But this season was the greatest demonstration of him as a pitcher. When he struggled against lefties, he added the changeup, and when he struggled against righties, he added the slider. When he was getting hit around in April, he lost his cutter. When he was giving up too many homerun...
The first batter up against Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry in the bottom of the ninth was Bill Mazeroski. He was an unlikely home-run hero. Maz had hit only 11 goombahs during the regular season. But this was his moment. On a 1-0 count, Maz's blast over the left-field wall gave the...
“Hey, you got robbed,” Brooks calls out to the visiting pitcher with whom he’s about to block out a scene, referring to the previous night’s Mets game, in which Saberhagen threw most of the strikes but wasn’t credited with the win. “Why don’t you get the victory in those ga...
The Yankees took on the Brooklyn Dodgers and future Hall of Fame pitcher Rube Marquard the next day in Jacksonville. Like most rookies throughout baseball history, Halas was in the first stage of figuring out how to consistently hit curveballs. “I knew Rube had a dandy curveball, but I f...
Pitcher Don Sutton of the Dodgers, who would lose the final, devastating ballgame at Los Angeles, brought a measure of reflection to the work when he told a reporter that he felt no exceptional pressure on him as he went out to face the Yankees. ...