Tony Kubek's Homecoming in Milwaukee Was a Blast

Today, I’m taking you back to the 1957 World Series when Yankees rookie Tony Kubek, a Milwaukee native, returned home and belted two home runs in Game 3 at County Stadium to lead the Yankees to a 12-3 victory. Lets get to it.

MILWAUKEE (Oct. 5, 1957) - Before he stepped to the plate for his first at bat in Game 3 of the 1957 World Series, rookie Tony Kubek hadn’t played baseball in his hometown since 1953.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Kubek was a 17-year-old sandlot star (his high school dropped baseball after his freshman year) who decided to attend a Braves’ tryout camp that spring, though his primary reason for doing so wasn’t necessarily to impress the Braves’ scouts and coaches who were evaluating the talent before them at County Stadium.

“I wanted free tickets to the ballgames. They gave away free tickets to anyone who tried out,” said Kubek of the deal the team, which had moved from Boston following the 1952 season, was offering as a way to get more fans in the stands during its first year in Wisconsin’s largest city.

So Kubek hit and ran and threw and caught, then pocketed those free tickets and never heard from the Braves again, which was fine with him. That’s because the summer before, Kubek had caught the eye of Yankees scout Lou Maguolo when he played in the prestigious Hearst Sandlot Classic at Yankee Stadium which pitted New York All-Stars against players from around the country.

Although scouts from several teams took notice of Kubek, Maguolo had the inside track because, as Kubek said, “There were quite a few clubs interested in me, but the only one I was interested in was the New York Yankees. Money never occurred to me. I wanted to play, so I wasn’t interested in any kind of money that would make me a bonus player. And I was a shortstop and I figured Phil Rizzuto was getting old and I stood a better chance with them.”

That turned out to be quite prescient because while Kubek didn’t end up being the man who took over for Rizzuto in 1956 - that was Gil McDougald - he signed for a $1,500 bonus after graduation in 1954 and made it to the Yankees by 1957 as a multi-positional player who Casey Stengel used in a variety of spots, shortstop being one of them.

“It’s tough to determine where the boy belongs,” Stengel said before the World Series got underway at Yankee Stadium. “I don’t like to keep shifting him around but he looks good no matter where I play him. Kubek would be a great shortstop but we have a first class man in Gil McDougald. Maybe Tony can play second. I think we’ll find out in the spring (of 1958). It will be an interesting experiment and will be entertaining for the writers in Florida.”

Having split the first two games in the Bronx, the teams relocated to the upper Midwest and in Game 3 - the first World Series game ever played in Kubek’s hometown - he took the field at County Stadium for the first time since that tryout four years earlier batting second in Stengel’s lineup and playing left field.

Stengel had joked about Kubek’s homecoming with the press beforehand, saying, “Let’s see now, this is his hometown, isn’t it? I’ll probably just have to find where his folks are sitting and play him in the spot that’s closest to them so they can see him.”

That was the backdrop as Kubek - a week shy of his 22nd birthday - dug himself into the batters’ box with one out in the top of the first inning and stared out at Milwaukee starter Bob Buhl. He received light applause because he was the local kid, though most of it came from his mother, father, two sisters, and other family and friends who were in attendance. However, when he whacked Buhl’s third pitch of the at bat just over the 355-foot sign on the right field fence, everyone else among the more than 45,000 people were stunned into silence as he circled the bases.

More quietude followed in the seventh when Kubek hit a three-run homer off Bob Trowbridge to almost the exact same spot which put the game out of reach as the Yankees went on to a 12-3 victory, giving them a two games to one lead in their defense of the 1956 championship. Kubek had hit only three home runs during the regular season, and never before had he hit two in one game at any professional level, so this made for quite a remarkable day for him.

“It felt pretty good. Both of them felt pretty good. It was a special thrill,” he said of becoming just the 12th man in history to hit two homers in one World Series game. “I was shaking with excitement as I trotted around the bases (after his first home run), and to my amazement there was the most deafening silence I had ever heard. In the seventh inning, again I went around the bases, I couldn’t hear a sound coming from the crowd. It was as if nothing happened. And the stands were filled with relatives and friends who had known me all my life. Not a peep.”

