Home Run Bonanza
It's power hitter day at Briggs Stadium.
Deviating From Reality
This game in real life was a pitcher’s duel. Here’s how The Detroit Free Press reported it:
The replay version wasn’t quite a pitcher’s duel.
Big Beginning
Larry Doby set the tone right from the start:
Doby was hitting leadoff, and simply wasted no time in launching one. I thought right here that the Indians were going to succeed in moving into first place, and figured that Detroit likely had no chance in this one.
However, Johnny Groth had other ideas. He came up in the bottom of the 1st with nobody on:
And with that we had a ballgame.
Detroit Moves Ahead
Fred Hutchinson, the Detroit starting pitcher, led off the bottom of the third with a sharp base hit. George Kell followed with a single to shallow center field.
That brought up Groth again, in an interesting situation.
I knew that Johnny had just hit a solo home run in the first inning to tie the ballgame. However, I was worried about a potential double play. Groth had not been hitting all that well even after hitting that first inning home run. And power hitter Vic Wertz was hitting right behind him. I decided to bunt with Groth to put two men in scoring position, daring the computer manager to walk Wertz intentionally.
And it worked:
That brought up Wertz. And, like something out of the 1984 World Series, the Indians decided not to walk him.
Bad decision.
The Long Ball
Cleveland came back.
It started in the top of the 5th inning. Catcher Jim Hegan, not known as a major power hitter, came up with the bases empty for the Indians:
Then, in the top of the 6th inning, Doby led off once again:
And then, once again in that top of the 6th, Dale Mitchell came up with Lou Boudreau on first base and two out:
That made the score 5-4 Cleveland, with time running out.
8th Inning
And the Indians weren’t done.
Boudreau opened things up with a single. Up came Hal Peck:
Hutchinson was clearly starting to struggle, but I thought he could get out of it. He hadn’t thrown many pitches to this point, and seemed to be pitching well — if you don’t count the 4 home runs, that is. I decided to leave him in.
The computer decided to bunt with Mickey Vernon, which felt like a page out of my own strategic playbook:
That brought up Mitchell again, who had just hit a big two run homer in the 6th. I didn’t want to see him become the second Vic Wertz. I decided to walk him to set up the force play:
That brought up Bob Kennedy with the bases loaded:
The Tigers got out of the inning, but the score was now 6-4, Cleveland.
Detroit started to come back in the 8th.
It started off with a single by Paul Campbell. That brought up Johnny Lipon:
Mike Garcia, who I had originally considered starting in this game, came in for the Indians in relief.
Next up was Neil Berry, another weak hitter. I decided to have him bunt:
Now the bases were loaded, and now this game was getting good. Up came Hutchinson again.
Fred Hutchinson was actually a pretty good hitter, particularly in 1949. I thought about taking him out, but decided to leave him in instead. I’m glad I did:
Campbell scored, and I was naturally going to send the runners, since there was nobody out. The Indians decided to ignore getting the slow Hutchinson at second in favor of trying to throw the faster Lipon out at the plate. And it worked.
Up next was Kell:
That wasn’t much of an at bat by George. We were in a pretty awkward position. I decided to take the chance to send Berry home. I’m not certain why he turned back to third, since Hutchinson was there already.
Groth came up again, though, and I thought he might go deep with two out:
And that was it. It felt like a long inning, but we only got one out of it.
9th Inning
Hegan walked to start the 9th for the Indians. Up came Bobby Aliva, who had just entered the game as a replacement second baseman:
That was it for Hutchinson. I took him out and put in the ageless Dizzy Trout to face Doby:
Trout made the big play, and was able to get out of the inning in the end without any further damage. Both Boudreau and Peck ground out.
That brought us to the bottom of the 9th, with Cleveland holding onto a slim 1 run lead.
Wertz led it off the right way:
Hoot Evers came up next, with a chance to be a hero:
Bob Swift then fouled out to the catcher, leaving it all up to Campbell:
That’s about as close as you can get. Campbell just missed that one, hitting it to dead center field instead of pulling it.
This was another wild one. 26 hits, 11 runs, and only 4 walks.
The Tigers stranded 10. I know we don’t like talking about RBIs these days, but you can really tell there’s a problem when you’re constantly leaving runners on base like that. I wouldn’t mind giving up a few of those extra hits for a helpful sacrifice fly here or there.