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 Willie Mays and the 1954 New York Giants Photo Gallery
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Michael Keedy’s Top Ten Greatest World Series Catches

Number Four:

Willie Mays, “The Catch,” and the 1954 World Series

That Coogan’s Hollow Feeling

“Part of the charm of the Polo Grounds…is that a man pitching a game can, without turning his head, listen to fans in the right-field stands ask each other for matches.” -Sportswriter Jimmy Breslin

The New York Yankees opened Casey Stengel’s highly successful managerial career by capturing an unprecedented five consecutive world titles. They then promptly added another five pennants and two more world championships before their eccentric-but-brainy field boss was fired in the wake of the 1960 season. Oddly enough, the Old Man’s best record came in 1954, when the Yankees went 103-51.

It was odd because they finished second to the Cleveland Indians that year, a full eight games out of the money.  All the while, the “Perfessor” continued to talk gibberish to the press while shrewdly platooning his players to a record of two wins out of every three games played.  

A persuasive measure of the ’54 Indians superiority was their 111 wins, most ever by an American League club in the pre-expansion era. Their winning percentage (.721) stands as the greatest in league history. Only once—when they dropped a road series to Chicago—did they lose as many as four straight. That is, until Cleveland met up with the New York Giants in the World Series. The Tribe was so powerful that, before the Series opened, 110 baseball writers out of 154 polled predicted Cleveland would prevail. Not a single one forecasted a New York sweep—and understandably so. 

The Highly Favored Indians Were Stacked…

Cleveland boasted an impressive four future Hall-of-Famers on their pitching staff: Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, Bob Lemon, and Early Wynn. Plus, Mike Garcia had gone 19-8, Art Houtteman was 15-7, and two rookie relievers—Don Mossi and Ray Narleski—were the lights-out closers. Based on pitching alone, the Indians seemed unbeatable.

The Tribe’s lineup was loaded. It included future Hall-of-Famer Larry Doby; Bobby Avila, winner of the 1964 batting title; Al Rosen, the American League’s first and only unanimous MVP choice the previous season; and slugger Vic Wertz, who batted .500 in the Series.

…And the Giants Had Plenty of Star Power Too!

The Giants also had plenty of stars, including a superstar centerfielder named Willie Mays, the reigning National League batting champion (.345) and league MVP. Don Mueller, in right field, was second in team hitting (.342); and left-fielder Monte Irvin would one day join Willie in the Hall. The Giants’ stopper was Johnny Antonelli, an intimidating southpaw whose 21-7 record was the team’s best. With Leo “The Lip” Durocher pushing buttons in the dugout, and with the most productive pinch-hitter on the planet at his disposal, these National Leaguers might be able to keep things interesting.

The Polo Grounds, The Giants’ Secret Weapon

A critical part of the Giants’ arsenal, as it turned out, was New York’s stadium, hard by Coogan’s Hollow. Billy Martin, an astute observer of the game, once said this about his home park, Yankee Stadium: 

“The ballpark defeated the Dodgers. The Dodgers would come in with all those right-handed home run hitters like Hodges, Robinson and Campanella and they’d hit balls nine miles for outs.” 

Perhaps somebody should have mentioned this to the Tribe before Game One of the ’54 series, played across the Harlem River in the Polo Grounds. 

The Giants definitely did not play ball in a cookie-cutter arena. No sir. Down the line in left, where Bobby Thomson had delivered a back-breaking drive against the Dodgers three years before, it was a mere 279 feet to the stands. Worse yet, a pop fly to right could qualify as a homer just by dropping over the 258-foot sign. As if to confirm that Paul Bunyan’s bathtub, only masquerading as a ballpark here, might have been meant for other purposes, a cannonball to dead center could sail a whopping 480 feet, remain in play at that absurd distance, and be harvested for out-number-whatchacallit at any given moment.  (“Where triples go to die,” as a wag once said of Willie’s glove.)

This was the venue, at any rate, into which the commanding 111-43 Cleveland Indians strode for Game One played on September 28, 1954. They didn’t figure on the fate awaiting them, and neither did any of the geniuses claiming membership in the Baseball Writers Association.

Vic Wertz is Locked In!

