The Magic of Baseball Memories: Dusty Rhodes and the 1954 World Series

April 1, 2023

I titled my newsletter American Eclectic for a reason, so I would have the opportunity/freedom/luxury to sometimes address topics besides politics—that is the case here.  I know I plan on writing more than a few essays about baseball as well as several addressing historical perspectives that might help readers develop different perspectives on the present, some on music and movies (perhaps tying music and movies to politics), and wine. Besides, this is April and baseball is here.

George Will wrote of baseball, “[It] is a game of episodic action. Discrete events standout.”  I’m not sure I agree with him.  For one brief and shining moment, spread out over three games of a World Series that ended in a sweep of four games in 1954, a discrete event was present but transcending that one event was a series of events that, unfortunately, are not seen on a par with that discrete event—the pinch-hitting of James Lamar “Dusty” Rhodes.

Rhodes had a seven-year career, six with the New York Giants and one with the San Francisco Giants.  The Giants last year in New York City was 1957, as was the case for the Brooklyn Dodgers, both teams packed their bags and moved in California.  In seven seasons, Rhodes had a .253 batting average and 54 home runs.  Not a distinguished baseball career, but his reputation as a pinch-hitter could be understood by a remark made by Willie Mays some years after Bobby Thomson hit his “homer heard ‘round the world” on October 3, 1951, in the bottom of the ninth inning to help the Giants win a three-game playoff against the Dodgers to then face the New York Yankees in the World Series (and lose).  Mays was on deck when Thomson hit his home run over the left field wall at the Polo Grounds, where the Giants played.  He was asked what he felt being in the on-deck situation and said, “I was afraid that Leo [Durocher, manager] would use Dusty Rhodes to hit for me.”  The problem was that Rhodes did not begin his major league career until the next year, 1952: Rhodes’ reputation as a pinch-hitter eclipsed his actual playing years.

In 1954, Rhodes could do no wrong.  In 1953, he hit .233 with an on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) of .756, but in 1954 he raised his batting average 108 points to .341 and his OPS was 1.105.  He started to come back down to earth the next year, hitting .301 with an OPS of .838 in 1955, the year the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series which, I guess, matters to a few lost souls.

In 1954, Rhodes started off the season as nothing but a pinch-hitter. Beginning with the first game of the season on April 14 and then over the next two months, he came to the plate 18 times in 18 separate games and collected six hits with no home runs.  Beginning on June 20 and for the next month, he played in 19 games but 14 of his at bats were in pinch-hitting situations where he collected six hits, two were home runs.  His situation changed beginning July 27 until the end of the season on September 26, when he became a regular player mostly in left field (two games in center and one in right) with a fielding percentage of .984 and only one error in 289 innings.  His July 28 performance in a game against the St Louis Cardinals (which the Giants won 10-0, played in the Polo Grounds) was certainly his best game.  In six plate appearances, he was intentionally walked three times and hit three home runs.  The box scores at Retrosheet.org (a site anyone wanting to research baseball needs to know) does not say where the home runs landed, but we can assume they were probably all along the right field foul line where the distance was 279 feet.  Until the 1950s, home runs that traveled in this direction were sometimes derogatorily referred to as “Chinese home runs.”  The implication was that they were cheap and easy, which gives you the impression of the attitude that some sportswriters had toward Chinese Americans.  Rhodes hit from the left side, although he threw right-handed.  Mel Ott, usually an outfielder occasionally at third base, who had a great career playing for the Giants from 1926 until 1947, also hit from the left side and threw right-handed and although he ended his Hall of Fame career hitting 511 home runs, with a .304 batting average, references can be found where some of his home runs were called Chinese home runs. Ott was my father’s favorite player, he used to talk about seeing him lifting his front foot before beginning his swing.

In 1954, the Giants won the National League pennant, five games ahead of the Dodgers.  There were times throughout the season where it looked like the Dodgers would take the pennant but by mid-June the Giants looked better than they did when the season began.  July started to show them to be contenders with 18 wins and 14 losses and August no doubt helped them with 17 wins and 10 losses.  They faced the Cleveland Indians in the World Series who won 111 games that year. The New York Yankees won 114 in 1998 and the Seattle Mariners 116 in 2000 so in the years since the 1950s, 111 wins is still impressive.

Cleveland was seen as having an impressive pitching staff. Early Wynn (inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1972) was considered their best pitcher but Bob Lemon started game one of the series which opened at the Polo Grounds.  Lemon was also an excellent pitcher and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1976.  In addition to Wynn and Lemon, Cleveland had Bob Feller (inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962) in addition to Mike Garcia and Art Houtteman.  In other words, three future Hall of Fame pitchers made up the five-man pitching rotation.  Understandably, Cleveland was favored to win the series.

