1936 World Series: Yankees Remain Kings of New York

Once again, New York City was mesmerized by another Subway Series and the Yankees, the dominant team in baseball in 1936 as a rookie named Joe DiMaggio joined the club, took out the Giants in six games.

There was an awful lot going on in the world in 1936.

At home in America, the economy continued to stagger and citizens from all corners of our country were suffering as the Great Depression lingered.

Around the globe, devastation reigned in Spain with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; in the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin began his “great purge” which would see more than 8 million people killed and another 10 million imprisoned over the next four years; and in Germany, Adolf Hitler was coming fully into power, though his supposedly superior Aryan race was embarrassed by a young African-American track athlete named Jesse Owens who won four gold medals in the Berlin Summer Olympics.

But for one autumn week in New York, it all receded to the periphery because the Yankees and Giants were squaring off in the World Series. Again.

As we would also experience later when the Yankees and Dodgers became frequent World Series opponents in the 1940s and 50s, and when the Yankees and New York Mets battled in 2000, it was remarkable how insular the city could be when two New York teams were meeting to decide baseball’s championship.

At this time in America’s sporting history, baseball was to New York what Times Square is to New Years Eve. When the Yankees played the Giants or Dodgers in the World Series, the entire city went to the games. Maybe not with a ticket in hand to Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds or Ebbets Field, but the masses were there in spirit thanks to that most prized of possessions - the radio.

Just as there was tremendous cheering at the ballparks, it was nearly as boisterous on the streets, in the restaurants, in the office buildings, in the apartment houses, in the courtyards, in the subways.

For those two or three hours when the games were being played, it was almost as if the city came to a standstill. Nobody wanted to work, nobody wanted to play, nobody wanted to talk, nobody wanted to breathe. All people wanted to do was press their ear to a transistor radio and live and die with each word that emanated from the golden throats of announcers like Red Barber (Dodgers), Russ Hodges (Giants) and Mel Allen (Yankees).

In front of the New York Times building a big scoreboard - called a Play-O-Graph - was erected and with the game blaring over a loudspeaker, a man would update the score each half inning giving the assembled crowd a visual aid. Street vendors would sell their hot dogs and for no extra charge provide play-by-play commentary to their customers.

Any restaurant or bar that expected business was tuned in to the broadcasts and patrons would resonate with the ebb and flow of the game. If the weather was cooperative, Central Park was strewn with blankets and picnic baskets, and while the kids ran around and played tag or maybe catch, their adult supervisors - be it mother, father or nanny - paid only glancing attention, too busy were they staring into the tiny radio speaker as if they could actually see what was going on.

Housewives airing their laundry on the lines that stretched between tenements would share their thoughts on why Joe McCarthy called for a sacrifice, why Red Ruffing threw the curveball, or why Lou Gehrig swung at a 3-0 pitch. On the busiest streets of midtown Manhattan, crowds would gather in the biggest department stores or tiniest specialty shops to catch an update. And it wasn’t much different in Gramercy, Greenwich Village, Soho, the theater district, Murray Hill, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn.

Like the glamorous Broadway shows, the dynamic night clubs, the rich ethnicity of the neighborhoods, and the towering skyscrapers that were now springing up on the Manhattan skyline, baseball was a vibrant part of New York’s culture, its soul, its identity. Everyone loved baseball, everyone followed baseball, so when baseball’s ultimate event was an all-New York affair, its grip on the city’s emotions and passions was unbreakable.

By 1936, it had been 13 years since the last subway series, and when it came to pass, the city just about exploded. New Yorkers felt good about themselves that week. They forgot about the Depression and allowed themselves to smile. It was only baseball, but it was such a therapeutic balm for a wounded city amidst a wounded country. When the Series was over they would return to the reality of their lives, but oh, at least for a few days, how those unemployment lines would sing with lively conversation and playful banter. It was only baseball, but it was an important part of life.

The Yankees had long ago supplanted the Giants as the consistently strongest ballclub in New York City, but their superiority did not alter the rooting interests of much of the region. While the Bronx-based Yankees and the Brooklyn-based Dodgers had sizable pockets of fans outside their home boroughs, the Giants were still the preferred team in New York. Their lineage dated back to 1883, and though the Dodgers were nearly as old, their sad record of no world championships cast them in the roll of the ugly stepchild next to the Giants’ 13 pennants and six championships.

In 1936, the key to the Giants’ success had been the pitching of Carl Hubbell who won 26 games, including 16 in a row to end the season. It was apparent the Yankees were the better team, but in a seven-game series the Giants’ faithful reasoned that Hubbell might be able to pitch three times and that could be enough to deliver the championship to the lords of the Polo Grounds.

Jake Powell thought otherwise. The Yankees left-fielder shrugged off Hubbell’s season-long dominance on the eve of the Series opener saying, “Who’s afraid of Hubbell? He’s been striking out those National League bushers and getting a reputation. I’ll hit him like I own him. He’s only human and I’ll be in there swinging.”

