1955 World Series: The Dodgers Finally Do It!

1955 World Series: The Dodgers Finally Do It!

“He was out!” – The greeting Yogi Bera used whenever he saw Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow.

“He was safe!” -The greeting Rachel Robinson used whenever she saw Yogi Berra.

In 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers finally broke the luckless streak of five straight World Series losses to the Yankees (1941, ’47, ’49, ’52, and ’53), and became World Series Champions for the first time. Let’s take a trip down baseball’s version of “memory lane” and revisit this magical year with a photo essay, as we salute this championship team, possibly the greatest in Dodger history.

Here’s an excerpt from Through a Blue Lens, The Brooklyn Dodgers Photographs of Barney Stein. I can’t improve on this writing, so I’m quoting it verbatim:

It finally happened in 1955.

After all the anguish, all the losses, all the heartbreak. After losing to the Yankees five straight times in the World Series, dating back to ’41…after losing to the Philies on the last day in ’50 and to the Giants on the last day in ’51…after watching someone else, always someone else, go home with a championship every October.

But in ’51…

The Dodgers ripped off 10 straight wins to open the season, win a stunning 22 or their first 24 games. They made a mockery of the National League race, winning the pennant by 13 ½ games. But the World Series followed a familiar script, as the Dodgers dropped the first two games at Yankee Stadium.

Back at Ebbetts Field, a brash youngster named Johnny Podres went all the way to win Games 3. Campanella, Snider, and Hodges homered to win Game 4 for reliever Clem Labine. Snider followed homered twice in Game 5 to back the stalwart pitching of rookie Roger Craig, a 5-3 winner. However, just one win away, the Dodgers fell to the Yankees 5-1 in Game 6 at Yankee Stadium.

That left it up to Podres in Game 7. Hodges drove in two runs, one in the fourth inning with a single and another in the sixth with a sacrifice fly after manager Walter Alston told two of his biggest guns, Snider and Campanella to lay down bunts. Podres wriggled out of trouble, especially in the sixth on Sandy Amoros’s famous catch and again in the eighth after the Yanks put runners on first and third with one out.

In the ninth, Podres got the Yankees in order, capping an eight-hit gem. Elston Howard made the last out, sending a grounder to Pee Wee Reese, the only man who had been in uniform each and every time the Dodgers had fallen short for the past 15 years. Reeses’s throw to Hodges may or may not have been in the dirt – they still argue over that in some pockets of Brooklyn – but when it hit Gil’s mitt, it was done. Brooklyn had its first, and only, world championship!”

-Gary Livacari

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