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It’s Game Seven of the 1926 World Series and Yankees ace Waite Hoyt is pitching against the Cardinals Rogers Hornsby. The game was played on a rainy, cold and dreary day that kept the attendance to only 38,000-plus but the ballpark is still full of energy as one should expect from a deciding game.
Babe Ruth would get the scoring started in the third inning with a long home run off the Cards Jesse Haines and giving New York an early 1-0 lead. But the following inning St Louis would rally for three runs thanks to two Yankees errors and a two-run single scoring Les Bell and Chick Hafey by an unlikely hero in shortstop Tommy Thevenow.
The Yankees would add a run in the 6th inning to chip away at the Cardinals lead to make it a 3-2 ballgame. But in the ninth inning the game and World Series would end in one of the strangest ways possible – with Ruth on first base on a two-out walk against Cardinals reliever Pete Alexander and with Bob Meusel at the plate and Lou Gehrig on deck, Ruth got bold and to the surprise of everyone tried to steal second base on an Alexander curveball that Meusel took low. Ruth was out by a country mile as catcher Bob O’Farrell throw to Hornsby was on the money and the Cardinals were the World Series champs for the first time in the most unlikely fashion.
Hornsby would recount later how Ruth after the play “didn’t say a word. He didn’t even look around or up at me. He just picked himself up and walked away”. Ruth would explain after the game he had hoped to take second base in efforts of scoring easier on a Meusel hit.
Ruth makes the last out of the 1926 World Series trying to steal second, Rogers Hornsby applies the winning tag
Who made the yankee errors?