Powell backed up his acid-tongued comments by rapping out three hits in the rainy, chilly first game at the Polo Grounds, but his teammates chipped in with just four other safeties and Hubbell cruised to a 6-1 victory over Red Ruffing. The defeat snapped the Yankees’ record 12-game World Series winning streak that encompassed the sweeps of Pittsburgh (1927), Cincinnati (1928) and Chicago (1932) and served as a cold slap in the face.

When the game was over, the Yankees were a grim bunch. Hubbell had frustrated them with his masterful screwball, and Powell was swearing a blue streak when he entered the clubhouse, appalled that the rest of the Yankees couldn’t hit Hubbell. Lou Gehrig, as usual the voice of reason, told the volatile Powell, “It’s one game, there’s a long way to go.”

The Yankees entered the eighth inning trailing 2-1 but put runners on first and third with nobody out and Joe DiMaggio, Gehrig and Bill Dickey coming to the plate. On Hubbell’s first pitch to DiMaggio, the rookie lashed a line drive right at second baseman Burgess Whitehead who speared the ball and threw to first to easily double up Red Rolfe while Frank Crosetti remained parked at third. When Dickey grounded out to end the inning, the Yankees still trailed.

Seemingly let down by his team’s inability to tie the game, Ruffing was roughed up in the bottom half for a four-run, game-clinching spurt. “I’ll say this,” Joe McCarthy said following the game. “That double play that DiMaggio hit into was the break of the game, but those things happen and they even up usually.”

The miserable weather that plagued the opener continued into the next day and forced postponement of Game 2 for 24 hours. It was well worth the wait for the Yankees as they busted up the Polo Grounds almost as effectively as the wrecking ball a few decades later. The Yankees hung a convincing 18-4 defeat on their cross-river rivals. President Roosevelt threw out the first ball, and that was about the only ball the Yankees didn’t hit as they rapped out 17 hits to set a Series scoring record.

Tony Lazzeri and Dickey each drove in five runs, four for Lazzeri coming on one swing in the third when he keyed a seven-run uprising with a grand slam. Every Yankee had at least one hit and one run scored, while benefiting from this show of strength was Lefty Gomez who pitched nine effortless innings to get the win, yielding only six hits.

“Those guys just shellacked us,” Giants manager Bill Terry said. “Toughest team I’ve ever faced. It was sort of sad to keep the boys in there taking it, but I was in there taking it with ‘em and if I could stand it, they ought to.”

Back at Yankee Stadium for Game 3, the Giants’ Freddy Fitzsimmons baffled the Yankees with his knuckleball and allowed only four hits, but one was a home run by Gehrig in the second inning and another was Crosetti’s game-winning RBI single that Fitzsimmons stopped, but couldn’t gain control of as the ball bounded behind the pitchers mound. Powell raced in from third base on that play to provide the Yankees with a 2-1 victory in front of 64,842 fans, the largest crowd to have ever witnessed a Series game.

“You wouldn’t mind if a ball was hit good, but to have been beaten like that is tough to take,” Fitzsimmons said of Crosetti’s hit. “I can’t do anything right enough. That ball looked like a cinch to me. I’ve gone over much farther to get those nasty hoppers, but today the ball was a half inch too far.”

The Yankees’ joy was curtailed by the fact that now they had to face the impregnable Hubbell the next day, and another Series record crowd came out fully intending to help their Yankees in any way possible. The Yankees didn’t need much help, though, as they figured out Hubbell’s screwball and strafed him for eight hits and four runs during a 5-2 victory.

Gehrig crashed a two-run homer in the third to make it 4-0, giving starter Monte Pearson all the run support he would need. Before the game, Pearson was feeling terrible. He was complaining of back pain, his shoulder was sore, and he was suffering from dizzy spells. Gomez peaked in to the trainers’ room and asked him, “How do you feel, Mont?” and Pearson replied, “Worse than I look.” Well, a little tape and some iron tonic and Pearson was fine as he gave up just seven hits and two runs while striking out seven.

Hal Schumacher, who had been the Giants’ starter in Game 2 before being routed inside three innings, obliterated that nightmarish day and rescued the Giants in Game 5. He pitched all 10 innings and extended the Series with a hard-earned 5-4 victory.

After blowing a 3-0 lead, Schumacher blanked the Yankees over the final four innings, escaping trouble in the ninth by retiring Gehrig on a grounder with runners dancing off first and second. “Who wouldn’t be worried?” Schumacher said of facing the Iron Horse in that situation. “But I didn’t have time to think about that. All I had to do was get him out. We had to get those fellows out a lot of times to stay in the game.”

Inspired by their gutty pitcher, the Giants produced the winning run in the 10th as Jo-Jo Moore opened with a double and later scored on Bill Terry’s fly to center.

“They’ve got to win two, we’ve only got to win one,” was McCarthy’s response afterward.

And the Yankees got that one the next day over at the Polo Grounds. The Giants made it tough for eight innings as they trailed only 6-5, but a seven-run explosion in the ninth blew it open for the Yankees and their fifth championship was in the books.

“They’ve got everything, including pitching,” said Terry. “Who told me they didn’t have a good pitching staff? I’ll say they were pretty good.”