1955 World Series: Finally

The Teams
National League: Brooklyn Dodgers (98-55) - Ninth World Series
American League: New York Yankees (96-58) - 21st World Series (Won 16 previous times) 

What Happened
The story of the 1955 World Series started with the 1941 World Series. That was the first time the Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the New York Yankees in the World Series. That year started a pattern. Six times, the Dodgers topped the National League, and six times, they lost to the Yankees in the World Series. No matter how good the Dodgers were, no matter how ho-hum the Yankees were, the Yankees were always better when it counted.

There were other losses, of course. Losing the pennant to Philadelphia on the final day of the 1950 season. Losing to the Giants in the 1951 playoff. But the narrative always came back to Dodgers vs. Yankees. And the story always ended the same.

There wasn't much reason to believe that 1955 would be the proverbial Next Year for Brooklyn. That was supposed to be 1953, when the Dodgers tore through the National League, putting together one of the best seasons in that league's history. And still, they lost. In 1955, they were a little bit older, a little less skilled than they had been. Time was running out.

Robinson steals home in Game 1,
perhaps the defining moment of his career.

The series didn't start well for Brooklyn. Five home runs were hit in Game 1 - three by the Yankees. Jackie Robinson, the aging pride of the Dodgers, stole home with two outs in the eighth Game 1 and the Dodgers down 2, but it wasn't enough, as the Dodgers fell by 1. In Game 2, the Yankees got 5 singles in the fourth inning, giving them all four runs they needed to take a 2-0 lead to Brooklyn.

In the friendly confines of Ebbets Field, the Dodgers' mighty bats woke up. The Dodgers scored 8 runs in both games 3 and 4, with Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, and Duke Snider all homering in Game 4. Snider hit two more bombs in Game 5, and Brooklyn took a 3-2 series lead back across the East River. They were one win away from finally breaking through. But the Dodgers were always one win away when it came to playing the Yankees. Whitey Ford made sure they had to wait, getting five first-inning runs to cruise to a complete-game Game 6 win.

So decades of frustration, six years of heartache against the Yankees, all came down to one game, played in historic Yankee Stadium, with a 22-year-old starter who had gone 9-10 during the regular season the man tasked with giving the Dodgers a championship. Here's the ball, Johnny Podres. Go win us a World Series.

And so he did.

Amoros makes the catch in Game 7.

Hodges got single runs batted in in the 4th and 6th innings, and Podres was cruising through five. In the sixth, the Dodgers started preparing for the end game, putting Sandy Amoros into the game for his defense, two batters later, there were two men on and nobody out when Yogi Berra sliced a ball deep to the left field corner. Amoros ran, and ran, and ran. And he caught it, the kind of catch that the Dodgers never used to make, the kind of catch that can win you a championship. Plus, he got the ball back in the infield in time to turn the double play.

The Yankees still had three more innings to try to catch up, and they mounted some threats, but the game was over after Amoros' catch. He had single-handedly saved Brooklyn. In the end, when the game was over and Brooklyn was finally World Champions, the heroes weren't one of the famous Boys of Summer, like Robinson or Snider or Hodges or Campanella or Reese. No, they were Amoros and Podres.

Defining Game
I have Game 7 ranked as the 13th best  Game 7 of all time. Try telling a Brooklyn fan it's anything but number 1. I've written about it before; see that post here. 

MVP
Snider could have been named MVP for his series-high four home runs and seven runs batted in. But the first official World Series MVP award was given to Podres, the 22-year-old kid who stared decades of disappointment in the face and laughed.

Scores
(Home team shaded; winners in Bold)

Brooklyn	5	2	8	8	5	1	2
New York	6	4	3	5	3	5	0

The List
I'm ranking all the World Series, from worst to best. Here are the ones I've done so far:

57. 1955 - Brooklyn (N) def. New York (A) 4-3
58. 1979 - Pittsburgh (N) def. Baltimore (A) 4-3
59. 1987 - Minnesota (A) def. St. Louis (N) 4-3
Numbers 60-69
Numbers 70-79
Numbers 80-89
Numbers 90-99
Numbers 100-107

Game 7s
Simultaneously, I'll rank all the Game 7s. The ones that have appeared in my countdown so far:

12. 1979: Pittsburgh 4, Baltimore 1
13. 1955: Brooklyn 2, New York 0
16. 1940: Cincinnati 2, Detroit 1
18. 1987: Minnesota 4, St. Louis 2
21. 1968: Detroit 4, St. Louis 1
22. 1931: St. Louis 4, Philadelphia 2
29. 1965: Los Angeles 2, Minnesota 0 
31. 1967: St. Louis 7, Boston 2
32. 1945: Detroit 9, Chicago 3
33. 1909: Pittsburgh 8, Detroit 0

October 4, 1955: Next Year

BRONX, N.Y. - Johnny Podres was an unlikely candidate to be a hero. Only 22 years old, he went 9-10 in the 1955 season as the Dodgers No. 3 starter. But he had won Game 3 of the '55 series, an absolute must-win as Brooklyn was already down 2 games to 0. So he had handled pressure well earlier in the week. But this was an entirely different kind of pressure.

After seven straight World Series losses, the losing can start to wear on you. After so many heartbreaking losses, the refrain of "wait 'til next year" starts to sound a bit hollow. It'd be one thing if those losses had been to different teams in different eras, but the last five losses had all been to the Yankees. The Damn Yankees. Why should this year be any different?

