Where Have You Gone, Carl Erskine?

A team turns its lonely eyes to you

Where Have You Gone, Carl Erskine?

In real life, Brooklyn sent Carl Erskine down to the minors at the end of April, 1949. He wouldn’t be back up with the big team until mid-July.

The Dodgers in my replay really, really miss him. You’ll see why in this slugfest.

Bats

The weather was ideal for hitting:

When you see a weather report like that, you know you’re going to have to watch out.

Brooklyn led this game 7 to 4 going into the top of the 7th inning. I thought that the Dodgers might smash their way through to the end. The Cardinals managed a run, however, and up came Marty Marion with one on base, down 7-5:

That turned this into a 7-7 ballgame, and I started to really pay attention.

Roy Campanella struck back with one on in the bottom of the 7th:

And, well, that’s just the way this one went. Campy had his second home run of the game, the score was now 9-7, and the question was why in the world Brooklyn didn’t have a reliable pitcher in the bullpen to turn out the lights.

That’s especially a problem when Stan Musial comes up to hit in the top of the 8th with one on:

And, well, now we were tied at 9.

The Drama

This is the part where it really starts to get interesting.

Duke Snider was on first base with one out, and Pee Wee Reese came up:

Gil Hodges was due up next. I decided to have Reese try to steal second in hopes of avoiding the double play:

I’m not certain that I fully understand the defensive indifference here, but I’ll give the computer manager the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, they weren’t going to pitch to Hodges with first base open:

And all of that brought up Carl Furillo, with the bases loaded and only one out:

That was certainly unexpected! Furillo was hit by the pitch, allowing the run to score and everybody to move up. The score was now Brooklyn 10, St. Louis 9.

Up next was the pitcher’s spot. I picked on Eddie Miksis to pinch hit:

That made the score 11-9, and up came Jackie Robinson with two outs:

And so we went to the top of the 9th, leading by an 11-9 margin.

This is where I really would have liked to have Erskine in the bullpen. Instead, we wound up putting Bud Podbielan on the mound.

Up first was Eddie Kazak:

That’s right: four straight balls to start things off. Not a great idea, and especially not with Marion up next:

There were now runners at second and third with no outs for the Cardinals. That was it for Podbielan in my mind. I stuck Morrie Martin out there, hoping to just get those final three outs.

Up next was Joe Garagiola:

Now it was really crisis time. Nippy Jones was up next for the Cardinals:

The score was now 11-10, and there were still runners on first and third with only one out. The Cardinals put Chuck Diering up to pinch hit for the pitcher:

Well, I’ll give you this: it was a surprise, all right. The bunt completely failed, and turned into a game ending double play.

Can you imagine that? BUNTING in a game like this, which had already seen 21 runs scored and 28 hits? Insane.

Neither team played particularly well. There were only 9 walks total, but we also saw 4 errors. One interesting tidbit is that the Cardinals only stranded 6 runners, which surprised me.

Brooklyn is starting to catch steam, but I’m not convinced it will be enough to catch the Pirates.