Cincinnati history. Then one spring day in 1956, the Big Man's back began to ache. It ached until he could hardly bear it. In 1957 he stopped hitting home runs and the crowds stopped roaring.

For the next two years the headlines he made were medical, though no one could find a reason for the ache. Kluszewski was traded to Pittsburgh, but he did little there. Last August 24 the White Sox, with nothing to lose, got him from the Pirates. Although he hit well for Chicago during their drive to the pennant, he hit only two home runs. Then came the World Series and he hit two in the first game. He thought the first one was going to be caught. The second was more like it, he said, a real Cadillac job. He felt good and his back did too. The crowds were cheering him once more and the next day he was in headlines across the country.

At 35, Ted Kluszewski had had his biggest day yet.

Dodger Homers, White Sox Goof

It was a circus on Thursday; on Friday it was baseball. The score was 4-3, the Dodgers won and suddenly people who had been talking about a four-game Chicago sweep remembered that the team winning the first game the last four years had lost the Series.

The White Sox looked a little more like the White Sox. They collected eight hits, which is about par for the course, but none of these were home runs. The Dodgers also looked like the Dodgers. They made mistakes, which they have been making all year, but they kept scrambling and clawing back and finally they won.

In the first inning the combined talents of Aparicio, Landis and Lollar accounted for two Chicago runs. Johnny Podres could have been out of the inning scoreless but a double-play ball by Kluszewski took a funny bounce, hit Charlie Neal in the stomach instead of the glove, and the only play was on Klu at first base. Maury Wills made a bad play, too, but both Neal and Wills were to make up for their miscues later.

In the fifth, Neal hit a home run into the left field stands. The wind was with him and for a 156-pounder he can swing a bat pretty good.

In the seventh, with two out, Alston sent in a pinch hitter for Podres, although Johnny had been pitching very well. The pinch hitter was a former Stanford linebacker named Chuck Essegian, who once belonged to the Phillies and Cardinals and assorted minor league teams too numerous to mention. He swings right-handed, and Bob Shaw, the good young Chicago pitcher, throws right-handed, and the Dodgers had some left-handed pinch hitters on the bench, but this is not what Alston was thinking about.

"We were a run behind, there were two out, and it was getting late," he said.

"I wanted somebody who could hit the ball out of the park. I like the way Essegian swings a bat. He doesn't hit very often but I thought he might hit one out."

So Essegian hit one out and the score was tied. This undoubtedly unsettled Shaw, and he walked Jim Gilliam. Then Neal hit one out. This particular home run sailed over Landis' head in deep center field, over the 415-foot sign on the fence and into the White Sox bullpen, where Billy Pierce reached out almost absent-mindedly and caught the evil thing on the fly. He gave it to a policeman. Later, in the Dodger dressing room, photographers took pictures of Neal's muscles, which hardly showed. Kluszewski one day, Neal the next. Heroes are not measured in pounds.

That was about all except for the one very un-White Soxlike demonstration in the last half of the eighth. With Larry Sherry, the tough young rookie right-hander, pitching for Los Angeles, Kluszewski singled to center and Lollar followed with a scratch single off Gilliam's glove. Lopez sent Earl Torgeson in to run for Kluszewski. With the count three-and-two and the runners moving with the pitch, Al Smith whacked a double between Moon and Snider which hit the left field wall on one bounce.

When the ball came back, Moon was waiting for it. He whirled and threw a perfect strike to Wills, who had come out from shortstop to take the relay. Wills whirled and threw a perfect strike to Roseboro, who was squatting at plate. And down the third base line plodded Lollar, out dead by 30 feet. Although Torgeson scored and Smith ended up on third, the back of the rally was broken.

Naturally, the question was, what made Sherman run? And what made Third-base Coach Tony Cuccinello wave him on? Both knew that Lollar is not Luis Aparicio or Jim Landis, although, of course, he is not Ted Kluszewski either. The answer to everything revolves around the fact that White Sox success has been founded upon speed. They run to tie up games, they run to win by a run, they ran to a pennant. When in doubt, the White Sox run.

"The trouble, as I saw it," said Lopez, "is that Lollar hesitated just before he reached second. He thought maybe Moon would catch the ball." (It was a real try, no bluff on Moon's part.) "And that put the timing of the whole play off just enough. We've been scoring all year from first base on doubles to left. And I don't mean just Aparicio and Landis. Everybody does it. Everybody but Klu. That's the way we play ball."

But, Lopez was reminded, if Lollar had been held up, there would have been runners on second and third with nobody out. And since Lollar did hesitate going into second, thereby fouling up his chance to score, shouldn't Cuccinello have held him at third?

"You'll have to ask Tony about that," said Lopez. Cuccinello, who has been working with Lopez and waving runners around third base for years, admitted he had goofed. "Lollar was the tying run," he said. "I thought it would take a perfect play to beat him."

