Summer of '49: The Yankees and the Red Sox in Postwar America (36 page)

CHAPTER 15

C
ERTAIN GAMES ARE CLASSICS,
seized on by baseball aficionados and remembered long after they are over. Such was the Raschi-Kinder finale and also the first game of the World Series. Allie Reynolds of the Yankees pitched against Don Newcombe of the Dodgers. It was the first baseball game televised to a mass audience; there had been telecasts in the past of World Series games, but this time there were 10 million people watching. That was the big breakthrough. Gillette had paid $800,000 for the rights, four times more than in 1948. Red Barber, who along with Mel Allen did the radio broadcast, thought it was the first moment in baseball history when the pull of television was virtually as powerful as that of radio.

Newcombe, Rookie of the Year, was three months past his twenty-third birthday. Big and strong at six feet four and 230 pounds, he was the first great black power pitcher to reach the major leagues. In his own words, he burned with a bitter resentment toward racial injustice. His anger manifested itself, as much as anywhere else, in his hatred of hitters, almost all of whom in those days were white. Newcombe went, in a brief span of three years, from being a child of the New Jersey slums to being a major New York sports celebrity. Geographically that journey was only a few miles, but emotionally it was like a voyage to the moon.
The most obvious symbol of it to him was the sudden availability of beautiful women; he was now constantly surrounded by them.

But pleasure and pride were mixed with anger, for star pitcher or no, he still encountered bigotry and injustice. Jackie Robinson was his idol, and, like Robinson (and unlike Roy Campanella, a conciliatory man by nature, who was the third black on the team), Newcombe was unbending. He remembered the insults, and he judged his teammates not just by whether they played well on the field but by how they behaved toward him off the field. Were they willing to stay in hotels where their black teammates were not allowed and to eat in restaurants where their black teammates could not go? Often he found them lacking. The gap between white and black was very large then, and when the game was over they went their separate ways. He could understand that, but he did not like the other part—the idea that his teammates might not be very different from the people who were giving him, Jackie, and Roy such a hard time.

Once during that first season, when he had been in the shower, another Dodger pitcher had filled his mouth with warm water and, when Newcombe’s back was turned, had squirted it at him. Newcombe spun around. There was the pitcher holding his genitalia. “You’ve got your hand on your cock,” Newcombe said. “If you just did what I think you just did—if you pissed on me—I’m going to break your goddamn arm right here and now.” The others rushed to explain that it was just a gag. But it was not a gag, he thought, because it was not something that would have been done to a white player. It was to him one more sign that even his teammates were a part of the
they.

That year he was constantly aware of racism. In St. Louis the black fans were permitted only in the bleachers. This meant that only about 3,000 could get in, while 10,000 more waited outside in the streets. He and Robinson talked
about this; these, after all, were their people—poor Southern blacks who had made the trip up from Memphis and Birmingham and Little Rock (“the fried-chicken specials,” he and Robinson called them). He and Jackie would joke that if there was ever a brawl on the field, they would immediately run like hell in the direction of the bleachers, where, no matter what the park, their people were sure to be seated.

He was angry that the Dodgers had not brought him up sooner, which he was sure they would have done had he been a white pitcher. Branch Rickey, he thought, was integrating slowly, essentially one black at a time—Jackie first, then a ten-inning cameo appearance by Dan Bankhead in 1947, and Campanella in 1948. But by the time he was called up, Newcombe was tired of waiting on the stairs. At one point, after two exceptionally successful years, he had jumped his minor-league team and gone home. But his arrival in Brooklyn had given some measure of protection to Robinson and Campy, who had been sitting ducks for beanballs until his arrival. The white Brooklyn pitchers simply were not going to protect Jackie and Roy. Therefore it was Newcombe’s responsibility.

In those first few years, the racial taunting was constant. There was one memorable game with the Phillies in 1950 in which there was a knockdown of Campy. There was an old coach on the Phillies named McDonald, and, as far as the black Dodgers were concerned, he was kept solely to scream racial obscenities. That day Robinson came over to Newcombe. “Newk, you hear that little son of a bitch?” he asked. “You think I’m deaf, Jackie?” Newcombe answered. “Newk, you got to do something,” Robinson said. Newcombe thought about the Phillies’ lineup and decided who their best hitter was: Del Ennis. When Ennis came up, Newcombe drilled him. He threw right at his head. Many years later he was still uneasy with the hatred that he had felt when he threw that pitch. Ennis hit the dirt, then slowly picked himself up, called time, and walked over to the bench.
He told Newcombe years later that he had said to McDonald, “Listen, you little son of a bitch, he damn near killed me and with the shit you’re yelling he’s got a right to. Unlike you, I’ve got to hit against him. Now you shut the hell up or I’ll come over and tear your goddamn tongue out.”

