The 1954 World Series will always be remembered by “The Catch.” Every baseball fan knows the story. The New York Giants and Cleveland entered the eighth inning of Game 1 at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan locked in a 2-2 tie. The visitors got the first two men on base against New York’s Sal Maglie. Against reliever Don Liddle, Vic Wertz smashed a 455-foot drive to center field. Unfortunately for Wertz, the center field wall was 483 feet from home plate in the venerable horseshoe-shaped ball field, and Willie Mays was playing center field. Mays raced back, made a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch, and quickly turned and fired the ball into the infield to keep any runs from scoring.
Observers thought it was one of the greatest catches they’d ever seen. However, Mays and his manager, Leo Durocher, weren’t as impressed. After the game, Mays told United Press that he thought he’d made two better catches during the season. In his book, The Era, author Roger Kahn recalled Durocher snapping at a reporter who asked whether that was the greatest catch Mays ever made. “What kinda question is that?” Durocher asked. “Willie makes great catches like that alla time. He’s made catches like that all year. Where you been?”
OK, then, I’ll write about someone else.
The Unlikely Hero
Major League Baseball didn’t begin issuing the World Series Most Valuable Player Award until the next year. Had they begun the award a year sooner, they would have had a tough decision on their hands between Mays and his teammate, Dusty Rhodes. Cleveland was heavily favored to win that Series. They won 111 games during the regular season, ending the New York Yankees’ five-year stranglehold over the American League pennant. Their pitching staff boasted two 23-game winners in Early Wynn and Bob Lemon. Right behind them was 19-game winner Mike Garcia and future Hall of Famer Bob Feller, who was 13-3. One person who wasn’t impressed with Cleveland’s record was Giants traveling secretary Eddie Brannick, who told Al Abrams of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “There were five Pittsburgh teams in the American League,” referring to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who were 53-101 and finished last in the National League. Ouch!
James Lamar Rhodes was born on May 13, 1927, in Mathews, Alabama. He got as far as eighth grade, and as a teenager, he picked cotton and worked in a grocery store. He joined the Navy when he was 17. When he got out of the Navy two years later, he played semiprofessional ball in his hometown, where Chicago Cubs scout Bruce I. Hayes saw him and signed him as an amateur free agent. Rhodes played minor league ball from 1947 until the Giants purchased his contract in the middle of the 1952 season. The left-handed-hitting outfielder was never a regular in the majors because he wasn’t considered good enough defensively. Indeed, in his book, Nice Guys Finish Last, Durocher called Rhodes the “worst fielder who ever played in a big league game.” Rhodes was fine with how he was employed. Reflecting on his career in 1972, he told Dave Distel of The Los Angeles Times, “Deep down inside, I didn’t want to play every day. I just liked to hang around and come up with men on base.”
Game 1: Don’t Blame the Chinese
Game 1 went into extra innings, still tied, 2-2. Cleveland’s starter Lemon was still on the mound in the bottom of the tenth. With one out, Lemon walked Mays, and after Mays stole second, Lemon intentionally walked Hank Thompson. With right-handed batter Monte Irvin due up against the right-hander Lemon, Durocher called on his secret weapon, Rhodes, to pinch hit. During the regular season, Rhodes hit .341/.410/.695, 15 HR, and 50 RBI in 186 plate appearances. Although he appeared in just 82 games, playing in the field in only 37 of them, he received votes for the NL Most Valuable Player Award.
On Lemon’s first pitch to Rhodes, he hung a curveball. Rhodes hit it in the air toward the right field line, which was just 258 feet from home plate. On the Mutual Broadcasting System, “Brother Al” Helfer described Rhodes’ at-bat thusly to the radio audience: “Rhodes swings on the first pitch and hits a high fly ball into right field. Coming over [Dave] Pope, back to the line. He leaps. He can’t get it! It’s into the right field stands for a home run for Dusty Rhodes! Lemon throws his glove straight up in the air! And that’s it! That does it!”
Such was baseball in the Polo Grounds, where Wertz could hit a ball 455 feet and make an out, while Rhodes could hit one 259 feet, barely into the front row, and be a hero. “Lemon’s glove went further than my home run,” Rhodes joked to Bill Madden of the New York Daily News in 2009. In the parlance of those politically incorrect times when Cleveland’s baseball team could be named the Indians, Rhodes’ home run was called a “Chinese” home run on the radio and in the papers. Dick Young of the Daily News wrote a particularly insensitive column about it. Finally, Shavey Lee of New York’s Chinatown had enough. He wrote a letter to Brannick, protesting the use of the term. Wrote Lee, “It isn’t the fault of the Chinese if you have 258-foot fences. Why should we be blamed all the time?”
