This story originally ran in the November 1956 edition of SPORT Magazine — a year after Jackie Robinson finally won his first World Series with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Before 1955, Robinson had played in four World Series since he debuted in 1947 — all against the New York Yankees, all losses. After he and the Dodgers finally broke through, he spoke to SPORT Magazine about how he played in the series. This story has been condensed for clarity and space.
I GO ABOUT the World Series in an entirely different frame of mind from the way I play during the regular season. I don’t play the same way in the Series at all.
There are two reasons for it. First, I think you’ve got to fight hard to keep from giving in to a natural tendency to relax and let down after you’ve won the pennant — especially if you don’t clinch it until right at the very end. This may not be true of your first World Series, when just the excitement of playing in one keeps you fired up, but it’s something to worry about after you’ve been in a few of them. And second, you’ve got to remember every minute that the World Series is short and you can win it or lose it in an awful hurry. In a 154-game season the breaks average up and you can usually figure that the best team is going to come out on top in the end. But in a seven-game series, or shorter, you get a couple of bad breaks and you’re practically out of it.
Like what happened to the Indians in 1954. If they had won that first game, the one they lost at the Polo Grounds, 5-2, on Dusty Rhodes’ three-run homer in the tenth, after Willie Mays had robbed Vic Wertz of a long hit that would have broken up the ball game, it might have been an altogether different story. But they didn’t win it; the breaks went against them and they fell apart.
The thing is, the breaks mean everything in the Series, but you can’t stand around and wait for them to happen. You’ve got to force them, and not only make sure they happen but make sure they happen in your favor.
Take that first game last year. It was the fifth Series I’d been in with Brooklyn, and we’d lost four out of four up to this one. Always to the Yankees. And despite the fact that we’d been losing them all, we’d been going along playing them in orthodox fashion, never trying anything different-and always getting beat. We came up to the eighth inning of this first game losing 6-3. Our club was just playing a baseball game; there was no spark. All the while, I kept thinking, we’ve got to do something to stir this up. Well, Carl Furillo singled to center and Gil Hodges hit a fly ball to Elston Howard. Then I rapped a grounder that Gil McDougald couldn’t hold and Furiilo went to third and I wound up at second. Don Zimmer flied out to Irv Noren in left center and Carl and I both tagged up after the catch. Carl scored, and I went to third.
Billy Herman, our third-base coach, walked over to me and the first thing he said was, “The only way you can go is if you get a big jump.” In effect, he was telling me not to try to steal it. But I was worried about the way things were going and I thought that if I could just do something maybe a little bit different, there might be a change in the feeling of the ball club. As I’ve been saying, I believe that in a World Series you can’t just go along depending on the bunt and the hit-and-run and the orthodox play. And standing out there, as I went up the third-base line on the first pitch, I could see that Whitey Ford, the Yankees’ pitcher, wasn’t paying any attention to me at all. Naturally, with us behind two runs, he didn’t figure me to try it. So I made up my mind to go all the way on him if it looked like I could make it, and I did. Sure, it was a close play, and we didn’t win the game anyway, but I honestly believe the steal gave the ball club a shot in the arm. I think there was a different attitude in our clubhouse after the game than there would have been if we’d just gone down quietly, 6-4.
Read More: From SPORT Magazine – Why Jackie Robinson played bolder in the World Series