1952 World Series: Billy Martin Saves The Yankees

It was a sound that defined a borough, one every Dodgers fan grew accustomed to hearing at Ebbets Field, especially at World Series time. It was the sound of exasperation, and it would blow across the ball field, out over the right-field fence and right on down Bedford Avenue like a Nor’easter marching up the Atlantic coast.

There would be the usual packed house at the tiny bandbox, Brooklynites rabid with excitement as their Dodgers would tease them with the remnants of a winning rally. And then one of those Bums would do something inexplicable and inexcusable, and just like that the rally was dead, the game was over, and the Dodgers were losers again in October. And again in October. And again in October.

On the afternoon of Game 7 of the 1952 World Series, that sound could be heard twice within a matter of seconds, and what a sound it was.

In the bottom of the seventh inning the Dodgers were trailing the Yankees 4-2, but they had the bases loaded with only one out and sluggers Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson scheduled to bat.

Ebbets Field was in an uproar as Casey Stengel wobbled out to the mound and took the ball from an exhausted Vic Raschi and handed it to Bob Kuzava. That’s right, the left-handed Bob Kuzava, in a ballpark where left-handed pitchers began swearing the moment they put their uniforms on. The great Warren Spahn, the all-time winningest left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball, was rarely allowed to pitch at Ebbets Field. It was suicide, no matter how good you were. Yet here was Stengel asking Kuzava to save the World Series.

Yankees fans in the ballpark or listening on their radios said in unison, “Has the old man lost his mind?” But remember, these were the Yankees and these were the Dodgers. Stengel himself could have pitched and the Yankees would have escaped the jam, though it took a great play to do it.

Kuzava at least had the percentages on his side when he faced the lefty-swinging Snider, and he induced the Duke of Flatbush to pop out meekly to Gil McDougald at third for the second out. He did not have that advantage when the right-handed Robinson stepped in to the batters box. With all 33,195 top-coated fans living and dying with every pitch, Kuzava carefully worked the count to 3-and-2 and now the tension was unbearable.

The pay-off pitch was a curveball and Robinson’s swing was just a fraction of an inch off which is often the difference between being a hero and a goat in baseball. He raised a towering pop fly to the right side of the mound, and there came that sound of exasperation emanating from deep in the lungs of those frustrated Brooklynites.

But as the ball soared to the heavens, none of the Yankee infielders moved. Yogi Berra had come out from behind the plate to make the call and he yelled for first baseman Joe Collins to take it. What Berra didn’t know was that as the ball reached its apex, Collins was blinded by the sun and had no idea where it was. Now the ball was in descent, careening toward the field like a meteor, and in the gusty breeze it started to drift away from the infielders and back toward the plate.

The ballpark suddenly jumped to life in anticipation of a long-overdue miracle. Carl Furillo, who had walked to start the inning, was across home plate, Billy Cox, who had singled, was just about there with the tying run, and Pee Wee Reese was already around second and on his way to third.

Fortunately for the Yankees, Billy Martin did not panic. He saw what was happening and began a mad dash toward the mound. At the last instant he reached out and snared the ball at about knee level, squeezing his glove as he tumbled to the ground with the prize nestled safely inside.

The Dodgers had been foiled once more, and there came that sound again, whistling through the frustrated borough. The game wasn’t over, but in essence, it was. When Kuzava waltzed through the eighth and ninth innings, the Yankees were winners and the Dodgers were losers. Again.

“I could see that (Collins) didn’t know where the ball was and I knew if he didn’t get it the ball would drop and two, probably three runs would score, so I took off,” Martin explained amidst the din of the clubhouse celebration. “I could tell the wind was taking it toward home plate and I was thinking about Yogi. I was afraid he’d be coming out for the ball and sometimes when he did he kept his mask on. I heard nothing, no one calling me off the ball, but I knew I might knock into somebody. I didn’t realize how long a run I had to make. I didn’t think the play was so much until I got to the dugout and they were all slapping me on the back and saying what a great play it was.”

