Decline & Fall

The chapfallen Dodgers shuffled off to Japan. "We'll win every game." said Captain Pee Wee Reese, just as if it mattered. Back in Manhattan, Charles Dillon Stengel creased his 66-year-old wrinkles in a broad grin. Retire? Well, he might have said something about it. But the fact was that he had just signed a -new contract to manage the Yankees for another two years at a fat $80,000 a year. What were 66 years to a man who had just won his sixth World Series and seventh pennant in eight years as the Yankees' manager?

Youth and the yawning expanses of Yankee Stadium had been the undoing of the aging Dodgers. Hits that would have sailed into the Ebbets Field stands for homers settled in Yankee gloves for long outs. Pitchers that the Dodgers had murdered in Brooklyn beat them handily in The Bronx. Brooklyn fans, talking of winning four straight after the Dodgers' first two thumping victories, suddenly recognized that something had gone out of Brooklyn's aging pros.

Perfect Game. There was brief hope as the week began. Crafty Sal Maglie was rested and ready. The Yanks were gambling on Don Larsen. a lighthearted playboy noted most for spectacular achievements such as wrapping his car around a Florida telephone pole during spring training. In the second game, he had lasted less than two innings.

Maglie was sure and sharp. He gave up only five hits and two runs. But after the first few innings, Sal Maglie was just the second-best pitcher in the game. Towering (6 ft. 4 in., 220 Ibs.) Yankee Larsen was scarcely wasting a pitch. Only once, against Pee Wee Reese in the first inning, did he go to a full count on a batter. His sharp curves found the plate as if they had eyes. He needed no more than 97 pitches (71 of which were in the strike zone) to dispose of the absolute minimum of 27 Dodger hitters, and not a single Dodger got to first base. While the crowd watched tensely, the Dodgers put up their 27th batter. Pinch Hitter Dale Mitchell. He took a ball, then a called strike, missed a curve for strike two. He fouled another off and settled grimly in the batter's box. Larsen pitched. Mitchell checked his swing, watched the third strike whiz by. The crowd let out its breath and roared. Yogi Berra leaped into Larsen's arms. Don Larsen had pitched the first perfect major-league no* hitter in 34 years, and the first no-hitter-of any kind in World Series history.

Thin Victory. Dodger hearts felt the chill forebodings of impending defeat. If Maglie could not win, who could?

For the sixth game, back at Ebbets Field, Manager Walter Alston started his bullpen specialist, Clem Labine. Inning after scoreless inning, he matched the Yanks' bulky "Bullet Bob" Turley, an erratic speed merchant who seldom wins the way he ought to. Then, in the tenth, hefty Jackie Robinson briefly remembered the skill that once made him one of the roughest hitters in the league. He laced a rising liner over the head of aging Enos Slaughter in left field and drove in the only run of the game. It was a thin victory, but the Dodgers were still alive.

Payoff in Home Runs. For the payoff game the Dodgers had no one left but Don Newcombe, who had started four World Series games, lasted through none. Tormented by the fate that dogged him in the big ones. Big Newk unwound with all he had. When he was on target, his fast ball hummed into life, but when he was wide of the strike zone, he was not wide enough. Even the pitches he wanted to waste hung close to the plate. Squat Yogi Berra, the best fastball hitter in the majors, whacked one of them for a homer in the first inning, another into the stands in the third. After that, the tense series degenerated into a shambles. In the fourth inning, Yankee Outfielder Elston Howard tagged Newk for another homer, and the home-town stands belched an ugly chorus of boos as the big man sadly slouched off the field. First Baseman Bill Skowron reached Dodger Reliever Roger Craig for a grand-slam homer to push the final score to 9-0. All the while, Yankee Pitcher Johnny Kucks held the Dodgers to three hits, and the Yanks had won back their championship four games to three.

Sad Arithmetic. The story of the series was the story of young Yankee pitchers and aging Dodger batters. For the first two games the Dodgers hit at a .313 clip. Then they collapsed. In the last five games Dodger hitters hit at an appalling .142 clip. They finished with a sad total of .195. No team had ever done worse in a seven-game series.

The oldest Yankee pitcher is Ford, at 28, the youngest Kucks, at 23. All season long no combination of Yankee pitchers had put together four consecutive complete games. When the championship was at stake, five of them pitched five in a row.

Except for stalwart Enos Slaughter, the Yankees looked young enough to stay champions for a long time; the Dodgers will be a long time recovering. The big names that brought them to the top --Campanella, Robinson, Reese, Snider --are aging fast. No matter how they add it up, the sad arithmetic of their decline will always be the same. Said Columnist Bugs Baer, with embarrassing logic: "When you score only one run in three games, you gotta lose two."

*No one has pitched a perfect game in the major leagues since 1922, when Charlie Robert son of the Chicago White Sox won 2-0 over the Detroit Tigers; Larsen's was the seventh per fect game in all major-league history. Most colorful was the one between the Boston Red Sox and the Washington Senators in 1917, which was only recently declared "perfect" by baseball's official historians. The first Senator to bat actually reached first base, but he was walked by Pitcher Babe Ruth, who was prompt ly thrown out of the game for clouting Plate Umpire Brick Owens to express his displeasure. The runner was caught stealing, and Relief Pitcher Ernie Shore, called in cold from the bullpen, disposed of the next 26 Senators with out walking one or allowing a hit. The Red Sox won 4-0.

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