A reprise of 1978? Try '49
Two games in NY decided pennant
During the Red Sox-Yankees series the Globe is exchanging sports columns with the New York Times.
One game for the American League pennant. That's how the Yankees-Red Sox marquee read last night. Some young-timers confused last night's showdown with what is known as the "Bucky Dent Game," the one-game playoff the Yankees won in 1978 at Fenway Park, but that game was for the AL East title. Last night's game was for the AL pennant and an invitation to the World Series.
Others may have assumed that the AL pennant had never before boiled down to one game between these raucous rivals.
But it once did -- on the final day of the 1949 season, also at Yankee Stadium, long before the current three-tier format of what is known as the postseason, back when only the first-place team in each eight-team league went on to the World Series, back when the Yankees meant Joe DiMaggio and the Red Sox meant Ted Williams.
Coming into that two-game weekend series, the Red Sox were one game ahead, but before Saturday's game, the Yankees had "Joe DiMaggio Day." When his mother, Rosalie, was introduced during the ceremonies, she walked past the honored center fielder and hugged her youngest son, Dom, the Red Sox center fielder.
"I saw Joseph yesterday," she later explained. "I hadn't seen Dominic."
The Red Sox had seen Joe, too. After limping through the first five weeks of the season with a painful bone spur on his right heel, he rejoined the Yankees June 28 for a midweek series at Fenway Park. Over the three games, he hit four home runs, drove in nine runs and scored eight as the Yankees opened an eight-game lead.
Slowly, with Williams hitting 43 homers and driving in 159 runs, the Red Sox caught and passed the Yankees. Another victory either Saturday or Sunday at the Stadium would clinch the pennant.
But on Saturday, the Yankees won, 5-4, on Johnny Lindell's eighth-inning homer. Lefthanded reliever Joe Page, who replaced Allie Reynolds in the fourth inning, pitched the last 5 2/3 innings. For the season, Page was 13-8 with a 2.59 earned run average and 27 saves. With the teams now tied for first, Casey Stengel, completing his first season as the Yankee manager, was asked his pitching plans for Sunday's showdown.
"It'll be Raschi tomorrow," he said, "and it'll be Reynolds tomorrow and it'll be Page tomorrow."
For the Red Sox, the starter would be righthander Ellis Kinder, a grizzled 32-year-old Army veteran of World War II from the hills around Jackson, Tenn., with an imposing record against the Yankees -- 7-2 lifetime, 4-0 that season when he had a 23-5 record with six shutouts. Saturday night, Kinder did what he often did in New York -- he went drinking with a friend, Arthur Richman, then a Daily Mirror sportswriter, now the senior adviser in the Yankee front office who recommended Joe Torre as manager.
"We stayed out," Richman has often said of that Saturday night with Kinder, "until the bars closed at 4 in the morning."
Around noon, Kinder, hardly the worse for wear, took the Lexington Avenue subway to the Stadium, warmed up and pitched well. Phil Rizzuto led off the Yankees' first with a triple that scooted past Williams in left field, then scored on Tommy Henrich's infield out. The 1-0 score stood through seven innings as Kinder dueled righthander Vic Raschi.
In the eighth, Joe McCarthy, the Red Sox manager who had led the Yankees to six World Series titles, removed Kinder for a pinch hitter, Tom Wright, who walked before Dom DiMaggio bounced into a double play.
With lefthander Mel Parnell, a 25-game winner, the new Red Sox pitcher, the Yankees put together four runs in the eighth, three on second baseman Jerry Coleman's double when right fielder Al Zarilla missed a shoestring catch. The Red Sox scored three runs in the ninth, but Raschi completed the 5-3 victory for the pennant.
The Yankees, who finished 97-57 to the Red Sox' 96-58, celebrated what would be the first of their record five consecutive pennants. They would win that year's World Series with the Brooklyn Dodgers in five games, the first of their record-five consecutive Series titles.
The Red Sox, who had lost a one-game pennant playoff to the Indians the year before, now had lost a virtual pennant playoff.
On the Red Sox train ride back to Boston that evening, Kinder, still furious over being removed for a pinch hitter in a 1-0 game, derided McCarthy in a noisy confrontation, but Tom Yawkey, the Red Sox owner, had put the situation in perspective.
"Two teams," Yawkey said, "can't win the same pennant."
As the Yankees and the Red Sox, more than half a century later, realized again last night.
