The Tigers had their share of runners. Through the first six innings, they left a whopping 12 men on base. In the tight spots, however, Dean made the right pitches and took advantage of the anxiousness of Detroit’s hitters.
Bridges didn’t have his best game and was pulled with nobody out in the fifth following a leadoff double by Martin, a triple by Rothrock, and a single by Frisch, making it 4–0. The Tigers’ only run of the game came in the ninth, when Greenberg’s triple with two down scored Jo-Jo White. For Detroit, it was a game of lost opportunities: They were 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position and left 13 men stranded. Performances like that are bad enough, but are even more demoralizing when they put you down two games to one in a World Series. It was an impressive feat of pitching by Dean, whose poise belied his 21 years. His catcher, DeLancey, himself only 22, called a great game.
After the win, Frisch taped a poster on the Cardinals’ clubhouse door with the words, “They cannot beat us.” When asked about it by a reporter, the manager shouted, “Boy, they ain’t going to do it, either!”31 Even though he threw 155 pitches, Paul Dean maintained that the Tigers had not given him much trouble.
Cochrane’s spike wound on his leg, a result of Medwick’s hard slide in Game Two, by now was inflamed and swollen. Two multi-colored, grapefruit-sized bruises had also appeared alongside it. Trainer Denny Carroll insisted, however, that the skipper would be okay for Game Four. Cochrane seemed more frustrated at his team’s offensive struggles that afternoon. “You can’t win without runs,” he sighed.32 Bob Murphy in the Detroit Times marveled at Cochrane’s fortitude. “Not a word has been uttered by Cochrane as to the great physical handicap under which he is playing this World Series. This Tiger manager is from the mould which never complains, but plunges doggedly and gallantly ahead.”33
Schoolboy Rowe, in a ghostwritten newspaper column the next afternoon, opined, “I’m glad the Deans aren’t triplets, or better.”34
Before the next morning, word got out that Cardinals president Sam Breadon had ordered a police escort to keep an eye on Dizzy Dean. After Game Three ended, Breadon had spotted Dean getting into an automobile bearing New York license plates. In an odd leap of logic, Breadon figured it might be the car of a kidnapper, and he quickly sent someone over to order Dean out of the vehicle. The pitcher protested that the auto belonged to a couple of fans who had volunteered to drive him home. Nevertheless, Breadon could not unburden himself of his peculiar notion: Someone might try to kidnap his most valuable commodity. As a precaution, two of St. Louis’s finest followed Dean’s every move that evening and kept a sentry over him while he slept.
Cochrane, meanwhile, was correct when he said the Tigers were not hitting. As a team, they were batting only .207 in the three games. Culprits included Cochrane himself, at .091 with no runs scored or driven in. Leadoff man Jo-Jo White was not much better at .182. Marv Owen was hitless. Greenberg, the club’s cleanup hitter since early September, looked like he was feeling the pressure. Despite his triple in the ninth inning of Game Three, he was not having a good Series, going 1-for-9 with men on base. Cochrane decided to drop Greenberg down to the sixth spot in the order for Game Four, hoping to relieve him of some of the pressure. Goslin, batting .357 in the Series, would take over the cleanup position, and Rogell moved up a notch to fifth.
For the fourth consecutive game, St. Louis scored first. In the second inning, the Cardinals loaded the bases with nobody out against Elden Auker. But the submariner escaped potential disaster, giving up only one run. It would be a battle the rest of the afternoon for Auker, whose sinker wasn’t sinking and curve ball wasn’t breaking. He would have to depend more on his fastball, which was not his normal modus operandi.
Facing 16-game-winner Tex Carleton, another side-arming right-hander, Auker led off the third with a bid for his first career home run. His long smash drove Orsatti to the base of the wall in right-center field, where he finally hauled it in. Then, after a Jo-Jo White strikeout, Carleton suddenly lost it. Cochrane doubled. Gehringer and Goslin both drew walks to load the bases. Rogell, who had struck out earlier in the game, followed with a single to center, which scored two runs and sent Goslin to third.
