Pennant Races

Nothing is more enjoyable than watching your favorite baseball team playing meaningful games during the month of September. While other teams are playing out the string and preparing to clean out their lockers, your team is in a pennant race. I thoroughly enjoyed this book despite the fact that it is less than perfect. Some will be upset that the author did not choose to select the particular race which captivated them the most, but overall there are some good ones included here. While I was familiar with the story of Gabby Hartnett's celebrated home run, Anderson provides details of the events in the three weeks leading up to the critical series between the Pirates and the Cubs that determined the 1938 pennant. I also enjoyed the coverage of the American League race of 1967 which saw the Red Sox, the Tigers, the Twins and the White Sox battling to the finish. Revelations have been made concerning the New York Giants amazing comeback in 1951 (serious allegations of sign stealing at the Polo Grounds), but this does not detract from the dramatic account of that storied season. Brooklyn still cannot forget losing out to their former manager, Leo Durocher, on the strength of Bobby Thomson's late inning home run off of Ralph Branca.

Pulitzer Prize winning sportswriter Dave Anderson of the New York Times supplies readers with a wide variety of stories about the leading pennant races in baseball history. His succinct sportswriter's prose is ideal to depict time ticking events in the hot, humid days of summer as races move toward dramatic climaxes. The winners will go on to the World Series while the losers go home to contemplate what went wrong.Two crucial pennant races which came down to the wire involved instances where the Dodgers and Giants respectively became aroused as a result of slights. The first instance was in 1934, when New York Giants' first baseman and manager Bill Terry was summarizing his view of the upcoming National League pennant race with New York reporters. When asked about the Giants' bitter Gotham rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, then experiencing hard times, Terry smiled and exclaimed, "Are the Dodgers still in the league?"As the pennant reached its crucial closing stages, and Terry's Giants were locked in a tight race with the "Gashouse Gang" St. Louis Cardinals with the Dean brothers, Joe Medwick, and playing manager Frankie Frisch,they concluded the season with two games at Ebbets Field against the Dodgers. Remembering the Terry slight, Casey Stengel, who would later win five straight world titles from 1949 to 1953 with the New York Yankees, relished the opportunity along with his players to knock their New York rivals out of the race. Stengel's Dodgers won both games and the Cardinals won the pennant, defeating the Detroit Tigers in seven games in the World Series.The Dodgers failed to profit from history, since in 1951, seventeen years later, they defied the adage, "Never rile a Giant." After sweeping the Giants at Ebbets Field, the Dodgers taunted the team they believed to be out of the pennant. In the small Ebbets Field clubhouse the home and visiting teams were separated by a tissue paper wall. The Giants listened in helpless rage as Dodger manager Chuck Dressen and his team sang, shouted, and taunted the Giants. Jackie Robinson pounded a bat repeatedly against the wall.Leo Durocher's Giants then came back from their presumed demise, winning 37 out of their last 44 games to finish in a first place tie with their hated rivals as the regular season ended. The immortal three game playoff ended with Bobby Thomson's 3-run homer off of Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca for a 5-4 victory and a Giant pennant, a blast known as "the hit heard round the world."Another example of a presumed slight which helped change baseball history was in the second to last game of the 1949 season at Yankee Stadium. The Boston Red Sox moved into New York up one game, needing only a split with the Yankees to qualify to play the Dodgers in the World Series. Boston catcher Birdie Tebbets, a legendary bench jockey, chided Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto in the first game that the Red Sox would be starting their rookie fresh from college the next day. An angry Rizzuto walke