Close One
Yankees at Browns, 5/4/1949
Close One
The real-life 1949 Browns probably wish they played a close game once in a while.
In real life, this game was a wash, as The St. Louis Star-Times teaches us:
The one highlight was this picture of Hank Bauer, a St. Louis native, trying to score:
Comeback
Bauer wasn’t exactly a hero in this one, either.
St. Louis went up by 2 in the bottom of the first, thanks to some awful pitching by Allie Reynolds:
I thought for a minute that the Browns might actually knock the Yankees’ first place lead down to a half game. The thought was fleeting, though, as New York put up 6 runs in the next 4 innings.
But St. Louis didn’t go away. A solo home run by Dick Kokos made it a 6-3 game in the bottom of the 7th, and then Eddie Pellagrini worked his magic with the bases loaded in the 8th:
Roy Sievers would have represented the tying run on third had he not been thrown out. As it stood, it was now a 6-5 game, and St. Louis had a chance to win it in the 9th.
Just Short
Of course, a real comeback needs a happy ending.
We came kind of close. Bob Dillinger came up with two out in the bottom of the 9th, the score still 6-5 Yankees:
Now, in a league of guys like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Lou Boudreau, and Hank Majeski, Jack Graham isn’t exactly the man you want up in this position. Desperate times call for desperate measures, though, and the Brownies had little choice.
And that’s how this one ended, in the most St. Louis Browns way possible. We were close to seeing something truly spectacular, close to seeing a nobody become a somebody all of a sudden.
All it took was for blog hero Cliff Mapes to make a spectacular catch to end our fun.
Reynolds gave up 4 walks in 7 2/3 innings, and still wound up with the win. The Yankees are a good team, but they’re not quite that good.