1923 World Series: Casey Stengel Nearly Stole Yankees First Title

Today, and for each of the next 26 Wednesdays, I’m going to give you a story about each of the Yankees World Series championships. I won’t do one on the 27th because I just wrote all about the 2009 title this past year here in the newsletter.  

I will write these in chronological order, and thus we start in 1923, the year the original Yankee Stadium opened, and the Yankees christened it the right way by winning their third straight AL pennant and then finally beating the crosstown rival New York Giants.

In between, as news warrants, I’ll try to get a newsletter out. Please remember, this is still free, and my duties covering the Bills typically fill my days, so I’ll do my best if things start happening in what has, so far, been a quiet offseason.

It’s hard to imagine Casey Stengel as anything other than the stumpy little old manager wearing a baggy pinstriped uniform and speaking a form of fractured English that was inaudible to virtually everyone except his players and his wife Edna.

The visions of Stengel resonate even today, six decades after he last managed the Yankees. Stengel leaning against that post in front of the visitors dugout at Ebbets Field during the five World Series clashes between his Yankees and the Dodgers; or sitting in the Yankee Stadium dugout with his face drooping into his chest watching his team win another pennant; or hobbling out to the mound to replace a tiring pitcher; or wrapping his arm around Mickey Mantle or Billy Martin or Whitey Ford and imparting on the kids a bit of priceless Stengelese; or standing behind a lectern on the off-season banquet circuit staring out at a crowd he had just transformed into a howling mob with some whimsical one-liner.

But while his baseball life reached unprecedented heights during his 12-year tenure as the Yankee skipper from 1949-60, his life in baseball had existed long before he took up his historic residence in the Bronx.

In fact, it was Stengel who very nearly single-handedly kept the Yankees from winning their first world championship in 1923. As a 33-year-old outfielder for the New York Giants, Stengel hit a pair of home runs that beat the Yankees in the first and third games of that World Series. Had it not been for a lackluster performance by the rest of John McGraw’s club, the Yankees would have one less title to call their own.

This was the third year in a row the World Series was an all-New York affair, and McGraw’s Giants had defeated Miller Huggins’ Yankees in the first two meetings in 1921 and ‘22. But with the Yankees having been so dominant in the American League and the Giants having worked hard to outdistance Cincinnati by a scant four games in the National League, it appeared the tide was about to turn in the Yankees favor.

The Giants were led by Bob Meusel’s brother, Irish, plus Frankie Frisch and George Kelly, all of whom had driven in more than 100 runs during the season. Seven of their eight starting position players had batted at least .290, and their pitching was well-balanced with Art Nehf, Rosy Ryan, Hugh McQuillan, Jack Bentley and Jack Scott. Stengel was second on the team with a .339 average in 75 games and he led New York in slugging percentage at .505, but if you had polled the Yankees as to which Giant player they feared most, Stengel wouldn’t have received a vote. This was a very good Giants team, but the Yankees were confident they could be conquered.

In the first Series game ever played at Yankee Stadium, McGraw tapped Mule Watson as his starting pitcher while Huggins went with Waite Hoyt, but neither pitcher survived three innings. The Yankees jumped to an early 3-0 lead, fell behind when the Giants put together a four-run rally in the third, then tied the score in the seventh on Joe Dugan’s RBI triple, and so it was left for Stengel to become the unsuspecting hero.

With two outs in the ninth, Stengel worked the count full, and then Bullet Joe Bush went by the book and attacked Stengel’s weakness, throwing a fastball to the outside corner. Stengel reached out with a mighty left-handed swing, connected solidly, and the ball rocketed out to the deepest part of the new stadium, left-center. Both Whitey Witt and Bob Meusel gave chase as Stengel rambled around the bases, arms flailing, knees buckling, a piece of his shoe flying out which made his awkward running style even more hilarious.

All 55,307 fans were on their feet watching breathlessly as this unforgettable play unfolded. Witt tracked the ball down, flipped it to the strong-armed Meusel and he fired home to catcher Wally Schang. The ball arrived a split second after Stengel stumbled across the plate with the winning run.

When Rosy Ryan mowed the Yankees down in order in the bottom of the ninth the Giants were up one game.

“It’s the same thing, we draw first blood, now watch us,” said McGraw. “The team pulled through victorious in one of the best games I think I’ve ever seen. I guess the team showed itself superior as a machine to the satisfaction of everybody.”

Huggins, who had grown tired of losing to McGraw - this was his 10th loss in 13 Series games to date - found solace in the fact that his troops had managed 12 hits in the game. “We showed today that we could hit the Giants pitchers,” he said. “It is not in the cards for us to have the breaks go against us in every game as they did today and we’ll come back all right.”

The teams moved across the Harlem River to play Game Two in the Polo Grounds and Ruth stole the show by launching two home runs, joining Pat Dougherty of the 1903 Boston Red Sox in accomplishing that feat. Ruth’s performance backed the superb pitching of Herb Pennock who went the distance, scattering nine hits in the Yankees’ 4-2 victory.