If Podres was feeling any pressure, it didn't show in his performance early. The first two innings went by without incident. Trouble came in the third, though. With two outs, Rizzuto walked and Martin singled, with the heart of the order coming up. Even with Mantle injured, it was still a dangerous lineup. Then, finally, a break. McDougald grounded one to the left side that probably would have gotten through, but it hit Rizzuto. Automatic out, inning over. The Dodgers finally got a lucky bounce.

It wasn't just losing, either, it was how they lost. Like the '47 Series, when they won Game 4 after getting their only hit with two outs in the ninth. It seemed like they had fate on their sides, then, until they blew the two-run lead in game 7. 1952 might have been the worst, though; that talented team, coming back to Brooklyn only needing to win one of the last two games to take it all, then blowing a game 6 lead, then watching that damn Martin save game 7 by catching that wind-blown popup that he never really saw. It's after stuff like that when you start to think the franchise really was cursed.

Maybe they were emboldened by finally catching a break, but Campanella's one-out double in the fourth gave the Dodgers life. He moved to third on a groundout, then scored when Hodges singled him home. Berra doubled to lead off the fourth - now how big was that ball that hit Rizzuto the previous inning? - but Podres pitched around it, got through the fifth as well. In the sixth, it was a single, an error, a bunt, and a walk, before Hodges drove home another with a sacrifice fly. So Podres had two runs to work with now. Based on Brooklyn's World Series history, that might have to be enough. Go get 'em, kid.

Of course, a loss doesn't have to happen in the World Series to be painful. Like 1950, when the pennant-winning run was thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, and the Phillies hit that home run in the top of the 10th. Or 1951, and Bobby Thomson's home run. Both on the last day of the season, both with the World Series painfully close to their grasps. At least those losses weren't to the Yankees, but that's really very little consolation.

Fate came back into play again in the bottom of the sixth. Shuba had entered as a pinch-hitter for Zimmer the previous inning, but he was no infielder. So the Dodgers moved Gilliam in to second and put in Amoros, the speedy left-handed Cuban, out in left field. Martin and McDougald reached, bringing up Berra. He was a lefty, so the outfield shifted over toward right. Naturally, Berra sliced it into left. But Amaros can fly. He ran somewhere between 50 and 500 feet, tracked it down on the track, reached out and caught it just before hitting the wall, fired to first for the double play. Two bits of fortune there: Amoros was the only player on Brooklyn's roster who could have caught up to that ball, and him being left-handed made the catch possible; a right-handed leftfielder almost certainly misses that ball. Maybe Fate had changed sides for once.

Nobody remembers the '16 and '20 World Series. They were so long ago as to be irrelevant to what was happening today. They weren't even called the Dodgers then, were they? But 1941 is recent enough for people to remember, for it to matter. That's when the Dodgers started their run. That's when they started being that team that was brilliant, but not quite good enough. It was someone different each year - for a few years there, it seemed like the Dodgers were perpetually two games behind the Cardinals, or they were just barely inferior to the Yankees, or they were one painful run short of the National League champion de jure. Always second-best. Always waiting 'til next year.

No lead is safe. Nothing can come easy. In the seventh, it was Mantle, pinch-hitting despite being barely able to walk. Of course he was the tying run. There was a sigh of relief when he popped out. In the eighth, it was that damn Berra again. It seems like he's always batting with two runners on base. But when Furillo closed his glove on Berra's fly ball, it seems like the worst of it was over. Bauer then struck out. Three outs to go.

It wasn't just how often the Dodgers lost, it was how often the Yankees won. Since 1923, only the Cardinals had beaten them in the World Series - in 1926, when Alexander struck out Lazzeri and Ruth ended the series by being caught stealing, and 1942, when the Cardinals were about as good as they had ever been (of course, the Dodgers finished two games behind the Cards that year. Of course they did). For those keeping track, that's a 15-2 record in the World Series. At some point, it stops being about luck. The Yankees were damn good, always would be. That's why they were so hard to beat.

Another Dodgers rally fizzled out in the ninth, and Podres went back out to pitch the most important inning in Brooklyn baseball history. A quick look around the field probably revealed some nervous faces, people afraid of having the ball hit to them for fear of making the crucial error. Reese doesn't have the fear, though, that's for sure. Snider in center probably doesn't, either. Too bad Jackie's hurt, 'cause you know he'd want the damn ball hit to him, even demand it. For the first out, though, Podres fielded Skowron's grounder himself. Two outs to go. Then Cerv flied to Amoros, probably to remind everybody of his great catch earlier. One out to go.

Pee Wee Reese joined the Dodgers in 1940 and played in the World Series for the first time the following year. In his long career, he was always good, never great, but always consistent. His years are filled with top-10 MVP finishes, and he became the captain, the heart and soul of the team that would come to be known as the Boys of Summer. Nobody embodied the Dodgers like Reese. He was the only man who had played in every World Series game between the Yankees and Dodgers. More than anybody else, he knew the pain of always coming up just short, knew exactly what it would mean to the team and the borough to get this last out.

Podres took the sign, got set. He started his windup and threw. Howard liked what he saw and swung, making solid contact. A grounder to the right side, right at Reese. Of course it was Reese. Could it be anybody else? He fielded it cleanly, made a perfect throw.

Next Year was finally here.