Martin grew up dirt poor on the hard streets of West Berkeley, California where you used your fists to survive, and he survived just fine. His father had run out on his mother when he was an infant, and though his mother remarried, there was very little money coming in to the household.

Martin was always a runt, and his oversized nose caused him to be the butt of many jokes. The other kids called him Pinocchio and banana nose, but what they didn’t know was that this “little bugger” as Stengel used to call him was usually the toughest guy in the bunch and his prowess as a fighter was legendary. As Martin would walk home from school through Jenxton Park there was always someone challenging him to a fight. To back down would only provoke the antagonists, so Martin would fight, and he’d win. Pretty soon they stopped picking fights with him.

Who knows what kind of life Martin would have led had it not been for his proficiency in athletics. He was never a good student, so he had no chance of going to college, but he starred for the baseball, football and basketball teams in high school. Sports kept him out of serious trouble, and ultimately, it was baseball that gave him a life.

When he was 18 years old he played semi-pro baseball for a team in Oakland that was sponsored by the Triple-A Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. The Oaks signed him to a contract and after playing in the Arizona-Texas League for Phoenix in 1947 and winning the MVP award, Martin was promoted to Oakland where Stengel was the manager. Stengel took Martin under his wing and virtually became Martin’s surrogate father. He loved Martin’s combativeness and the way he could spark his teammates with his feisty attitude. “He’s got it in here,” Stengel would often say, pointing to his heart.

The year after Stengel became the Yankees manager he convinced general manager George Weiss to purchase Martin’s contract, which Weiss did.

Martin played behind Jerry Coleman his first two years, then took over at second base when Coleman was drafted into the military in 1952 and Martin helped lead the Yankees to the fourth and fifth straight championships of the early Stengel dynasty.

Martin was a good fielder who used intelligence and hustle to make up for his lack of size, and with the bat he always had a knack for coming through in the clutch. “I never had the average, but my 1-for-4 would kill you,” he once said. Never was he better than in the World Series as he batted .333 in 28 career games, scoring 15 runs and driving in 19, though none of this mattered to Weiss.

Weiss never liked Martin, even though he was a vitally important player in both the 1952 and 1953 World Series. Weiss often decried his contributions, and of his great catch that saved the ‘52 Series, Weiss was convinced Martin was just showing off, that he made an easy play look tough.

Weiss knew Martin and Mantle were tight and he feared that Martin’s rambunctious nature would rub off on Mantle. Mantle was the meal ticket whom Weiss felt needed to be protected. The way to do that, or so Weiss thought, was to find a way to get rid of Martin. That was laughable because if Weiss only knew half the trouble Mantle used to get into on his own when Martin was nowhere to be found, he might have been looking for ways to get rid of his slugger. Regardless, like a gift from above, the incident at the Copacabana in 1957 provided Weiss all the ammunition he needed to jettison Martin, even though it was completely bogus.

Mantle and Ford arranged a birthday celebration for Martin on the evening of May 15 because the Yankees had a scheduled day off on the 16th, Martin’s actual birthday. Though the day off was eliminated when a rainout made it necessary to use the 16th as a makeup date, plans had been made so the players still went out. It was Mantle, Berra, Whitey Ford, Hank Bauer, and Johnny Kucks and their wives, and Martin who went stag.

They started the evening with dinner at Danny’s Hideaway, advanced to the Waldorf where Lena Horne was performing, and finally, after midnight, they went to the Copacabana on East 60th Street to catch Sammy Davis Jr. The Yankees were seated at a table near the back of the room, next to a group of drunken bowlers. One of the men directed a racial slur at Davis, and Bauer - the ex-Marine - told him to shut up.

It didn’t take long before a fight was proposed. Bauer and the bowler went to a private room with Martin and another bowler in tow. What happened is that while Bauer was priming himself for battle and Martin was trying to defuse the situation verbally, a Copacabana bouncer was summoned and he punched the drunk bowler’s lights out.