Well, that probably wasn’t true. His family was surely cheering, but in a stadium that size it would have been tough to pick them out. Besides, he wasn’t sure where anyone was because, “The seats were two by two and they had to be split up. I had 10 sets of two and I gave them all away. And a lot of my friends, too. I saw friends all over the place.”

Following Kubek’s lead, the Yankees obliterated six Milwaukee pitchers as they recorded nine hits and accepted 11 walks on the way to their 12 runs. Mickey Mantle, who hadn’t homered since Aug. 30 - a rare power slump for the man who had hit 34 homers during the season and 52 the year before - launched one off Gene Conley with Kubek on base to give the Yankees a 7-1 lead in the fourth.

“It sure was a long time between homers,” Mantle said of his ninth career World Series homer. “I knew this one was going out the moment I hit it. He threw me a good curve ball.”

Even though the Yankees were never in danger of losing, Stengel wasn’t pleased with how his starting pitcher, Bob Turley, was throwing. He had worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the first by striking out Joe Adcock, but he got into more trouble in the second and allowed a run and had another bases loaded situation when Stengel hobbled to the mound, took the ball, and brought in Don Larsen.

What made this so interesting is that this was Larsen’s first World Series appearance since Game 5 in 1956 which happened to be the day he threw his perfect game. He had not pitched in the final two games of that series nor the first two of this one, so when he stepped into the cauldron, he was still sitting on his streak of 27 consecutive batters retired.

“Continuing my perfect string was the furthest thing from my mind,” Larsen said. “All I was interested in was getting them out and I wasn’t fussy about hits, walks or what nots.”

He wiggled out of Turley’s mess by getting Hank Aaron to fly out deep to right and then went on to stretch his streak to 34 batters before Johnny Logan singled to start the fifth and came home on Aaron’s two-run homer that cut Milwaukee’s deficit to 7-3. But from there, Larsen did not allow another run as he went on to pitch 7.1 innings in relief and yielded just those two runs on five hits and four walks.

Stengel, of course, was gushing afterward about Kubek who went 3-for-5 with three runs scored and four driven in.

“Ain’t I been telling everybody the kid was an amazing ballplayer all year long?” he crowed to the media. “He lives here in Milwaukee and waited until he got home to let everyone know he’s a big leaguer. Why these Braves never knew he was in the league before today. They know now, I’ll betcha. You take a boy from this here territory, he’s used to the cold weather, he’s a good strong boy. Now you polish him up a little, you take him East, then you bring him back home and show him off to his home folks. And it makes them madder than hell.”

Stengel wasn’t crowing a few days later, though, because the Braves won the next two games at County Stadium, dropped Game 6 at Yankee Stadium, and in the deciding seventh game, Lew Burdette pitched a masterful seven-hit 5-0 shutout to win for the third time in the series, thus dethroning the Yankees and handing Stengel his first World Series defeat after six straight successes.

Kubek - who won the American League rookie of the year award as he batted .297 which was helped by a midseason 17-game hitting streak - finished the World Series 8-for-29 with all four of his RBI coming in this game. His eight hits tied Jerry Coleman, Hank Bauer and Yogi Berra for the team lead, and he started three games in left, two at third base and two more in center field.

His career ended prematurely after just nine seasons due to nerve damage at the top of his spinal cord which had been caused during a collision on the basepaths. He played on six pennant-winning teams, won three World Series, and played in three All-Star games.

He then turned to broadcasting and enjoyed a fantastic new career, highlighted by his role as analyst on NBC’s Game of the Week sitting next to play-by-play men Jim Simpson, Curt Gowdy, Joe Garagiola, and Bob Costas for nearly 30 years. He also spent time at the local level for the Blue Jays (1977-89) and, in a nice full circle, the Yankees (1990-94).

In 2009, Kubek received the Ford C. Frick award, which is presented annually to a broadcaster for “major contributions to baseball.”