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Michael Keedy’s Top-Ten Greatest World Series Catches

No. 6:

Mickey Mantle, 1956 World Series

Anybody who followed big-league baseball in the 1950s and ’60s remembers Mickey Mantle, who had to be God’s gift to the sport.  A natural powerhouse, from both sides of the plate.  Author of countless tape-measure home runs.  Winner of the coveted Triple Crown, 1956.  Three-time American League MVP (’56-57-62), who would have been the first and only winner of four such awards if he hadn’t been omitted altogether from three writers’ ballots in 1960.  (He ran first on more such ballots that year than Roger Maris, the eventual winner, but got a bit of the old “Ted Williams treatment” from sportswriters with personal axes to grind, unfortunately.)

In the years following his retirement, and perhaps more so since he died, in 1995, Mantle has been seen as a star-crossed man and ballplayer whose unlimited potential vastly exceeded his actual achievements on the field, as eye-opening as those were.  Any serious study of his life and career gives a deeper meaning to the term “bittersweet” as a result.  We can only guess how great he would have been if

not for a horrifying, career-threatening injury in his rookie season, or how long he could have played near the top of his game if he hadn’t been sentenced to a lifetime of unrelenting pain thereafter.  By his own later admission The Mick himself squandered much of his strength, skill, and speed, inch-by-inch and night after night, chasing The Grim Reaper incarnate.  He was through, for all intents and purposes, by his 33rd birthday  – and he knew it.  He admitted as much, and The World of Baseball grew suddenly and noticeably poorer when he was forced into an early retirement.

 

At the peak of his career, though, Mickey Mantle was an artist’s concept of the mythologically perfect ballplayer.  At just 5′ 11″, but built like a chiseled monument, The Mick was THE most awe-inspiring athlete of his era to fans of the national pastime and the most intimidating to his opponents.  Frank Sullivan, a tall righthander for the Red Sox in the 1950s, was once asked how he would pitch to Mantle.  “With tears in my eyes,” came his unhesitating and candid reply.  He must have been speaking for every other pitcher in the league – both leagues, for that matter.

“Faster Than Cobb!”

Because a ball hit by Mantle “probably had a stewardess on it,” to misquote Crash Davis, fans didn’t seem to care that much about his fielding.  Defense was secondary.  His time from home to first measured a ridiculous 3.1 seconds, though, and crowds gasped audibly at how fast he could circle the bases.  He was much faster than Joe Dimaggio, for example, and all other speedsters of the time.  His predecessors?  Forget it.  Cried Yankee Manager Casey Stengel in spring training, on seeing his new, kid blacksmith with the lightning cleats:  “My God!  He’s faster than Cobb!” 

Offense: the Name Of The Game!

As if to confirm what everyone already knew, before a scheduled World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers, no less an evaluator of baseball talent than Jackie Robinson felt obliged to confess that “we don’t have anyone that good.”  Hercules in pinstripes?  Check.  A locomotive on the basepaths?  Check.  Chasing after fly balls?  Well. . .what’s THAT all about?  Offense was the name of this game, and the Lords of Baseball didn’t even come up with the Gold Glove idea until 1957, seven full seasons into Mantle’s astounding but stunted playing career.

Mickey’s Defense an After-Thought

When it came to jaw-dropping, circus plays in the field, defensive stars such as Jimmy Piersall, Willie Mays, and Duke Snider would leap to mind among Mantle’s contemporaries.  Later on, fans inevitably thought first of great glovemen like Curt Flood, Vada Pinson, and Paul Blair.  More recently they have been inspired by the acrobatics of Ken Griffey, Jr., Jim Edmonds, and other, unnamed aerialists in baseball gear.  But as a genuinely modest and self-deprecating Mantle would say, “I wasn’t that good of a fielder.”  He was lying, but he had people believing it.  He was the game’s primogenitor of power and speed.  Even most eye-witnesses to his outstanding catch in the 1956 World Series decided those were the defining characteristics of the “Commerce Comet”:  Speed and power; power and speed.  His defense was definitely an afterthought – in his mind and everyone else’s.