Bauer and Martin never threw a punch, but they and the rest of the Yankee party were ushered out a back door before any explanations were given. It just so happened that a Daily News police reporter got wind of the story when the bloodied bowler told the cops that Bauer had punched him and that he wanted to press charges. The reporter called Bauer at 4:30 in the morning to get a comment, Bauer said he didn’t do anything, yet the headline in the paper screamed “Yankees in Brawl at Copa.” Weiss flipped when he saw the story, and the moment he read Martin’s name in the account, he immediately blamed the whole incident on his peppery second baseman.

“Billy wasn’t guilty that time,” Ford said, “but the Copa thing gave Weiss a chance to trade him.”

Which he did a month later to the Kansas City Athletics. Martin’s playing career slumped from that moment on and he admitted years later, “It was like a nightmare. It took a lot out of me, I wasn’t the same ballplayer that I’d been.”

Martin bounced around from Kansas City to Cleveland to Cincinnati to Minnesota, making a mark with none of those clubs. He finally quit playing in 1961, then began a scouting, coaching and managing career that eventually made him one of the most popular and controversial figures in baseball history.

The World Series began on Oct. 1 in Brooklyn and Joe Black got the start for the Dodgers. Ultimately, he would start more games during one week’s time in this series (three) than he had started his entire rookie season with the Dodgers (two). Many in the press thought Dodgers manager Charley Dressen was making a mistake relying so heavily on the youngster when he had other seasoned pros such as Preacher Roe, Billy Loes, Carl Erskine and Ben Wade at his disposal, men who combined to start 96 games that year. But Dressen’s managerial style was often unconventional, and at least for Game 1, pitching Black proved to be the right move.

The day before the game Black said he wasn’t the least bit nervous about facing the mighty Yankees because, in his view, “These aren’t the same Yankees that I used to pay to see when they had DiMaggio, Henrich and Keller. They’re wearing the same letters on their shirts, but I don’t believe they frighten anybody.”

Pretty bold words, but the Yankees wouldn’t have frightened anybody in that first game. Black looked like an African-American version of Bob Feller as he limited the Yankees to six meek hits to become the first pitcher of color to win a Series game. “This is no club of jittery rookies,” Dressen said of his supremely confident Dodgers after the 4-2 victory at Ebbets Field spurred by home runs from Robinson, Snider and Reese. “They’re all experienced players in top form, well-rested and ready to go.”

The Dodgers had never won the opening game of a World Series, and Vic Raschi made sure they didn’t take a commanding two-game lead. He put on a clinic in Game 2, striking out nine and allowing just three hits during a 7-1 Yankee romp. It was Martin who wielded the knockout punch during a five-run Yankee sixth against Erskine and Loes, hitting a three-run home run.

The third game pitted two junkball artists, Roe against Eddie Lopat, and Roe’s junk was a bit more effective during Brooklyn’s 5-3 victory at Yankee Stadium. “I gave them everything I had, but it wasn’t good enough,” said Lopat following the only World Series loss of his career. “I wasn’t as sharp as usual, and they had the advantage of a couple bloopers that paid off.”

The Dodgers snapped a 1-1 tie in the fifth when Cox led off with a single, went to second on a sacrifice by Roe and scored with two outs as Reese blooped one off his wrists that landed softly in right field. Clinging to a 3-2 lead in the ninth, the Dodgers pulled off a double steal as Reese stole third and Robinson second off reliever Tom Gorman. That maneuver proved critical when both men scored on a passed ball by Berra which was more than enough to offset Johnny Mize’s pinch-hit homer in the ninth for New York.