Game 2: “I Sure Love to Take a Whack at That Ball”
Game 2 pitted Giants’ left-hander Johnny Antonelli against Cleveland right-hander Wynn. The first batter of the game, Al Smith, homered off Antonelli. That was the only run Cleveland got. Meanwhile, Wynn had a perfect game going through the first four innings. When Mays led off the bottom of the fifth with a walk, and Thompson followed with a single, Durocher must have figured that scoring opportunities would be scarce, and he sent Rhodes to hit for Irvin once again. Rhodes hit a fly ball single to shallow left-center field that dropped in front of center fielder Larry Doby (who Joe DiMaggio noted was playing “unusually deep” in his guest column) to score Mays and advance Thompson to third. One out later, Wes Westrum walked, and Antonelli rapped into a force play to score Thompson with the winning run.
Rhodes remained in the game to take Irvin’s spot in left field. When he came up again in the seventh against Wynn, he launched a solo home run deep off the right field roof. (Jack Hernon of the Post-Gazette apparently didn’t get Lee’s memo, noting that this home run was “not Chinese.”) The 3-1 score held up. The Giants were ahead, 2-0, in games, and Rhodes was 3-for-3. He understood how he was being employed by Durocher. “I ain’t much of a fielder and I got a pretty lousy arm,” Rhodes told United Press, “but I sure love to take a whack at that ball.” DiMaggio predicted a four-game sweep.
Game 3: “Leo Knows When I’m Ready”
The scene shifted to Cleveland Stadium, and this time it was Garcia’s turn to take the mound for Cleveland. The Giants took an early 1-0 lead thanks to Mays’ RBI single in the first inning. The score was still 1-0 when New York loaded the bases with one out in the third. With Irvin, who’d popped out in the first inning against Garcia, due up, Durocher sensed an opportunity to break the game open and called on Rhodes once again. Rhodes smashed Garcia’s first pitch on a line drive to right field to drive in two runs. Rhodes was now 4-for-4 in the Series and tied a Series record with three pinch hits in three games.
Once again, Rhodes remained in the game to take over left field from Irvin. In his next plate appearance, Rhodes came to bat in the fifth inning with a runner on second base. By then, Cleveland manager Al Lopez had seen enough of him and ordered him intentionally walked. Later, Rhodes showed he was human, going hitless for the rest of the game. The Giants cruised to a 6-2 victory, with Rhodes’ hit being the difference.
After the game, Rhodes was asked how he felt about being left out of the starting lineup despite his hot hitting. Rhodes absolved Durocher and even gave him credit. “Leo knows I’m a streak hitter,” he told Associated Press. “He can tell when I’m ready. How? I’ll never know. I think I’m always ready but he can really tell.” Setting a Series record didn’t matter to him, either. “Who cares about records? They don’t mean a thing in a deal like this. We came out here to win the World Series and we’re gonna do it.” He then joined the great DiMaggio in predicting a Giants sweep. He was anxious to go home and go fishing.
Game 4: Dusty’s Going Fishing
The Giants earned their sweep the next day, knocking out Lemon with seven runs over the first five innings and hanging on to win, 7-4. They did it without Rhodes this time. Irvin touched up Lemon for a double in the second inning. That, along with two Cleveland errors, sparked a two-run rally. By the time Irvin came up in the third inning, the Giants were ahead 3-0, and despite having runners on first and second, Durocher allowed him to bat. Why not use Rhodes to pinch hit for Irvin, who struck out? Durocher wasn’t big on discussing strategy with the unwashed masses in the media. Maybe Durocher was comfortable with Irvin against Lemon after Irvin’s double. Maybe with a three-run lead, Durocher felt safe and wanted Irvin’s superior defense in left field. Perhaps his magical sixth sense told him Rhodes wasn’t “ready” after making two outs in Game 3.
Afterward, Lopez was left to lament to the Associated Press over how his team came up short. He was at a loss for why his “big three” starters had a combined 5.68 ERA, why Cleveland hit just .190 as a team, or why they made errors at the most inopportune times. He ticked off a myriad of factors that contributed to Cleveland’s defeat but never mentioned Rhodes. Feller, who didn’t get into a Series game, was more succinct when asked what happened. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I wasn’t in it.”
The Career Winds Down
In 1955, Rhodes hit .305 for New York, but in 1956, his former teammate Bill Rigney took over as manager for Durocher. Maybe Rhodes needed Swami Durocher around to predict when he was “ready.” Whatever the reason, Rhodes hit just .212 from 1956 to 1957. He spent 1958 at Triple-A Phoenix. When he started the 1959 season hitting .325 in Phoenix, he was called up to the Giants, who were now in San Francisco, for the rest of the season. But he was just 9-for-48 with San Francisco and spent the next three seasons at Triple-A Tacoma, posting rather pedestrian numbers before retiring from baseball.
Rhodes returned to Manhattan, where his World Series ring was taken from him by muggers on the subway, and worked as a Pinkerton guard and later on a tugboat. He wanted to coach, but never got an offer, so he never returned to baseball. Later, he moved to Las Vegas, where he passed away at the age of 82 on June 17, 2009.