Game one is the game that stands out because of The Catch made by Willie Mays in the 8th inning.  Sal Maglie, often known as The Barber for the way he pitched inside to batters was taken out by the Giants manager Leo Durocher and Don Liddle was sent in to pitch to Vic Wertz.  Liddle would go on to win game four of the series and Mays would reward him by giving him the glove he used to make The Catch.  I learned this from Liddle’s granddaughter who was a student of mine.

Wertz connected and Mays ran back catching the ball over his head and turned and threw to the infield.  Cleveland had a runner on first base who could not advance to second on the throw but Larry Doby who was on second base was able to advance to third base.

The Polo Grounds had odd dimensions compared to modern stadiums.  Interestingly, the more one reads about the dimensions of the Polo Grounds the more it becomes apparent that some degree of guessing is required.  But despite the problem of a lack of precision, the stadium was, more or less, 259 feet along the right field foul line, 450 feet into the left field corner, center field was 483 feet (more on that in a moment), 450 feet into the left field corner and 279 feet along the left field foul line.  That center field dimension of 483 feet was odd since this middle section of the outfield was set back and on the left side there were stairs going up.  In the 1936 World Series, Joe DiMaggio, playing for the New York Yankees, chased a ball hit by Hank Leiber of the Giants and either caught it just before reaching the steps and momentum forced him to keep running up the stairs or he caught the ball while running up the steps, depends on which account one reads of this DiMaggio feat.  In other words, the ball that Mays caught hit by Wertz traveled maybe 460 feet (guesswork required), but the ball hit by Leiber probably went 25-40 feet farther.

The Yankees were winning the game by 14 runs when DiMaggio made his catch, but the game was tied when Mays made his catch so, as is the case in World Series play, everything is raised to a higher level under the right circumstances.  The World Series is different than an ordinary games during the regular season, but Mays felt that a 1952 catch at Ebbetts Field (home of the Brooklyn Dodgers) was a more impressive catch: Context and circumstances matter.  Great plays happen all the time over the course of a baseball season, made by future Hall of Famers as well as journeymen just coming up from the minors or going back down.  As Mays stated regarding this catch made during the course of a season:

I made a catch in Ebbets Field, off of a guy by the name of Bobby Morgan. And it was in the seventh inning, two men on, [two out,] a ball was hit over the shortstop — over the line — over the shortstop. Now you’ve got to visualize this. Over the shortstop. I go and catch the ball in the air. I’m in the air like this, parallel. I catch the ball, I hit the fence. Ebbets Field was so short that if you run anywhere you’re going to hit a fence. So I catch the fence, knock myself out. And the first guy that I saw — there were two guys — when I open my eyes, was Leo [Durocher] and Jackie [Robinson]. And I’m saying to myself, ‘Why is Jackie out here?’ Jackie came to see if I caught the ball, and Leo came to see about me.

Finally, we get back to Dusty Rhodes.  Mays and his catch in the 8th inning of game one of the World Series kept the game tied at 2-2, neither team had scored any runs from the 4th through the 9th innings and the game went into extra innings.  In the bottom of the 10th inning, Rhodes pinch-hit for Monte Irvin and the ball traveled probably no farther than 280 feet along the right field foul line, the Giants scored three runs on Rhode’s homer and won the first game 5-2.  Wertz’s fly out to centerfield was hit probably 460 feet, some 180 feet farther than the game winning hit.

The Chinese home run derogatory remarks came up in a story by Dick Young, sportswriter for the Daily News:

The story of the Giants’ 5-2 victory over Cleveland in yesterday’s World Series opener should be written…in Chinese hieroglyphics. It was won on a 10th inning homer…right out of a Charlie Chan yarn. Ming Toy Rhodes, sometimes called Dusty by his Occidental friends, was [the] honorable person who, as a pinch hitter, delivered [a] miserable bundle of wet wash to the first row in rightfield of [the] Polo Grounds, some 259 1/2 feet down the block from the laundry.

Young’s remarks led to a protest by the Chinese community in New York. A petition was presented to the New York Giants, although why it was presented to the Giants and not the Daily News, was not clear at all.

In game two, also played at the Polo Grounds, Rhodes did it again.  In the 5th inning, again pinch-hitting for Monte Irvin, he hit a single that scored a run.  When the 5th inning ended, the Giants had the lead 2-1 on Johnny Antonelli’s groundout, that scored Hank Thomson, the pitcher had helped himself.  In the 7th inning, Rhodes added to the lead with another home run, the Giants won 3-1.