The Dodgers, who had been kicking the ball around for two days, had the perfect play when it counted. That's the way they are.

Charlie Neal's Bee-Sting Home Runs

Charlie Neal doesn't look like a man who would hit two home runs in a year, much less one game. He weighs only 156 pounds and his wrists are thin. Yet he has hit 41 home runs in the last two seasons. He has played with the Dodgers for four years and is regarded as one of the best second basemen in the National League. In the dressing room as reporters questioned him, Neal looked embarrassed. What pitches did he hit? He didn't know, he said, and when the reporters looked puzzled, he said he was sorry. A photographer asked him to make a muscle, and he looked embarrassed again as laughing teammates compared it to a bee sting. But their kidding was gentle; it was that bee sting which had tied the Series at a game apiece.

Game 3 - 92,294 People and One Furillo

The Dodgers beat Chicago in the third game the way they beat the Giants and Braves all year, by attrition. The Dodgers let the White Sox punch then until the White Sox were worn out. It is not the easiest way in the world to win a baseball game, but it seems to work for Los Angeles.

In every inning, the White Sox managed to collect at least one hit, and sometimes two. Occasionally they added a walk, and once a hit batsman. Don Drysdale, the Dodger starter, was behind almost every batter. The Dodger bullpen looked like a picnic of ants. At the same time, Los Angeles was doing nothing with Dick Donovan, a slow-moving, quick-talking fellow who may have invented the slider. In the first six innings Donovan allowed only one Dodger hit, and he walked not a man. He struck out five and everyone else seemed to hit the ball into the ground.

But Drysdale, despite all the hits and walks, was tough when he had to be, and when things were the toughest he had Relief Pitcher Larry Sherry to bail him out. Defensively, the Dodgers were superb; they made some brilliant catches, they made no mistakes, they pulled off three double plays, and they had John Roseboro, the strong-armed catcher. The speed of this Chicago team is legend, but in the third game, the frustrated White Sox tried four times to steal and three times Roseboro threw them out.

"That's what I've been waiting for," said Don Zimmer, assistant shortstop and head cheerleader of the Dodgers. "For them to go-go and for Roseboro to gun them out."

"I hope," said Manager Al Lopez of the Sox, "that Roseboro doesn't change our thinking."

As for their offense, the Dodgers saved their strength for one big effort. In the seventh, Neal hit a single into the screen, the second hit off Donovan.

Larker walked and Hodges walked, to fill the bases. Lopez took Donovan out and brought in Gerry Staley to pitch. Manager Walt Alston sent in Carl Furillo to bat. Furillo hit a hard ground ball between Aparicio and second base, the kind of play that Aparicio makes every day of the week. Only it was Sunday and the ball took a hop over his glove and two runs scored. "In the second game," said Alston, who doesn't particularly look like a genius, "I used Essegian because I needed a home run. Today I needed a single, so I used Furillo."

The White Sox, who in the first inning had filled the bases with one out and then failed to score, filled the bases again in the eighth. They scored this time, once, but on a double play that wrecked the rally. A pop fly followed to end the inning and the Dodgers were home free. They added another run in the eighth and stopped the White Sox cold in the ninth to win 3-1.

"I thought that it was a hell of a ball game," said Lopez. "We were lucky to win," said Alston.

Game 4 - Sherry, Sherry Everywhere...

In the beginning the White Sox built their hopes on slickness and quickness, on poise and determination, on pitching and speed. By the time the fourth game was over it was apparent that the Dodgers were better in all of these. Sometimes they excelled by only by a stride, an inch or a molecule, but they were better.

Their pressing, forcing gait bullied Chicago into errors. The White Sox were nervous and tight; you could see it in their faces and in the way they played. On Monday Roger Craig was as good a pitcher as Early Wynn and when he needed relief there was Larry Sherry. For the third time in three games the amazing Dodger rookie came in to pitch and for the third time he saved a Dodger game. This time he even got credit for winning.

But as is their way, the Dodgers made even the easy victory come hard. They led 4-0 after six innings, scoring all their runs in the third on five hits and sloppy White Sox fielding. They seemed to have the game well in hand, but in the eighth Landis singled, Fox singled, Kluszewski singled, Lollar homered and the game was tied.

At this every Dodger run in the Series had been scored with two out. But Gil Hodges, leading off the eighth, couldn't wait. He drove Gerry Staley's second pitch on a high arc far up into the sun-baked crowd out in left center. That was the run the Dodgers needed. Sherry did the rest.

On the blackboard in the Dodger dressing room after the game someone wrote "One to Go-Go-Go!"

In the White Sox dressing room Al Lopez said, "We still have a chance." To end it the right way for the White Sox, a miracle was required. It was too bad but the Dodgers seemed to have a corner on miracles.