Around The Horn

It was Sunday baseball at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn before 33,813, standing room only. Yankees against Dodgers, Game Four, 1941 World Series, the first for Brooklyn in 21 years.

The first ball was thrown out by New York Mayor LaGuardia. Everyone settled in on that summer-like day to watch the match-up of Brooklyn’s Kirby Higbe and New York’s Atley Donald in the first Subway Series between the two teams.

The game moved to the ninth inning with the Brooks clinging to a 4-3 lead. Higbe and Donald were long gone. In their place were Brooklyn’s Hugh Casey and Yankee reliever Johnny Murphy.

The burly Casey got Johnny Sturm and Red Rolfe on ground balls. That made it seven in a row for him. Tommy Henrich was next. The count ran full.

“Casey goes into the windup,” Mel Allen described it. “Around comes the right arm, in comes the pitch. A swing by Henrich . . . he swings and misses, strike three! But the ball gets away from Mickey Owen. It’s rolling back to the screen. Tommy Henrich races down toward first base. He makes it safely. And the Yankees are still alive with Joe DiMaggio coming up to bat.”

That fabled call by Allen succinctly and dramatically described what happened. Tommy Henrich recalled: “That ball broke like no curve I’d ever seen Casey throw. As I start to swing, I think, ‘No good. Hold up.’ That thing broke so sharp, though, that as I tried to hold up, my mind said, ‘He might have trouble with it.’”

Owen, who ironically, that season, set the National League record for 476 consecutive errorless chances accepted by a catcher while setting a Dodger season record by fielding .995, was the goat.

There were those who thought the game was over when Henrich swung and apparently struck out on the Casey 3-2 pitch. A few Yankee players were headed down the runway to their locker room. Police, positioned in the Dodger dugout, were out on the field prepared to handle crowd control. The police, it was later claimed,were an issue for Owen trying to come up with the passed ball.

A shaken Casey was roughed up for four runs. The Yankees wound up beating the stunned Dodgers,7-4. The next day a four hitter by Tiny Bonham gave the Yankees a 3-1 victory and the world championship again.

For the Dodgers, it was “Wait ’til Next Year” again.

Harvey Frommer is now in his 32nd consecutive year of writing sports books. He is the author of 38 sports books, including the classics: “New York City Baseball,” “Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball,” “Rickey and Robinson,” “A Yankee Century,” and Red Sox Vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry” (with Frederic J. Frommer). His newest efforts are OLD TIME BASEBALL and WHERE HAVE ALL THE RED SOX GONE? He is now at work on the definitive book on the 1927 Yankees to be published in 2007.

Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.

FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in excess of 750,000 and appears on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.

The words and phrases are spoken and written day after day, year after year - generally without any wonderment as to how they became part of the language. All have a history, a story. And since so many of you asked for another installment - here it is.

OLD ACHES AND PAINS Luke Appling performed for two decades with the Chicago White Sox. A .310 lifetime batting average was just one of the reasons he was admitted to the Hall of Fame in 1964. His nickname stemmed from the numerous real and imagined illnesses he picked up playing in 2,422 games, while averaging better than a hit a game. Appling was born April 2, 1907, and in 1950 was still playing major league baseball, aches, pains, and all.

OLD RELIABLE Tommy Henrich played for the New York Yankees from 1937 to 1950. His lifetime batting average was only .282, but the value of Henrich to the Yankees was in his clutch hitting. Time after time he would come up in a key situation and deliver. His nickname had its roots in his ability to function under pressure and to perform reliably with distinction.

OLE PERFESSOR Hall of Famer Charles Dillon Stengel was an original. Born on July 30, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri, he played in the majors for 14 years and managed for 25 more-with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Boston Braves, the New York Yankees (10 pennants), and the New York Mets (four tenth-place finishes). He had seen it all, and in one of his more coherent statements, he said, “This here team won’t win anything until we spread enough of our players around the league and make the others [teams] horseshit, too.” The statement underscored the ineptitude of the early Mets. Loquacious, dynamic, vital, Casey could lecture on baseball and life for hours and hours, and that was just part of the reason for his nickname. Actually, in 1914 Stengel held the title of professor at the University of Mississippi, for he spent that year’s spring-training coaching baseball at that institution. That’s how he really came by his nickname.

$100,000 INFIELD That was the price tag and the nickname given to Eddie Collins, “Home Run” Baker, Stuffy McInnis, and Jack Barry, the players who composed the infield for Connie Mack’s 1914 Philadelphia Athletics.

“WAIT ‘TIL NEXT YEAR” A plantive refrain echoed annually by the fans of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, this phrase was an expression of eternal optimism and faith in the ability of their beloved Bums to make up for all the failures and inadequacies of years gone by. It especially applied to the World Series. In 1941, for example, the Dodgers won the pennant but lost the World Series in five games to the New York Yankees. In 1947 the Dodgers won the pennant and lost again in the World Series, this time in seven games, to the New York Yankees. They lost in the 1949 World Series to the Yankees; they bowed in the 1952 World Series to the Yankees; they were defeated in the 1953 World Series by the Yankees-but 1955 was “next year.” The series went seven games, and the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees and became World Champions at long last.

WALKING MAN, THE Eddie Yost played nearly two decades in the major leagues. His lifetime batting average was only .254, but that didn’t keep him off the bases. Yost coaxed pitchers into yielding I,614 walks to him-almost a walk a game through his long career.

WEE WILLIE He was born March 3, 1872, in Brooklyn, New York. He died on January 1, 1923, in Brooklyn, New York. His name was William Henry Keeler. A lefty all the way, he weighed only 140 pounds and was a shade over 5′4″. His tiny physical stature earned him his nickname, but pound for pound he was one of the greatest hitters baseball ever produced. Keeler played for 19 years and recorded a lifetime batting average of .345, fifth on the all-time list. He collected 2,962 hits in 2,124 games, spraying the ball to all fields. Wee Willie’s greatest year was 1897, a season in which he batted .432, recorded 243 hits and 64 stolen bases, and scored 145 runs. He swung a bat that weighed only 30 ounces, but as he said, he “hit ‘em where they ain’t” -and that was more than good enough to gain Keeler entry into baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1939.

Harvey Frommer is now in his 32nd consecutive year of writing sports books. He is the author of 38 sports books, including the classics: “New York City Baseball,” “Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball,” “Rickey and Robinson,” “A Yankee Century,” and Red Sox Vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry” (with Frederic J. Frommer). His newest efforts are OLD TIME BASEBALL and WHERE HAVE ALL THE RED SOX GONE? He is now at work on the definitive book on the 1927 Yankees to be published in 2007.

Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.

FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in excess of 750,000 and appears on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.