The Missing Dodger

Don Newcombe and the 1955 World Series

The Missing Dodger

Not all replay projects need to be long and complicated.

Sometimes it’s a lot of fun to replay a good World Series. But, of course, there’s a problem. What do you do about lineups, injuries, and the like?

It’s usually not all that difficult to figure out which players were available and which weren’t. For some World Series, though, this can be harder than you think. And that’s something I’ve run into with the 1955 World Series.

As the magazine cover above clearly shows, Don Newcombe was very much a part of the 1955 Dodgers - both with his arm and with his bat.

From Sports Illustrated, August 22, 1955, page 29

The story is that Newcombe hurt his shoulder sometime in early September. This comes from his SABR biography:

The source here is the March 9, 1957 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, which I unfortunately do not have access to at the moment.

However, we know from the daily statistical record that Newcombe had indeed hurt his shoulder in early September. Even though I don’t have access to The Brooklyn Eagle’s 1955 issues, we can still reconstruct what happened to him.

We know that Newcombe pitched a complete game on September 5th against the Phillies. In fact, he hit a home run that day:

From New York Daily News, September 6, 1955, page 56

In the first game of the doubleheader on September 9th at Wrigley Field, however, Newcombe pitched very poorly:

From New York Daily News, September 10, 1955, page 26

Of course, the reason for all the references to a hangover came because the Dodgers had clinched the pennant the day before:

Now, if you’re following along with your real life lineups, you’ll notice that Newcombe doesn’t pitch again until September 20. This is likely due to the shoulder injury he apparently referred to in that Saturday Evening Post article. However, it wasn’t just something between Newk and Walter Alston. The whole country knew about it:

From The Hartford Courant, September 15, 1955, page 2

And the Dodgers had more problems than just that:

From Appleton Post-Crescent, September 20, 1955, page 28

Newcombe went 8 innings against the Phillies that day, and was in the box again against Pittsburgh on September 24th - though only throwing two innings in relief.

And that was the day that both teams announced their starting pitchers for the first game:

From The Miami News, September 25, 1955, page 24

Of course, Newcombe only pitched that first World Series game - and his shoulder made him pretty ineffective. Instead of pitching the customary 1st, 4th, and 7th games, Newcombe didn’t return to the Series at all.

But the press certainly noticed:

From The Boston Globe, October 3, 1955, page 8

There was apparently an attempt to get Newcombe to start the 7th game, though that didn’t happen:

From St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 4, 1955, page 18

And there’s actually a lot more where that came from. The press coverage of the 1955 World Series was miles above what it had been for the 1905 World Series - and, honestly, the 1905 World Series was better covered overall than our modern World Series have been.

But this all brings up some interesting questions for replayers:

Do you consider Newcombe to be injured and unavailable for the World Series?

Do you have him pitch as if he were healthy - and do the same thing for injured stars such as Duke Snider (who played in all seven games despite a knee injury) and Mickey Mantle (who sat out most of the Series)?

What do you do about players like Sandy Koufax - players on the active rosters for the Series who simply didn’t play for one reason or another?

More of this to come soon.

By the way: if you wanted to replay the 1955 World Series with the original 1956 APBA cards, you’d have no choice but to start Newcombe in more than one game. That’s because APBA didn’t make a card for the likes of Karl Spooner:

The big question is whether that helps or hurts the Dodgers’ chances.