Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 100

In the eighth, the first two Indians reached base and up came Wertz, who to that moment had added two other hits to go with the triple. Leo Durocher figured that Maglie wasn’t going to have any better luck facing Wertz a fourth time around, so the Giants manager replaced him with Don Liddle, who had accompanied Antonelli in the trade from Milwaukee.

Wertz found Liddle to be no less a mystery than Maglie, launching a deep drive to straightaway center. In any other ballpark it would have cleared the fence, but this was the Polo Grounds, with its bizarre, bathtub like field dimensions of a

mere 260 feet down the lines and 480 to dead center. Willie Mays, who was playing in, tore off after Wertz’s drive and made a sensational over the shoulder catch some 450 feet from Wertz’s bat. The amazement was not in how Mays caught the ball, but that he was just able to catch up to it.

The play, forever to be known in history simply as “The Catch,” is probably the game’s most overrated moment in terms of its technical merits; even Mays said he’d made many more difficult plays over his career. But it was an emotional backbreaker for the Indians, and they were further wounded when Dusty Rhodes came off the bench in the 10th inning and finally broke the tie

with a three run homer off Lemon, down the right field line 260