Favorite Moments of the World Series

Five baseball legends recount their favorite moments

In more than 100 years of autumn ritual and splendor, the World Series has seen a deep cache of immortal moments. Nearly every fan of America’s pastime, including the fall classic’s long list of heroes, has a favorite memory.

Larsen’s Perfect Game

No event in all the World Series ever played can match what took place on Oct. 8, 1956, at Yankee Stadium. Twenty-seven Brooklyn Dodgers up, 27 Dodgers down—all victims of New York Yankee Don Larsen’s perfect game, the only one in World Series history.

“When it came down to the end,” remembers Larsen, 73, “when (umpire) Babe Pinelli called Dale Mitchell out, and then Yogi (Berra) coming out and jumping on me—I didn’t expect that. Yogi’s not really like that, but I knew something was going to happen when he started running out at me.”

Maybe Yogi Berra was merely expressing the eternal boyishness of playing a kid’s game. The game after all, even to craggy veterans and exalted World Series heroes, once started there—on some bumpy playground—with a glove too big or barely padded; with youthful screams of delight and eager faces full of nothing but baseball.

Scoring the Big Run

The Baltimore Orioles’ Brooks Robinson, who spent 23 years in the majors, was renowned for his spectacular third-base plays, such as those in Baltimore’s 1970 World Series sweep over Cincinnati, in which he was named the Series’ Most Valuable Player. Robinson also hit a scorching .429, including two home runs.

“In that Series, I mean every day I was getting a workout,” says Robinson, 65, now president of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association. “The biggest concern we had going in was what kind of shoes should we wear? It was the first time we played on Astroturf.”

Robinson grew up a St. Louis Cardinals fan in Little Rock, Ark. At age 9, he listened on radio to one of the most dramatic finishes in World Series history.

“What sticks in my mind is the 1946 Series when Enos Slaughter ran through a stop sign and ended up scoring the big run in the Series on a long single by Harry ‘The Hat’ Walker,” Robinson says.

Slaughter’s mad eighth-inning dash from first base, ignoring frantic signs to stop at third, ended with the timeless image of him sliding across home plate ahead of a trail of dust. It was the deciding run, as the Cards won that Game Seven against Ted Williams and the Boston Red Sox, 4–3.

Rollie Fingers on the Mound

A smile crossed the face of Rollie Fingers as he rubbed the baseball and squinted into the afternoon sun, scanning the stands at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. It was the bottom of the fifth in the first game of the 1974 World Series, and the Oakland A’s reliever had been called in to snuff a Dodger rally that had narrowed the A’s 2–0 lead to one run.

Serious business was at hand, but Fingers felt the taste of childhood dreams fulfilled that afternoon.

“I lived in the L.A. area as a kid,” remembers Fingers, 56, who still sports his famous handlebar mustache. “I remember the Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox in the 1959 World Series. Larry Sherry saving two games and winning the other two was my favorite part. I was 13 then, and it was exciting for me, because there were no teams out here until the Dodgers moved out in 1958. Being able to stand on that mound and look up and see where I used to sit as a kid, then going on to win Game One of the 1974 World Series, is a moment I’ll never forget.”

Later, in the tense final game of that same Series, Fingers delivered again, closing out the last two innings. He was named the Series’ Most Valuable Player.

The First World Series

The first modern World Series involving pennant winners of the National and American leagues dates back to 1903, when the American League champion Boston Pilgrims—forefathers of the Red Sox—beat the Pittsburgh Pirates (National League) in a best-of-nine championship series, five games to three.

But many historians list the first “official” World Series as the 1884 three-game meeting between the champions of the National League, then in its eighth season, and the 3-year-old American Association. The National League’s Providence (R.I.) Grays swept all three games from the New York Metropolitans and spawned the first legitimate World Series hero—pitcher Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn—who won 60 of Providence’s 84 games that year, including victories in all three World Series games.

The Mighty Duke at Bat

The Brooklyn Dodgers, who usually lost to the New York Yankees in Series’ history of the 1940s and ’50s, savored their only moment at baseball’s pinnacle in 1955. Brooklyn shrugged off its October curse (they’d lost all seven previous World Series in which they’d appeared) and defeated New York four games to three. In that classic confrontation, Dodgers center fielder Duke Snider hit four home runs to pace Brooklyn.

Snider was one of baseball’s three best power-hitting center fielders in the 1950s, along with Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. His most memorable World Series was when Dodger catcher Mickey Owen couldn’t hold a pitched ball with two out in the ninth inning in Game Four of the 1941 Series against the New York Yankees.

“Tommy Henrich struck out on a low sinker by Hugh Casey in 1941,” says Snider, 76, who was 14 at the time. “It got by the catcher, Mickey Owen, and the Yankees went on to win the game and the World Series.”

Owen’s gaffe on the strike-three pitch should’ve ended the game, giving Brooklyn a 2-2 tie in the Series. Instead, the error gave New York new life, as Henrich raced to first base. The Yanks went on to win that game and won the Series the following day. “That was the most memorable,” Snider says.

Bob Feller, Early Cubs Fan

As a 10-year-old Iowa farm boy, the Cleveland Indians’ Bob Feller—baseball’s greatest pitcher of the late 1930s and early 1940s—remembers the 1929 World Series’ stunning reversal of fortune.

“I was rooting for the Chicago Cubs when they were playing the Philadelphia Athletics,” says Feller, now 83. “They had a lead. When I came home from school, I jumped out of the bus and went and told my dad, ‘The Cubs are ahead today!’ He said, ‘Well, not quite so fast, son. Philadelphia just scored’—I think it was 10 runs—‘on a dropped fly ball by Hack Wilson. The ball got in the sun.’”

In that game, the Cubs were cruising along with an 8–0 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh. The Athletics’ batter, Mule Haas, hit a fly ball that Wilson lost in the sun, and the Athletics went on to 10 runs that inning. Philly, the forerunner of today’s Oakland A’s, went on to win the Series.

Feller’s own World Series moments played out differently. In his opening game against the Boston Braves for the 1948 World Series, Feller pitched a near-flawless masterpiece—a two-hitter—and lost. Fortunately, his Cleveland Indians went on to win the only World Series they played in Feller’s 18 illustrious seasons.

Alan Ross is a freelance writer from Monteagle, Tenn.

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