Frisch, deciding to cut his losses, yanked Carleton. He brought in the 43-year-old right-hander Dazzy Vance. In his heyday with the mediocre Brooklyn Robins, Vance was one of the fastest pitchers in the game, a three-time 20-game winner who led the league in strikeouts seven times. The only thing missing on his resume was a World Series appearance. Now that he had it, he faced the unenviable task of pitching to Greenberg. The Tigers’ slugger got fooled on an outside pitch, hitting a slow roller to the right side. He beat it out for an RBI single; just like that, the Tigers had a 3–1 lead.
Auker ran into trouble in the third inning. He quickly retired the first two batters, but a single, a walk, and another single produced a run to pull St. Louis to within one. Detroit answered right back in the top of the fourth, without the benefit of a hit. After drawing a one-out walk, Jo-Jo White attempted to steal second. Catcher DeLancey’s throw sailed into the outfield, and White tried to make it to third. Orsatti, playing a shallow center, retrieved the ball and threw a peg to third that had White dead to rights. Pepper Martin dropped the ball, however, and White was safe. He scored soon after when Vance threw a wild pitch, making it 4–2 Tigers.
Auker hit another bump in the road in the bottom of the fourth. Orsatti led off with a single. Durocher grounded to Owen at third, who threw down to Gehringer to get a force and possibly a double play. But Orsatti slid hard into the bag, and Gehringer dropped the ball as he hit the ground. The official scorer charged the Tigers’ second baseman with an error, and the Cardinals had runners on first and second with none out. Spud Davis, pinch-hitting for Vance, blooped a single to right, scoring Orsatti and sending Durocher to third. With the score 4–3 in favor of the Tigers, St. Louis had a chance to do even more damage.
At that point, Frisch rapidly scanned the bench for a man who could run for the lumbering Davis at first. He sent in Dizzy Dean (some accounts claimed that Dean volunteered for the duty), to the delight of the home crowd, which let out its biggest roar of the day. The move, while unusual (not to mention risky), was not unprecedented. In his career so far, Dean had pinch-run five times. He was, in fact, one of the speediest runners on the Cardinals, which was saying a lot. Either way, the fans loved it, and as Dean reached first and patted the departing Davis on the back, the cheers began anew.
What followed remains one of the most bizarre plays in World Series history. Pepper Martin hit a sharp grounder to Gehringer, who scooped the ball and flipped it over to Rogell to get the force. Dean, high-stepping it to second, jumped up in the air as he approached Rogell, rather than attempting to slide. Rogell’s strong relay struck Dean right smack on the forehead. The ball ricocheted high into the outfield, while Dean dropped as if he had been shot. Second-base umpire Bill Klem called him out. Durocher scored on the play, tying the game, but a sudden hush fell over Sportsman’s Park. Dean lay sprawled on the ground near second base, “out as cold as a mackerel,”35 in the words of John Drebinger, as teammates (and Tigers) gathered round to check on the status of the world’s most famous pitcher.
Dean revived slightly, although not enough to walk off the field on his own power, much less remain in the game. “As (Dean) was being lugged off the field in the arms of his brother and other comrades,” wrote J. Roy Stockton in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “it was easy to see the Cardinals’ championship chances vanishing with the bearers and their burden.”36 Sportswriter Damon Runyon quipped that the Cardinals “handled [Dean] as gently as if he were a sack of eggs.”37 The uncertainty regarding their star pitcher cast a gloom over the Cardinals and popped their rally balloon. Auker retired Rothrock on a short fly to left, and Frisch grounded into a force to end the frame. Meanwhile, Dean was rushed to St. John’s Hospital.
The game remained tied until the top of the seventh. Bill Walker gave up a leadoff single to Gehrin
ger, and Goslin bunted him to second. Rogell followed with a ground ball right to Durocher at short. Gehringer, instead of holding at second to see if the ball would make it through the infield, motored down to third at the crack of the bat. It was a rare mental mistake for The Mechanical Man, and he would have been hung out to dry at third, but Martin dropped Durocher’s throw, his third miscue of the afternoon. It gave the Tigers runners at the corners with one out.
That brought up Greenberg, who drove a long fly ball to center. Tracking it, Orsatti reached out his glove, but he could not hold on to the ball; Greenberg cruised into second with what was ruled a double. Gehringer scored, and Rogell took third. Walker pitched out of the jam, however, and Detroit had to settle for a one-run lead.
