Duke Snider, Clem Labine, Roy Campanella and Gil Hodges
By DAVE ANDERSON
The New York Times
Published: March 5, 2007
Bobby Thomson’s home run against Ralph Branca is always the primary story line for the New York Giants’ conquest of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1951 National League pennant playoff. But a mostly forgotten and fractious subplot involved the Dodgers right-hander Clem Labine, who died Friday at 80, and his manipulative manager, Chuck Dressen.
Labine later developed into the Dodgers’ closer long before that term was part of baseball’s vocabulary. He is remembered for an overhand curveball that dropped as if it fell off a table and for his 10-0 victory against the Giants at the Polo Grounds in Game 2 of the playoff. The victory created the stage for Thomson’s three-run ninth-inning homer the next day.
But had Labine, then a cocky rookie only two months up from the minors, not defied Dressen’s instructions and had Dressen not been so stubborn about keeping Labine in the manager’s doghouse for more than a week in the final days of the schedule, maybe the Dodgers would not have blown what had been a 13 ½-game lead in mid-August.
After being promoted from the St. Paul farm team on July 17, Labine appeared to be pennant insurance against the Giants’ challenge. As a spot starter and reliever, he quickly posted 4-0 record. But in the first inning of a Friday night game at Ebbets Field on the season’s next-to-last weekend, the Phillies loaded the bases.
Chuck Dressen (right with Jackie Robinson)
Willie Jones, known as Puddin’ Head, a Dodgers tormentor, was up. With the bases loaded, most pitchers, then and now, prefer to use a full windup, but Labine threw his first pitch from the stretch position. Dressen hurried to the mound.
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Labine explained that he could throw a better curveball from the stretch position, but Dressen growled, “Use your full windup.” Labine disobeyed. He threw another curveball from the stretch position and Jones deposited it in the left-field stands for a grand slam. “Fresh kid,” Dressen was heard muttering, or words to that effect.
When the Phillies added another run in the second, Labine was yanked, not to appear again for eight full days.
As the Dodgers’ lead dwindled to two and a half games, Labine was listed as the “probable pitcher” for the opener of a Tuesday doubleheader in Boston, but Branca and Carl Erskine started. The Dodgers lost both games. The lead was down to one game. On Wednesday, the right-hander Don Newcombe maintained that lead in a 15-5 rout.
On Thursday morning in Boston, Dressen made, in hindsight, another mistake. Informed by telephone that if there were a pennant playoff, the Dodgers had won the coin toss for the right to choose the first game at home or both the second and third games at home, Dressen surprisingly barked, “First game in Brooklyn.”
That afternoon, Dressen, who had planned to rest the left-hander Preacher Roe (22-2) until the World Series, started Roe and told Labine: “Don’t go to the bullpen. Stay in the dugout.” When the Dodgers lost, 4-3, the lead was down to half a game, and when they lost Friday night in Philadelphia while the Giants were idle, they were tied.
On Saturday, both teams won. On Sunday, with Roe starting on only two days’ rest, the Phillies jumped ahead, 4-0, and Roe was out. Branca wasn’t much better. In the fifth, Dressen brought in Clyde King and, finally, Labine. In the sixth, the Dodgers were losing, 8-5, when the Shibe Park scoreboard showed the Giants had won in Boston, 3-2.
Now the Dodgers had to win to create a playoff. They did, 9-8, on Jackie Robinson’s 14th-inning home run after he made a diving, game-saving catch in the 12th inning.
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But when the Giants won the playoff opener, 3-1, at Ebbets Field on home runs by Thomson and Monte Irvin against Branca, the Dodgers had to win both games at the Polo Grounds. Dressen was desperate. So desperate he announced that Labine, the forgotten fresh kid, would start the second game.
“The Polo Grounds is a park for the overhand curve,” Dressen said, referring to its short distance for home runs down each foul line. “The strong hitters won’t pull it.”
With two out and the bases loaded in the third, Labine, remembering Dressen’s instructions nearly two weeks earlier, threw from a full windup and Thomson missed a low sweeping outside curveball that Dressen had called from the dugout. After the 10-0 victory on Labine’s six-hitter, Dressen chirped:
“You think I’m going to have him throw a fastball there? If Labine doesn’t get it over, or if Thomson doesn’t swing, one run is better than four.”
Bobby Thomson
As the baseball world knows, the next day, Branca was summoned to relieve Newcombe in the ninth inning. As Branca strolled to the mound, Labine began throwing next to Erskine. Branca threw two fastballs. Thomson took the first for a strike. The second was up and in. Thomson hit it into the lower left-field stands.
But what if Labine had not defied Dressen by throwing that curveball from the stretch position to Puddin’ Head Jones at Ebbets Field? What if Dressen had not put Labine in the doghouse for more than a week? What if Labine had been used more in that final week? Would the Dodgers have held onto first place and won the pennant without a playoff?
The baseball world will never know.
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