For any white rookie player Yankee Stadium was hallowed ground. But that was not true for Newk. The Yankees were not special to him, nor did pitching in Yankee Stadium mean that much to him. Black kids of his generation did not have that dream, for it was beyond the realm of possibility. Newcombe’s father had been a chauffeur. Don Newcombe’s dream as a boy was to drive a truck; that to him meant both freedom—by going all over the country—and power—by double-clutching on one of those huge monsters. Pitching in a World Series was more an accident than a dream achieved.

From the moment he walked out on the mound that day he knew he was never going to be any better. The Yankees were a fastball-hitting team, and he was going to damn well let them earn their reputation that day. He was pleased to be matched against Allie Reynolds. Reynolds, he thought, was one mean SOB, a real redneck from Oklahoma who was tough on all hitters, but particularly on the blacks. (Gene Woodling, Reynolds’s teammate, agreed with at least part of Newcombe’s assessment: “On a team filled with Red Asses,” he said, “Allie was the champ—the King of the RAs.”) Larry Doby, the first black to play in the American League, had complained to Newcombe that the first few times Cleveland had played the Yankees, Reynolds had knocked him down almost every time he came up. Robinson too was convinced that Reynolds had a vendetta against blacks, and there was obvious bad blood between the Yankee pitcher and the Dodger infielder. What made it even worse, Newcombe thought, was that Reynolds
was
good. When he was at his best, the Dodgers could not touch him.
“He would stick our bats up our ass,” was Newcombe’s picturesque phrase.

Reynolds, of course, was equally glad to be there. He loved pitching such big games. He was, his Yankee teammates thought, a great ham. “Allie,” Charlie Keller once told him, “don’t ever pitch in St. Louis or Washington before a small crowd. One more thing—you need to pitch in big games and close games. You work better when it’s close. You get sloppy when you get a big lead.” But in a big game before a big crowd, he was always at his best. Pitching today against Newcombe, after his failure against Parnell in the next-to-last game, was a chance for redemption.

The Yankees did not know Newcombe. Their scouting reports said he was a power pitcher, but the scouting reports were too clinical, Jerry Coleman thought; they did not seem to recognize fully Newcombe’s strength and power. Casey Stengel had tried to warn them in the pregame meeting. “Don’t try and pull the ball on him,” Stengel had said. That was needless warning number one. They could barely see the ball, let alone pull it.

It was a bright sunny day, more like summer than fall. The Yankee management pulled aside the tarpaulin in the center-field bleachers to accommodate the extra fans. If under normal conditions the tarp offered some protection to the hitters, it was gone on this day, not that either Newcombe or Reynolds needed any extra help.

If Don Newcombe thought Allie Reynolds was tough, then the Yankees quickly came to think the same about Newcombe. Phil Rizzuto, the first man to bat against Newcombe, came back to the bench. “That man,” he said, “is
mean.”

It was, Newcombe thought, the perfect game: The Yankees could barely touch him, and the Dodgers were doing precious little with Reynolds. In the first inning Newcombe retired the first three batters on infield plays. Then, in the second, starting with DiMaggio, he struck out the side. In
the first inning Spider Jorgensen had hit a high fly to left field which Lindell had misplayed; it had fallen for a double even though it should have been an easy out. But then Reynolds shut them down.

The Dodgers got their next hit in the eighth with one out—Pee Wee Reese singled. That was it. We might, Newcombe thought as the late innings arrived, be here forever. At the end of eight innings, the Dodgers had 2 hits and the Yankees had 4. Reynolds had struck out 9, and Newcombe had struck out 11.

Newcombe thought he had never been faster. This was a time before radar guns became fashionable, but based on what he knew then and later, Newcombe judged his best fastball at ninety-six to ninety-seven miles an hour, and his curve, almost a change of pace, at ninety. Reynolds, he thought, was every bit as fast.

In the broadcasting booth, Mel Allen and Red Barber were calling the game on radio. “Well, Brother Allen,” Barber said in the bottom of the ninth, “come over here now to the microphone and tell how you’ve been seeing this thing.” “Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve been sittin’ here just real amazed at two great pitchers giving perhaps the two best performances of their careers,” Allen answered.