Before (and after) being robbed at Coogan’s Bluff in the eighth inning, Vic Wertz was a one-man wrecking crew for Cleveland. He tripled home his team’s only runs in the first, doubled leading off the tenth, and added two singles for good measure in between. In any other ballpark, he would have batted 1.000 for the day, and the Indians would have gone up 1-0 in the series, approximately as forecast.  He was, as baseball pundits like to say, “locked in.”

The Fateful Eighth Inning

With the score tied in the eighth, Doby opened with a walk off starter Sal Maglie. Rosen singled, putting runners on first and second with nobody down. Up sauntered Wertz, already 3-for-3. Durocher signaled for his southpaw, Don Liddle, but the resulting lefty-vs.-lefty matchup here didn’t much bother Mr. Wertz. He was hardly playing “Liddle Ball” this afternoon. Wertz quickly took an off-speed pitch, fastball, or whatever it was, “downtown,” with a legendary outcome still talked about seven decades later.

The ball seemed destined to cross the river and land in Yankee Stadium. Willie Mays raced toward the centerfield wall with his back to the plate. In a scene that remains as riveting today as then, he managed to collect this soaring rainbow over his shoulder “nine miles from home.”  Wertz was out, of course, but the best part of this tremendous play was yet to happen: Instead of continuing his sprint to the wall, or tumbling to the turf as might have been expected, Mays had both the presence of mind and the physical control needed to slam on the brakes, pivot, and heave the ball toward the infield in time to prevent Doby from scoring.

“Well, I Got My Man!”

If not for these rare, acrobatic maneuvers the Giants would have been down a run, maybe two, with no crying at all from Cleveland over a three-bagger that went into a great fielder’s mitt to die. When it was all over but the shouting, Liddle, who had pitched only to Wertz before being replaced by Marv Grissom, got off a memorable baseball line: “Well, I got my man…” 

In slightly better detail than that, Mays later described his defining moment to Roger Kahn:  

“I’m going back, a long way back, but there is no doubt in my mind I am going to catch this ball. The problem was Larry Doby on second base. On a deep fly to center at the Polo Grounds, a runner could score all the way from second…So if I make the catch, which I will, and Larry scores from second, they still get the run that puts them ahead.  All the time I’m running back, I’m thinking, ‘Willie, you’ve got to get this ball back into the infield.’ I have to turn very hard and short, and throw the ball from exactly the point I caught it. The momentum goes into my turn and up through my legs and into my throw.”

Thanks to this amazing play, the Indians were forced into extra innings in search of their vital but elusive winning run. When they squandered a leadoff double from—wait!—Vic Wertz in the tenth, their hosts were still very much alive.

Things Go Downhill Quickly For the Tribe!

 As the game moved into the bottom of the tenth, Indians’ starter Bob Lemon was still on the mound. He had scattered eight hits, allowing just two runs.  When the game ended, he yielded nine hits through nine-and-a-third, with more runs in that fateful fraction of an extra inning than he gave up over the entire previous nine.

Everything unraveled quickly for The Tribe: With one out, Mays walked, then stole second. Lemon then issued a pass to Hank Thompson. Durocher now elected to pull Monte Irvin in favor of his ace-in-the-hole, Rhodes, who had batted .341 as a part-time outfielder and pinch-hitter during the regular season.

A 260-Foot Homer Wins It For the Giants!

Remember Billy Martin and his apt observation, “The ballpark defeated the Dodgers”?  Rhodes, batting left, sent Lemon’s first and only pitch high and shallow, up along the foul line in right. This pop fly, utterly harmless under normal conditions, traveled all of 260 feet before dropping into the stands for three runs. The game was over—and Durocher looked like a genius. In total disbelief combined with utter disgust, the victimized pitcher hurled his mitt to the mound and walked away. “Lemon’s glove went farther than my home run,” said a thrilled Rhodes, thoroughly relishing his moment in the sun. And that was about the size of it.

If the Tribe ever recovered, they kept it to themselves. Indians’ Manager Al Lopez, whose ’59 White Sox were the only other team to deny the Yankees a trip to the Fall Classic over a stretch of 16 inspired years, confessed that “we were never the same.” The Catch, as it came to be called, had ended their hopes for a championship. As if to prove it, Cleveland waited four long decades-plus for their very next World Series appearance. 

Michael H. Keedy

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