When Al Gionfriddo speared Joe D’s deep drive into “Death Valley” in 1947, the 25-year-old outfielder earned his place among a select few whose World Series catches deserve the “greatest” label, featured in our current, top-ten study.  His long, lightning-fast sprint to the railing in left-center and contorted, last-second grab, all immortalized by broadcaster Red Barber’s iconic call, live on today in the collective memory of baseball aficionados around the world.

In contrast to “making the hard ones look hard,” as Gionfriddo surely did then, nine years later another 25-year-old patrolling the very outfield at Yankee Stadium achieved his own rightful spot on this same hallowed list by making a hard one appear – well, impressive, yes, but – all thanks to his preposterous speed – relatively routine.  Because of its particular significance in the history of the World Series, his running stab actually ranks a slight notch above Gionfriddo’s, in the humble and biased opinion of one superannuated Brooklyn fan who has struggled a lifetime to overcome an inbred prejudice against anything bearing the label of U.S. Steel, General Motors, or the New York Yankees.

Mickey Saves Don Larson!

Mickey Mantle had given the Yanks their only run with – wait for it – a homer into the right-field stands in the bottom of the fourth, staking a journeyman pitcher to the slimmest of leads over Sal Maglie and the Dodgers.  It was the 1956 World Series, and these clubs had split the first four games.

Although he rang up a disastrous 3-and-21 record for the Orioles just two seasons earlier, and would go 1-and-10 within a few short years of this historic date, as the fifth inning opened Don Larsen began to realize that the Dodgers had no hits, and that some of the best stuff of an otherwise mediocre career had been sailing out of his no-windup delivery this particular afternoon. 

With one down, the great Gil Hodges, who helped to slay the hated Yanks in Game Seven the year before, drilled a shot into the yawning gap of Death Valley.  It looked like extra bases for sure, and of course the end of Larsen’s short-lived no-no.  Considering his uneasy grip on such attributes as command, control, and self-confidence (to say nothing of a comfortable lead, which he didn’t have), it could well have meant the conclusion of Larsen’s brief outing as well.  He wasn’t even the pitcher of record yet, for heaven’s sake.

Relying on his all-world speed, Mickey Mantle streaked across the outfield into left-center, his back to the plate, and not far from the spot marking Al Gionfriddo’s earlier claim to series immortality [see featured photo above]. To the delighted surprise of a raucous Yankee crowd, and their partisan, professional cheerleader Mel Allen, The Mick drew a perfect bead on The Great Gil’s bid for extra bases.  Caught!

As things played out, this great catch by the smooth and speedy Mantle could not have been much bigger.  It saved the only Perfect Game in series history.  With Maglie hurling a five-hit, complete game of his own, it enabled the Yanks to take a 3-2 lead in games heading back to Brooklyn.  When relief artist Clem Labine shut down the Bombers over ten innings at Ebbets Field the next day, holding on for an eventual, one-to-nothing win on a walk-off hit by Jackie Robinson, the Mick’s catch loomed ever larger.

Mickey Mantle: “The Last Boy”

Mickey Mantle was a splendid, many-faceted being:  Astonishing power at the plate; late-night carousing; Olympic speed; a magnificent but oft-injured and mercilessly abused body; All-American charm; an addictive fondness for pharmaceuticals and feminine attention; genuine modesty and shyness; and, most poignantly of all, an occasional and destructive relationship with nagging yet tantalizing images of a premature death.  He will long be remembered for all of these things.

In the considered opinion of an excessively outspoken Dodger fan and Yankee hater, he should also be honored for making one of the greatest catches in World Series history.  Improbably, Mantle called his saving snare off the bat of Gil Hodges “…probably the only good catch I ever made.”  That has to be the all-time understatement of any major-league ballplayer, living or dead.

Michael H. Keedy

October, 2022

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