By that time, an announcement was made that Dean had not suffered any serious harm; this tidbit brought another loud cheer from the crowd. The close, exciting game was broken open by Detroit in the eighth. The big blow was Rogell’s bases-loaded, two-run single. Greenberg hit a ground-rule double that just missed being a home run, and later swiped home on the front end of a double steal. Indeed, it was a game of redemption for the man they called “Hammerin’ Hank,” who went 4-for-5 with two doubles, three RBI, and a run scored. Auker settled down and went the distance in the 10–4 victory.
St. Louis played sloppy baseball, making five errors and using five pitchers, none of whom was effective. Frisch felt the Cardinals had played like a sandlot team. Reporters demanded to know why he used Dean as a runner, risking serious injury when he had other position players, most notably the fleet-footed Burgess Whitehead, on the bench. Frisch insisted it was a wise move, given Dean’s speed. “This sort of accident will not happen once in the next 20,000 times, if at all,” he added, an estimate that seemed like little consolation.38 Cochrane liked his team’s chances to go all the way, now that his bats seemed to have woken up. “We’re off now. The Cards won’t win another game.”39
For the Detroit Free Press, Iffy the Dopester wrote, “They beat better ball clubs in the American League because they out-nerved them. If they win the World Series—and psychologically they now have better than an even chance—it will be the old story all over again—beating a better ball club because they didn’t quit even though they did stagger under a new kind of fire.”40
Dean was asked how he felt after the game. “You can’t hurt me, hitting me in the head,” he affirmed. “I never knew I was hit until I woke up on the ground. I didn’t see the throw start. All I saw was a lot of stars and moons and cats and dogs. Sure, I’m gonna pitch tomorrow. I’ve been dyin’ to get at them Tigers again. I’ll beat ’em, too.”41
Cardinals shortstop Leo Durocher was ready to move on from the shoddily played contest. “If we win every other day, we’re bound to cop the Series.”42
Decades later, Billy Rogell recounted the play that nearly brought down baseball’s most flamboyant pitcher. “It really bothered me. That poor sight being carried off the field. Of course, it was Dizzy’s fault. He threw up his head in the way intentionally. Even said so. He wanted to break up the double play. And to tell you the truth, I never saw the play because I was coming to the bag at an angle. I caught the ball and threw. Actually, if I’d have known his head was there, I would have thrown the ball harder.”43
If a wallop in the head by a baseball was supposed to get in the way of Dean’s pitching the next day, somebody forgot to tell him. Dean was his old self in Game Five, allowing only six hits and two earned runs over eight innings and 108 pitches. But Tommy Bridges, despite having pitched just two days prior, was even better. In a complete-game effort, he walked none while fanning seven. Detroit prevailed, 3–1, to take a commanding three-games-to-two lead in the Series.
Detroit opened the scoring in the second inning when Pete Fox hit a two-out double to drive in Greenberg from first base after he had drawn a base on balls. A mild hullabaloo erupted in the bottom of the third with two out. Switch-hitting Jack Rothrock was at the plate, batting from the left side against Bridges. Pepper Martin, the runner on first, broke for second. “Cochrane,” wrote the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “taking the inside pitch, found Rothrock in his way and threw. The ball hit the bat and caromed to the second baseman’s position.”44 Home-plate umpire Brick Owens immediately called Rothrock out for interference, and the threat was over. Frisch put up a long protest, but to no avail.
In the sixth inning, Gehringer ran the count full before Dean grooved a fastball down the middle. The Tigers’ second baseman crushed the pitch for a long home run that landed on the roof of the pavilion in right field. Three batters later, a run-scoring fly ball by Greenberg made it 3–0, and that was all the Tigers would need.
