My twelfth annual recap (since 1912)
This story, like the annual recaps that preceded it, first appeared in MLB’s World Series Media Guide.
After two World Series played by the Yankees and the Giants entirely in the Polo Grounds — the latter had leased their home park to the former, then evicted them — this is the first true Subway Series. Meeting for the third straight time, the Yanks were now housed in a dazzling new stadium in the Bronx while their former hosts were still beneath Coogan’s Bluff in Manhattan, as they had been since 1891.
The Giants were the glamorous franchise among New York’s three. The Dodgers failed to win in their two World Series appearances (1916, 1920) and the Yankees had never even appeared in one until Babe Ruth came to town from Boston. Tossing up lobs to the Bambino, who batted .118, John McGraw’s Giants prevailed in the 1922 Series as they had in 1921.
But now everything would be different, as the Yanks would win their first of 27 world championships, unmatched in any team sport.
The great run began not with McGraw or Ruth, who had dominated discussion in the prior two years, but with Casey Stengel. One day he would lead the Yankees to more World Series — 10 in 12 years — than anyone. But in 1923 Stengel was a 33-year-old outfielder who had broken into the big leagues with the Dodgers in 1912 and moved on to the Pirates and Phils before reviving his flagging fortunes with the Giants.
And it was “Old Casey,” as he was already called, who broke up Game 1 at Yankee Stadium with a ninth-inning inside-the-park home run. Of his dash home Damon Runyon wrote:
This is the way old “Casey” Stengel ran, running his home run home, when two were out in the ninth and the score was tied and the ball was still bounding inside the Yankee yard.
This is the way —
His mouth wide open.
His warped old legs bending beneath him at every stride.
His arms flying back and forth like those of a man swimming the crawl stroke.
His flanks heaving, his breath whistling, his head far back.
Let’s hear Casey tell the story of that home run: https://bit.ly/3ZU2eo4.
The Yanks won Game 2 as Ruth hit two homers to support Herb Pennock’s pitching. The first, a solo blast over the Polo Grounds roof in right, broke a 1–1 tie in the fourth, and the second, an inning later, concluded Yankee scoring in their 4–2 win that evened the Series.
Art Nehf threw a shutout while Stengel hit another late homer to provide the only run of Game 3. An odd highlight of the game was when the Yankees’ Wally Pipp injured himself sliding into second in the seventh inning. He was replaced at first base by Ruth because John McGraw had not granted the Yanks permission to include September callup Lou Gehrig on their World Series roster. So … who replaced Ruth in right field? Hinkey Haines, who in 1927 would become the enduring answer to an all-time great trivia question: Who was the only man to win both a World Series and a championship game in the National Football League?
Stengel’s reward for his two game-winning homers was to be traded, one month later, to the last-place Boston Braves. By the end of his long career, Casey could say that he was a player or manager for four clubs in New York City.
Ross Youngs’ fourth hit of Game 4, an inside-the-park homer at the Polo Grounds, gave his Giants a fourth run to lead off the bottom of the ninth, but as a rally it fell short; the Yankees had already scored eight — with six coming in the second frame.
With the Series even and — in the alternating mandate that called for a return across the Harlem River to the Bronx — the Yankees finally won their first postseason game in the new ballyard. Joe Bush gave up only three Giant hits — a single, double, and triple to Irish Meusel — but Yankees brother Bob Meusel drove in three runs with his three hits. Third baseman Joe Dugan added four hits, including a three-run homer, as the American Leaguers breezed to an 8–1 victory.
In Game 6, Pennock yielded four Giant runs in his seven innings on the mound and seemed on the edge of defeat. But in the top of the eighth, Nehf (who had pitched one-hit ball since Ruth homered for a Yankee run in the first) lost his stuff. With one out, two singles followed by two walks (on eight pitches) forced in a run. Rosy Ryan replaced Nehf and walked in another run. Ruth struck out, but Bob Meusel’s single and a wild throw from center cleared the bases to put the Yankees ahead 6–4, where they remained to game’s end for the first of their 27 world championships.
John McGraw’s inside-baseball strategy had given way to The Big Bam’s slugging style; he would never win another championship. The Yankees, on the other hand, became perennial World Series contestants, winning three more times with Ruth and then virtually running the table with Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle … and Stengel.
75 Years Ago
As the Yankees and Giants continued to win pennants and championships, the 1948 World Series brought together two historically bedraggled franchises: the Cleveland Indians, whose only other appearance in the Fall Classic had come in 1920, which they won, and the Boston Braves, who likewise had won in 1914. Cleveland had to win a one-game playoff with the Boston Red Sox to reach the Series, led by shortsop-manager Lou Boudreau and rookies Larry Doby and pitcher Gene Bearden, a wounded World War II veteran. Boston was led by mound aces “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.”
The Series began with a split in Boston, as Sain defeated Bob Feller (also a War vet) 1–0 and then converted infielder Bob Lemon topped Spahn. In Game 1, Feller had given up only two singles, but one of them followed a walk and a sacrifice (and a controversial pickoff play at second, in which the Boston runner was ruled safe although later photos showed him to be out).
Bearden shut out the Braves in Game 3 (Vern Bickford pitched, as it did not rain). A record 81,897 fans saw Sain defeat Steve Gromek in Game 4, notable for a home run by Doby, the first Black player to be signed by an American League club. But that attendance record stood only until game 5, when 86,288 fans gathered in hopes that Feller would sew up the Series. That was not to be, though “rookie” Satchel Paige pitched to two batters.
Back in Boston, the Indians won Game 6 by a score of 4–3 as Bearden finished in relief. It would be the last time until 1957 in which a New York team was not the champion … until the Braves, reborn in Milwaukee, won in 1957.
50 Years Ago
The Mets, world champions in 1969, nearly repeated in 1973 despite a diminished squad, led by manager Yogi Berra. Implausibly they won the NL East despite a puny record of 82–79, defeated the powerful Cincinnati Reds in the NLCS, then took a lead, three games to two, over the defending world champs. The Oakland A’s were compelled to let their pitchers bat after a regular season in which a designated hitter had, for the first time, taken their spot in the batting order.
Back in Oakland for Game 6, the A’s came back to capture the second of their three consecutive crowns. Reggie Jackson’s doubles in the first and third drove in two runs to give the A’s a lead New York was unable to overtake. In Game 7 Bert Campaneris and Jackson both hit two-run homers in the third inning, and Campy scored a fifth run two innings later to seal the deal.
25 Years Ago
The Yankees of 1998 won 114 games in the regular season, earning them a mention alongside (or, in this writer’s view, atop) the great teams of the past: the Yanks of 1927 and 1939, the Philadelphia A’s of 1929, and the Chicago Cubs of 1906. Then they added eleven more victories in the postseason (against only two losses, to the Cleveland Indians in the ALCS). Third baseman Scott Brosius, a free agency acquisition via Oakland, was named Most Valuable Player in the World Series sweep of the San Diego Padres.
World Series Centennial Review: 1923 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.