In the bottom of the ninth, Tommy Henrich was the lead-off hitter. If there was any Yankee who had a shot at pulling a right-handed power pitcher like Newcombe, it was Henrich. Henrich was so good a fastball hitter that the hardest thrower of his era, Bob Feller, once said of him, “That guy can hit me in the middle of the night, blindfolded and with two broken feet to boot.” Before he went up, he turned to Frank Shea on the bench and said, “I’m going to get this guy. He’s been giving me fastballs all day and beating me, but if I get one this time I’m going to hit it out.” The truth, he thought, was that Newcombe was simply overpowering.

The first pitch was a fastball outside. The second pitch
was another fastball, just outside, a pitch that could have gone either way. It was 2-and-0, and Henrich knew he was going to get a good pitch. Newcombe had walked very few people all day, and he would not want to walk the lead-off man in the ninth. He threw Henrich a curve. Later there were various descriptions of it: Newcombe thought it broke down and in on Henrich; but Henrich himself did not think it broke like a curve. Rather, he thought it was a perfect pitch to hit, a hard fast strike down the center of the plate, a major-league fastball. Because of Newcombe’s speed, Henrich was out a little early on it, and he hit it well. Up in the radio booth, Red Barber was announcing. “The two-nothing pitch is swung on. Drilled out towards right field. Going way back ...”

The moment he hit it, Henrich ran hard and kept his eye on Carl Furillo as the Dodger right-fielder moved toward the wall. Henrich saw Furillo’s head tilt up as the outfielder neared the fence, and thought to himself, I’ve got it, I’ve got it. “Thaaaat’s the ball game!” Barber was telling his audience. “A home run for Tommy Henrich! There’s Henrich now between first and second. Bill Dickey, the first-base coach, almost jumped on his back, then realized that’s a tender back and he better not. Henrich’s coming into third. He is trotting his home run home. Look at him grin. Big as a slice of watermelon. Wow! Well, they call him Old Reliable and they’re not joking. ... With the startling suddenness of a pistol shot, the denouement, the climax was reached. ...”

As soon as Henrich had hit it, Newcombe knew it was a home run. One pitch, he thought, all it takes is one pitch. As quickly as he could he tucked his glove into his hand and walked off the mound. Often pitchers are stunned and wait on the mound long enough to survey the damage. Not Newcombe. He never looked around. He was in the dugout before Henrich reached the plate. A few minutes later Harold Rosenthal, the sportswriter for the
Trib,
came into the
Dodger locker room. Newcombe was stretched out on the training table and the Dodger trainer was cutting a toenail. “Newk, what the hell are you doing?” Rosenthal asked.

“I’ve got this ingrown toenail and it hurts like hell.”

“You pitched the whole game with an ingrown toenail bothering you?” Rosenthal asked.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to bother beforehand,” he said.

“That was a hard game to lose today, Newk,” Rosenthal said. “You pitched a hell of a game.”

Newcombe seemed almost not to hear him. Great game indeed: There were 24 strikeouts—13 by Reynolds, 11 by Newcombe. Reynolds had given up 2 hits; Newcombe, 5. The game was viewed even then as a classic: Allie Reynolds thought he had pitched as well as he did in his two subsequent no-hitters; and Newcombe, asked to name the best game he ever pitched, cited that World Series game.

The next day Preacher Roe beat Vic Raschi 1-0. Gil Hodges singled with Jackie Robinson on third for the game’s one run in the third inning. Later Raschi told friends that it was not Hodges who had beaten him, it was Robinson, on third, bluffing a break for home. “I had just never seen anything like him before,” Raschi said, “a human being who could go from a standing start to full speed in one step. He did something to me that almost never happened: He broke my concentration and I paid more attention to him than to Hodges. He beat me more than Hodges.”

The other Yankees, particularly the younger ones, watched Robinson with growing admiration. On the bench Jerry Coleman, who had turned down a Dodger contract before he signed with the Yankees, silently said a small prayer of thanks that he had signed with the Yankee organization. The Dodgers, Coleman thought, were not going to need a light-hitting second baseman for a long, long time. Robinson was different from almost any player Coleman had ever seen. He was not a power hitter, but he could change the tempo of a game nonetheless. Years later Coleman
still thought Robinson was special. Some younger players with greater speed had arrived, and they had produced greater statistics, but Robinson remained apart; he had done everything with a purpose—to wake up his own team, to intimidate his opponents, to make the game different. What a player, Coleman thought.