Bridges had St. Louis flailing away all afternoon. When they did make contact with his wicked curve, all they could do was chop the ball into the ground or pop up weakly. In a remarkable display of pinpoint control, he pounded the strike zone and was constantly ahead of hitters. Only twice did he go to three balls in a count, and both at-bats ended in strikeouts. The Cardinals’ only tally came on a solo home run by Bill DeLancey in the seventh inning. Pepper Martin made a bid to tie it in the eighth when, with one on and one out, he drove one to deep left-center. It looked like a sure double, possibly an inside-the-park home run given Martin’s speed. But center fielder Jo-Jo White, racing madly back, made a fine grab just a few feet from the wall. Goose Goslin called the catch “one of the greatest in any World Series.”45
In a pressure-packed bottom of the ninth, St. Louis had runners at the corners with only one out. But Bill DeLancey, in the words of Grantland Rice, “took three over the plate with a squawk that is still reverberating through the Osage and the Ozarks, on its way to the Rio Grande.”46 Bridges then induced Ernie Orsatti to ground into a force at second to end it.
It had been an unexpected and risky move on Cochrane’s part to go with Bridges, rather than the more rested Rowe. But Little Tommy always pitched well at Sportsman’s Park, while Rowe had been less successful. The Tigers’ skipper knew that he was opening himself up to a heap of criticism if Bridges were to falter. Now, he looked like a genius, with Rowe primed and ready to go in Game Six in Detroit. “Rowe will start sure tomorrow,” Cochrane said in the clubhouse after the game. “We have the Cardinals on the run and I’m anxious to get it over.”47
Fans back in Detroit could smell victory. A trickle of them began forming a line near the box office at Navin Field before Game Five had even ended. As the late afternoon turned into early evening, an eager multitude descended onto Michigan and Trumbull. All reserve seats had been sold long ago, but Tigers worshippers were hoping to snare the 20,000 or so bleacher tickets that would go on sale at 9 o’clock the next morning, just a few hours before Game Six. With Rowe on the mound, the long-elusive world championship at last seemed within the Tigers’ grasp.
Rumors swirled before Game Six that Cardinals owner Sam Breadon was prepared to put the team up for sale. Among the names floated as potential buyers, the most intriguing was Henry Ford. Breadon quickly squelched such talk, however. “If somebody would come along and offer me an attractive price for my holdings, naturally I would sell. But nobody has. There has been no offer from anybody to buy the club. There has been no offer by anybody to sell the club.”48
The brilliant Indian summer day began with a bad omen for Schoolboy Rowe. While puttering about in his hotel room in the morning, someone (it was never mentioned exactly who) had accidentally slammed a bathroom door on Rowe’s pitching hand (or so he claimed). Despite a mild swelling, he doubted it was serious, but that was not the end of the matter. Later during pre-game warmups, Rowe was yacking it up with Joe E. Brown, the Hollywood comedian and baseball fan who was a perennial presence at the World Series. (In 1932, Brown had actually appeared as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals in the Warner Brothers film, Fireman, Save My Child.) When photographers asked Rowe to shake hands with Brown, the funnyman squeezed a bit too hard, aggravating the swelling. Rowe, however, shrugged it off and step
ped into the cage for some batting practice, which, by his own account, made the hand even worse. He headed back to the locker room, where he soaked it in water as hot as he could bear. Not surprisingly, that did not help much, and the pain persisted. But throwing caution to the wind, he made his way to the field to start the game.
The Cardinals got on the board in the first inning, when Rothrock hit a one-out double and scored on Joe Medwick’s single. Paul Dean had no trouble with the Tigers the first time through the lineup, but Detroit capitalized on a Cardinals miscue with two out in the fourth. Jo-Jo White walked and would have been thrown out on an attempted steal, but he slid hard into second, bowling over Frankie Frisch, who could not hold on to the ball. With Frisch lying on the ground and the ball rolling away, White dashed down to third.
That brought up Cochrane, who had yet to drive in a run in the Series. After fouling off one pitch after another, he hit a slow roller to first baseman Ripper Collins. Cochrane beat it out for a single, scoring White, but he half-slid and stumbled awkwardly over the bag. Dean, who was covering first, accidentally spiked him near the left kneecap. Cochrane came up limping but stayed in the game.
St. Louis sought retaliation for White’s belligerent slide the next inning. Following Medwick’s leadoff single, Collins grounded one to Gehringer, who tossed to Rogell to start a double play. But a charging Medwick slid in with spikes flying. Rogell was upended, narrowly avoiding a slashing.
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