Game three moved to Cleveland Stadium.  The Giants took a one-run lead in the 1st inning, but in the 3rd inning, Rhodes pinch hit a single that scored two runs.  The Giants won game three 6-2.  Rhodes sat out game four, the Giants won it 7-4.  Overall, in the four-game sweep, the Giants had scored 21 runs to the Indians 9.  Rhodes had seven plate appearances and had four hits, two were home runs, and seven RBIs: One-third of the total runs scored by the Giants were credited in the series to RBIs by Rhodes.

Leo Durocher’s first impression of Rhodes was a bad one.  In his memoirs, Nice Guys Finish Last, Durocher recalled meeting Rhodes and not approving of his drinking and wanted Horace Stoneham, the Giants owner, to get rid of him.  But Durocher recalled Rhodes and his 1954 season, “He thought he was the greatest hitter in the whole world and for one year I never saw a better one.  The best pinch hitter no contest, I ever looked at.”

My first game at the Polo Grounds was in 1955, I was eight.  Buck O’Neil. who played and managed the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues and was the driving force behind creating the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum had a great quote about baseball memories:

Isn’t it funny? Everybody remembers going to their first baseball game with their father.  Thy might not remember going to their first day of school with their mother. They don’t remember their football game or their first Thanksgiving dinner.  But they always remember going to the baseball game with their father.

It wasn’t Mays’ catch that I was thinking about when my father and I got off the subway to walk to the stadium, it was Rhodes’ feat that I had some recognition about, not to perhaps the detail as I covered in this essay, but to me he was bigger than life.  I don’t remember if I saw him play that day, I remember Dad pointing out Durocher, seeing Mays, Don Mueller, Wes Westrum, Al Dark, several other players.  I remember searching for Rhodes before the game since we were able to walk down by the Giants’ dugout before getting to our seats.  I, sort of, remember catching a glimpse of Rhodes.  Baseball built on memories has a way of seeming different than seeing it up close—but it can enhance those first impressionable sensations of being at a ballpark, that don’t go away.  It wasn’t a dramatic crack of the bat or a catch we all dream of making that stood out to me.  The image I had of Rhodes is what contributed to that day and several more to come at the Polo Grounds.

Buck O’Neil’s quote is quite perceptive.  I interviewed O’Neil for a chapter in a book I wrote about him 27 years ago for the Florida Historical Society (O’Neil was from Florida).  At that time the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was across the street from where it is now in Kansas City.  As I remember it, it was in the back of a store and O’Neil walked me through the collection along with two of my students who I had brought with me.  One of the students I brought for a specific reason, her grandfather had played for the St Louis Stars, although he played after Cool Papa Bell had left the team.  After I introduced my students to O’Neil, he took my student aside whose grandfather had played in the Negro Leagues and they walked and talked together for a while, I never asked about their conversation.  For several years later, even after she graduated, her mother would send me fruitcakes she made at Christmas time, just because I was able to connect her daughter to a grandfather, she only had vague memories about.  I discussed meeting and talking with O’Neil with the late Lou Brock who I knew, and we discussed me helping him write his memoirs but, unfortunately, that did not happen. Brock is in the Hall of Fame having played most of his career with the St. Louis Cardinals. I plan on writing an article (maybe two) about Brock and what both Chicago Cubs and St Louis Cardinals fans have known as the Brock-for-Broglio trade.

By one estimate there are about 18 minutes of actual action in a baseball game.  The four games of the 1954 World Series lasted between 2 hours and 28 minutes and 3 hours and 11 minutes.  What had an impact on me was a collective, maybe cumulative might be a better word, series of plate appearances by one player. Albert Pujols made it to 700 home runs to end his career, his total home runs reached was 703.  I know I saw him hit a number of them and probably still have the ticket stubs from those games (just as I still have the two ticket stubs from the 2004 World Series when the Boston Red Sox beat the St Louis Cardinals in four straight games).  As I heard that Pujols reached that rarified club joining the other three members, I thought back to some of the home runs I remember seeing him hit—cumulative memory.   

Notes

 Lee Congdon, Baseball and Memory: Winning, Losing, and the Remembrance of Things Past (South Bend, Indiana, St. Augustine’s Press, 2011)

Leo Durocher with Ed Linn, Nice Guys Finish Last (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1975)

Arnold Hano, A Day in the Bleachers (Cambridge, MA, Da Capo Press, 1955).

Bill Madden, 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever (Boston, MA, Da Capo Press, 2014)

John Sacccoman, “Willie Mays,” SABR 50:https:// sabr.org/bioproj/person/willie-mays/

David W. Smith, “Demythologizing Dubious Memories Or: Do players really remember what they did?” SABR 32 (June 28, 2002): https:// retrosheet.org/Research/SmithD/Demythologizing%20Dubious%20Memories.pdf