“Say, if I had met that ball in the ninth square, I would have knocked that ball into the bleachers and made a fine day finer,” Ruth said of his deep fly to center that almost left the park but landed in Stengel’s mitt. “I wonder what McGraw’s system will be from now on. Just let him tell his pitchers to throw ‘em to me and watch the Babe. I’ll show them that last year was an accident.”

Ruth, of course, was referring to his abysmal showing during the Giants’ Series sweep of the Yankees in 1922.

McGraw conceded defeat by saying, “I want to give a lot of credit to Pennock for his fine performance. We have no excuses to offer. It was a game of hitting and we were out-hit. It was a game of pitching and we were out-pitched. They were due to win one and we’ll see if we can’t make that one the only one.”

Pennock was the last in the parade of former Boston players who had been dealt to the Yankees for next to nothing by frugal Red Sox owner Harry Frazee.

Between 1919-23, the Red Sox literally served as New York’s farm club as half the Yankees’ 1923 roster was comprised of players acquired from Boston including stars such as Ruth, Hoyt, Dugan, Schang, Bush, Carl Mays, Bob Shawkey, Everett Scott, Sad Sam Jones, and George Pipgras. While Ruth was certainly the most important figure, Pennock became what Huggins called, “the greatest left-hander in the history of baseball”, a statement that, along with his 241 career victories, helped gain Pennock induction into the Hall of Fame.

Pennock, then just a teenager, was pitching for a semi-pro team in Atlantic City in 1911 and was a teammate of Connie Mack’s son, Earl. Earl Mack was a catcher, and after helping Pennock throw a no-hitter, the younger Mack called his father, and less than a year later Pennock was pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics. But success in the major leagues came slowly and after 10 nondescript years with Philadelphia and Boston, Frazee figured that at age 29, Pennock was over the hill. That proved to be another ill-fated decision by Frazee.

Huggins had gone to Yankee general manager Ed Barrow following the 1922 season and said, “We can win the whole thing if we could only pick up a strong left-handed pitcher.” Barrow, who had managed Pennock in Boston, knew he was the man Huggins needed. Over the next 11 years, he would win 162 regular-season games for the Yankees, plus go 5-0 with three saves in World Series play.

Pennock was a master technician on the mound, always looking for ways to improve himself, and much of the time his work wasn’t physical, it was mental. “If you were to cut that bird’s head open,” Huggins said, “the weakness of every batter in the league would fall out.”

Pennock once said, “The first commandment is observation. Look around, notice the little quirks in the batter and notice your own quirks. Your doctor never stops learning. The great pitcher imitates him.”

And Pennock preached practice.

“When I was struggling I pitched in games, in batting practice, before games, in morning games, and during the off-season,” he said. “When I couldn’t get anyone to catch me I’d throw against a stone wall or against a barn door. It wasn’t always fun, but I kept on plugging away because it meant so much to me.”

Prior to Game 3 back at Yankee Stadium, Huggins boldly predicted that his starter, Jones, would run through the Giants’ batting order without incident. “I will pitch Sam Jones and he will win, I don’t care who faces him,” said Huggins. There was one hitch. Stengel wasn’t finished tanning himself in the spotlight as he emerged the hero again.

Jones was nearly as dominant as Huggins had promised, but he made one mistake, a poorly located changeup that Stengel ripped for a solo home run in the seventh. It was the lone score of the day as Nehf quieted the Yankee bats with a six-hitter and the Giants regained the Series lead with a 1-0 victory.

“That makes two games for Stengel and one game for the Yankees,” Stengel quipped afterward.

It also meant the end of Stengel’s Cinderella story, and the end of the Giants’ reign atop the baseball world as the Yankees went on to win the final three games by scores of 8-4, 8-1 and 6-4.

After losing the fourth and fifth games, the Giants’ last hope was Nehf in Game 6, the one man Huggins felt could at least slow the Yankees. And for seven innings, the left-hander did just that. After Ruth homered in the first inning, Nehf settled down and the Giants built a 4-1 lead by pecking away at Pennock and it appeared a seventh game would be necessary.

But the ever-dangerous Yankees exploded for five runs in the eighth, Bob Meusel’s two-out, two-run go-ahead single the clutch hit, to put themselves in position to win their first world championship.

Jones, who hadn’t pitched since his Game 3 duel with Nehf, strode confidently to the mound with the intention of putting the Giants away and wrapping up the Series. With two outs and one on, McGraw looked into his dugout and signaled for Stengel to pinch-hit, but this time the magic was gone and Stengel fouled out meekly to Joe Dugan behind third base to end the threat.

In the ninth Jones didn’t permit a ball to leave the infield, the Giants went down 1-2-3, and the Yankees were world champions for the first time since the franchise was born in 1903 as the Highlanders.

“Nehf is one of the finest, gamest and most able pitchers the game has known,” said McGraw. “It was not his fault that he faltered there. The Yankees played great ball this year. They have won a great victory.”

It was just the beginning.