Stengel had planned to start Ewell Blackwell in Game 4 if his team had the advantage, but now that he desperately needed to win, he turned instead to Allie Reynolds even though the Chief would be working on one day less rest. Then again, Dressen’s plan all along was to come back with Black, so that evened out the physicality of the pitching matchup. What Black couldn’t match was Reynolds’ experience. In a game he knew he had to win, Reynolds threw a four-hit shutout, striking out 10, and Mize’s second home run in two days started the Yankees on their way to a 2-0 victory.

“I’m getting too old for this,” the 39-year-old Mize said after his home run to left provided Reynolds the only run he would need.

The next day was Oct. 5, and pitching the fifth game of the Series for Brooklyn on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary was Erskine. You want more? In the fifth inning Erskine allowed five runs, and by the time the game was over, he had allowed only those five runs as well as five hits.

Five was certainly his lucky number, especially given that his teammates produced six runs, the last coming in the top of the 11th inning when Snider doubled home Cox to give the Dodgers a thrilling victory which left the Bums tantalizingly close to their first championship.

Erskine pitched perhaps the game of his life. He went all 11 innings and after the Yankees raked him in the fifth to take a 5-4 lead, he retired the last 19 batters he faced. In nine innings, the Yankees failed to register a hit, their only safety outside the fifth inning being a bunt single by Mantle in the fourth.

Author Peter Golenbock interviewed Erskine at length for his marvelous oral history about the Dodgers entitled “Bums” and Erskine shared a wonderful anecdote regarding Dressen’s visit to the mound that afternoon during the fifth-inning mayhem.

“He comes out to the mound, takes the ball from me, glances around a little bit, and he says, ‘Are you all right?’” Erskine recalled. “I said, ‘I feel lousy, but I’m all right.’ Then he says, ‘Is this your wedding anniversary?’ which darned near floored me. Then he says, ‘Is your wife at the game.’ I said, ‘Yeah, she’s here.’ Finally he asks me, ‘Are you going to celebrate your anniversary tonight?’ This was real strange. I said, ‘Well, I suppose we will Charley.’ With that he takes my glove and turns it up and slams the ball back in it and here’s what he said: ‘Well, see if you can get the side out before it gets dark.’”

The Dodgers were now one win away from realizing their dreams, and Game 6 was played before a deranged mob at Ebbets Field. For six innings Loes blanked the Yankees, stretching to 12 innings their futility against Dodger pitching. Meanwhile, the red-hot Snider slammed his third homer of the Series in the sixth to give Loes a 1-0 lead.

But then the Bronx Bombers swung into action with a pair of runs in the seventh - one on Berra’s home run that bounded down Bedford Avenue - and another in the eighth on the first of Mantle’s career Series-record 18 home runs. Snider’s second bomb of the day cut the Brooklyn deficit to 3-2, but with Reynolds saving Raschi’s strong outing, the Yankees held on and the Series was even at three games apiece.

For just the fourth time in the team’s illustrious World Series history, the Yankees were pushed to a seventh game, and as Snider said, “How much of this can one guy take?”

Lopat started Game 7 but he was helped by the tireless Reynolds and Raschi, and finally, by the obscure Kuzava. The runs came from Mize on a RBI single, a Gene Woodling home run, a Mantle home run, and an RBI single by Mantle. In the field, there was Berra handling the four pitchers flawlessly and Martin’s dazzling catch that averted a disaster in the seventh. And of course there was Stengel - matching Joe McCarthy’s record of four straight World Series victories - making all the right moves.

“There’s the greatest manager in baseball, make no mistake about it,” said coach Bill Dickey after the Yankees came away with a 4-2 victory. “There’s nobody around who can approach him. The way he has handled this club, not only in the Series, but from the start of the season, stamps him among the greatest of all time.”

Mantle broke a 2-2 tie when he launched an epic home run off Black, and his RBI single in the seventh came off Roe and gave the Yankees a 4-2 cushion, setting the stage for Martin’s dramatic catch.

When Kuzava finished off the Dodgers, there was utter silence in that little stadium. You had to feel bad for the Brooks. So close, yet such heartbreak.