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We’ve finally reached the culmination of Michael Keedy’s Top Ten Greatest World Series Catches. It’s not a big surprise that Sandy Amoros’s game-saving catch in the 1955 World Series rates as his Number One. Not only was it a great catch, but it also helped save the Dodgers’ one and only World Series title while in Brooklyn. Be sure to check out the film clip below.

What constitutes a great catch is very subjective and we all have our own opinions. But I think we can all agree that Sandy’s catch was a great one. We’ve all had a lot of fun with this, and whether or not we agree or disagree with Michael’s selections or his rankings, we thank him for his efforts in this very entertaining series! –GL

Michael Keedy’s Top Ten Greatest World Series Catches!

Number One:

Sandy Amoros and the 1955 World Series 

Long before the Dallas Cowboys came to be known as “America’s Team,” the Brooklyn Dodgers won the loving and sympathetic hearts of baseball fans across the country.  Brokers, bankers, and sundry corporate executives sporting pinstripes and starched shirts might root for General Motors, IBM and the New York Yankees, but the steelworkers, cooks, carpenters, and mechanics who helped lay the cornerstones of a great nation lived and died with their beloved, “blue-collar” Bums, win or lose.  The Dodgers were as human, accessible, inspiring, and exasperating as the Yanks were distant, domineering, mechanical, and monotonously triumphant.

“Next Year Is Finally Here!”

“Wait til next year!” was the fabled mantra for Brooklyn in the post-war.  This team, blessed with a rich abundance of potential and promise, was at once the most storied and star-crossed of all big league franchises in the 1940s and ’50s.  Well before the tardy arrival of Lady Luck in 1955, its familiar, annual rallying cry had become something of a cruel hoax.  By the time their perennial tormentors from the Bronx had counted up the winners’ shares yet again, in ’53, the Dodgers were one of only three clubs remaining in the majors, along with the chronically inept Browns and routinely mediocre Phillies, never to have won a World Series.

They lost in 1916 to the Red Sox of Babe Ruth, who set an all-time record by pitching his team to a 14-inning, 2-1 win; and again in 1920, against Cleveland, which whipped up on them with the only unassisted triple play in series history, the first grand-slam in any Fall Classic, and the first postseason home run by a pitcher.  Their next serious bid for a championship, in 1941, was the beginning of a long and demoralizing accumulation of near-misses, shattered dreams, and unanswered prayers.

By spring training in 1955, the Dodgers were a rapidly-aging, anxious squad of skilled but imperfect might-have-beens.  Father Time was gaining ground in giant strides on this, the oldest team in the majors.  The litany of blown chances in 1941, ’42, ’46, ’47, ’49-50-51-2 and ’53 weighed heavily on the mind and shoulders of Jackie Robinson, by now a grey and declining 36, and Captain Pee Wee Reese, whose 37th birthday was coming right up.  Since 1940, Reese had been on the field in every inning of every ill-fated game in which his team was chased down and overtaken from behind while within tantalizing reach of the promised land.

But the Boys of Summer, seemingly motivated by a now-or-never mentality, left baseball’s record books in tatters when they broke from the gate this year.  They won their first ten games.  Two weeks later, they were 22-and-2, with each loss coming by a single run.  They clinched their eighth pennant on September 8, the earliest date in history.  They became the first wire-to-wire team in the big leagues since the fearsome Murderers’ Row—who else?—claimed that distinction in 1927.

Another Subway Series opened at the Stadium in late September, the sixth such matchup in nine years.  Battling to a 3-3 standoff, these familiar rivals headed for a classic and unforgettable finale on October 4, back in the Bronx.  Could this be “next year”?

The Decisive Seventh Game!

By the top of the sixth, Brooklyn’s slender 2-0 lead had been in constant jeopardy.  When George Shuba pinch-hit for Don Zimmer, Manager Walt Alston had to rearrange his defense heading into the home half of the inning.  Nobody knew it then, but the world was seeing baseball history in the making.  A fateful die, without which New York would surely walk away with its record 17th championship, had now been cast.  The right-handed Jim Gilliam took Zimmer’s spot in the infield, and Sandy Amoros, a southpaw, replaced Gilliam in left.

The bottom of the sixth quickly produced possibly the most tense, dramatic, and eventful moment in World Series play.  With two on, nobody out, and the Yankees trailing, 2-0, Yogi Berra came to the plate.  A left-hand power hitter, the three-time MVP was notorious for pulling the ball.  A long bomb here, presumably to right, would sink the Dodgers.  Knowing all this, and following instructions, Amoros moved to within a few yards of dead center, about halfway between the fence and the infield.  He was standing sixty yards off the foul line in left when Johnny Podres threw his best fastball, low and away.

The Cuban Comet Comes Through!

Contrary to the expectations of 62,465 ticket-holders and the entire borough of Brooklyn, Berra punched the ball high into the air, toward the line in left.  Billy Martin, carrying the Yanks’ first run, headed for third base.  Gil McDougald, representing the tying run, sprinted at top speed toward second.  He could see the play in the outfield perfectly as it developed in front of him.  The rookie-of-the-year in 1951 and a most competent student of the game, McDougald was certain there was no way a mortal being could dream of outrunning this ball.  It headed toward the line, nearing the 301-foot marker, with Amoros racing across miles of open pasture in hot and seemingly hopeless pursuit.

But Sandy Amoros wasn’t known as “The Cuban Comet” for nothing, or for the mere purpose of alliteration.  Easily the fastest player on his team, he would later say, “I don’t know I get it.  I just run like hell and stick out my glove.”  He did that exactly, at the end of a long and speedy dash toward the distant foul line.  In one spectacular moment, he was Jesse Owens in baseball cleats.  The glove he mentioned was on his right hand. Thanks to blinding speed Gilliam didn’t possess, and a lefty’s maneuver Gilliam could not have made, the ball dropped out of the sky and into The Comet’s welcoming mitt.  

A huge crowd stood stunned, and McDougald, on his way to third, was hung out to dry.  With a perfect pirouette that only a lefthander could perform, Amoros fired a strike to Reese, yelling for the ball on the edge of the grass.  The captain’s slingshot over to Gil Hodges, straining forward at first as an airborne McDougald started his desperate slide for the bag, completed a breathtaking, game-saving double play for these Boys from Brooklyn. The mighty Bombers’ ominous rally was suddenly over.

Surviving additional jittery moments in the seventh and eighthth, the Dodgers held on tight to win, 2-0.  They were in the visitors’ clubhouse, celebrating Brooklyn’s one-and-only world championship, when Yogi Berra and his incredulous, appreciative manager raced over to congratulate their extraordinary outfielder on what is—in my humble opinion—the greatest defensive play in series history!

Michael H. Keedy

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Information: Thomas Oliphant’s 2005 autobiography:  “Praying For Gil Hodges.”