Waiting for Dusty

I ain't much of a fielder, and I got a pretty lousy arm, but I sure love to whack at that ball. --James Lamar Rhodes

Right up to game time at the Polo Grounds last week, odds that the Cleveland Indians would take the World Series were 9 to 5. After a long, loud summer, second-guessing Managers Leo Durocher and Al Lopez, the nation's sportswriters, smart-money boys and Sunday-afternoon bleacher jockeys all had an easy explanation: Cleveland's pitching was too good. Even with their patchwork infield, the Indians had won 111 games. How could they lose a short series?

"My pitchers don't exactly toss bean-bags," retorted Lippy Leo. But no one was listening. And for the first eight innings of the series, the Giants had a hard time hanging on. Then wonderful Willie Mays raced almost back to the Harlem River to pull down a long fly with his back to home plate and save the ball game. In the tenth, the score tied 2-2 and two men on, Durocher called on "Dusty" Rhodes, his first-rate, second-string outfielder, who had been a sensational pinch hitter all season. Dusty Rhodes popped the first pitch into a lazy arc along the rightfield foul line, and a light breeze wafted it over the high green grandstand barrier for a home run that broke up the game.

All of a sudden, men with money on Cleveland remembered that the Indians had fattened on the Humpty Dumpties of the American League; Giant pitching had held its own against some tough customers: the Milwaukee Braves, the despised Dodgers, the hard-hitting Cardinals. They also recalled that Willie Mays had been making catches like that all season and that Dusty Rhodes had always been uncanny in the clutch.

Midnight Man. Now, in the wild glare of series fame, fans discovered that Dusty was a ballplayer right out of a book: Ring Lardner's Busher, magnificently self-assured, not one bit abashed by the big leagues, thoroughly convinced that he and his big bat could win a World Series by themselves.

Dusty had been powdering baseballs ever since he was a drawling teenager in Montgomery, Ala. At 16 he played for a church team, the St. Andrew's Gaels, and in 1946, after a tour in the Navy, he began kicking around in the minor leagues. He started low--with the Hall Brothers' Dairy team--and moved up slowly. He had a busher's habit of muffing flies and missing curfews. "Dusty," said a careful friend, "was a midnight man in a 9 o'clock town." It took him six years to show signs of settling down. Then he was ready for the Giants, and 1954 was obviously his year.

Old Pro. The second-game crowd was still talking about Dusty's homer, when it settled back to watch the Giants play like champions. At third dour Hank Thompson made acrobatic, circus saves with astonishing skill; at shortstop Alvin Dark, a hard-looking old pro out of Louisiana State, knocked down everything that came his way. Slowly, with infuriating care, young Johnny Antonelli pitched around the thin edge of disaster. In the fifth, Pinch Hitter Rhodes sneaked a piddling blooper into short centerfield and the game was as good as over.

Later in the afternoon. Dusty stepped up again. Just to keep his franchise, he smacked an honest homer high against the rightfield roof. Next day in Cleveland, Dusty only had to wait until the third inning. He ambled to the plate, eyed Pitcher Mike Garcia and promptly planted a solid, two-run single in rightfield.

Mild Manager. After that, Dusty struck out twice, a failure that almost proved him human. But by then the Giants were safely in front. Durocher's men didn't seem capable of making a single serious error. Over on the Cleveland bench, Alfonso Ramon Lopez watched his boys make a shambles of their reputation. "Everything we've done is wrong," marveled the mild-mannered manager. "Everything they've done is right." Probably not even a good ball team could have beaten the Giants; the lackluster Indians never had a chance. After the third game Sportswriter Red Smith wrote that it might not be necessary to play the fourth: "There's talk of calling it off in order that James Lamar Rhodes of Rock Hill, S.C. may give an exhibition of walking on water."

In 50 years of World Series history, only seven clubs had won a four-game series. Now, anyone who doubted that the Giants would be the eighth was careful not to talk out loud. Even a pinch-hit homer by the Indians' veteran castoff, Hank Majeski, did not break the spell. Winning the fourth game, 7-4, was so simple that Leo Durocher did not even bother to call on Dusty Rhodes.

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