Having participated in more World Series than any other Major League Baseball team, the New York Yankees have been involved in some of the sport’s greatest moments, but one of the most stirring comebacks in World Series history, by the 1958 Yankees, is largely forgotten. Why this is so is somewhat of a mystery, because the 1958 Yankees, down three games to one to the Milwaukee Braves and left for dead, were brought back mostly because of one man. What “Bullet Bob” Turley did for the 1958 Yankees is one of baseball’s most clutch iron man feats. On a team of stars and legends, Bob Turley outstripped them all to carry the 1958 Yankees to the title.
Let us set the stage for the 1958 Yankees and Turley’s heroics. In 1957, New York, fresh off of the 1956 World Series victory over the Dodgers that featured Don Larsen’s perfect game, faced the same Milwaukee Braves. Braves’ pitcher Lew Burdette beat the Yanks three separate times; on each occasion the right hander threw a complete game, including a 5-0 shutout in Game Seven. The 1958 Milwaukee Braves also featured Warren Spahn on the mound and sluggers like Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthews, and Joe Adcock. Both teams had identical 92-62 records the following year, when the 1958 Yankees ventured to Milwaukee on October 1st to begin the rematch.
The 1958 Yankees were led by Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford, and Bob Turley. The “Bullet” nickname had been given to Turley well before he joined the Bronx Bombers; he had led the league in strikeouts in 1954, relying on a 93 mile an hour fastball for the most part. When he joined the potent New York offense in 1955, part of a humongous eighteen player deal with the Orioles, Bob Turley immediately became a winner. In his first three years in pinstripes, he went 38-23; everything came together for him at the age of 27 as a member of the 1958 Yankees, when he was 21-7 with a 2.97 ERA. He won the Cy Young Award as baseball’s best pitcher, by a small margin over Spahn, but the 1958 Yankees also had the wily Whitey Ford on their roster, and it was Ford who manager Casey Stengal called upon to open the Series.
Ford pitched well in the first game for the 1958 Yankees, but Warren Spahn of Milwaukee was just as good. The game was tied at 3-3 in the tenth, with Ford long gone but Spahn still on the hill. The 1958 Yankees had their premier reliever, Ryne Duren, going into his third inning of work. Duren, who possessed a wicked fastball that he sometimes could not control, had struck out over a batter an inning during the year for the 1958 Yankees, saving twenty games. Spahn had given up his runs on homers by ex-Marine Hank Bauer and Bill “Moose” Skowron. The Braves led off the tenth against the 1958 Yankees with an Aaron strikeout, but sandwiched a pair of singles around a fly out. Pinch hitter Bill Bruton then singled in Joe Adcock with the game winner, putting the 1958 Yankees into a 1-0 Series hole.
The hole became a crater for the 1958 Yankees the next day when Bob Turley failed to get out of the first inning. He gave up a homer to Bruton, and Stengal pulled him after he had given up three hits and a walk to the first five batters. Duke Maas, who had been 7-3 for the 1958 Yankees, then proceeded to make the move look really bad when he gave up a three run homer to the opposing pitcher, Lew Burdette, who now must have looked like Superman to New York. Maas didn’t make it out of the first either, and when the dust cleared, Milwaukee had beaten the 1958 Yankees 13-5, whose only bright spot was Mantle’s two homers off of the Braves’ starter, who had pitched yet another complete game against New York.
Don Larsen is famous for his perfect game in the 1956 World Series; perfection being a hard act to follow, his performance in Game Three for the 1958 Yankees is all but forgotten. Larsen pitched shutout ball for seven innings, allowing six hits, and when Hank Bauer knocked in all four runs with a single and his third homer of the Series, Duren came in to finish the blanking of Milwaukee. The 1958 Yankees had managed only four hits off of Bob Rush and Don McMahon, three of them by the always tough Bauer. Hank was known for his play in the Fall Classic; depending on the Series shares to supplement his income, he would often warn rookies that came aboard the team to play heads up ball by telling them, “Don’t @*� with my money!”
Over 71,000 fans turned out the next day to watch Warren Spahn mow down the 1958 Yankees with a two-hitter. The future Hall of Famer, who would win 363 games in a 21 year career, showed why he would be enshrined in Cooperstown one day, giving up only a triple to Mantle and a single to Skowron. Spahn, who played for Casey Stengal as a member of the Boston Braves when he began his career, and as a Met when he ended it, once joked that “I played for Casey before and after he was a genius.” Stengal and the 1958 Yankees looked like they were finished, as no team had come back from a 3-1 deficit in the Series since the 1925 Pirates. However, “Bullet” Bob Turley and Stengal had other ideas.
Turley flashed his Cy Young form in the fifth game, striking out ten and allowing but five hits. The 1958 Yankees finally solved the mystery of Lew Burdette, knocking him around a bit for six runs in five innings of work, including a solo homer by second baseman Gil McDougal. Still, Milwaukee was headed home needing only to win one more game, and with Burdette ready to repeat history and hurl a Game Seven if necessary.
It would be necessary, as the 1958 Yankees and the Milwaukee Braves played one of the greatest games in baseball history. Stengal sent Ford to the hill to match up with Spahn once more, but Whitey did not have it on this day. Bauer had staked him to a 1-0 lead with his fourth homer of the Series, but the diminutive lefty gave up five hits in an inning and a third; Stengal got him out quickly and this time the move worked big time. The Braves had scored twice off of Ford, but lost a third run at the plate when Elston Howard, playing left, made a perfect throw to the plate on a fly ball by Johnny Logan to nail Andy Pafko trying to score from third.
A sixth inning sacrifice fly by Yogi Berra tied the game, and the relief work of Art Ditmar and Ryne Duren kept it that way as it went to extra innings. But Braves’ skipper Fred Haney pushed the envelope too far when he sent Spahn out for the tenth. McDougal homered to lead off the frame, and still Spahn stayed in. He was almost home with only the one run allowed when singles by Howard, Berra, and Skowron plated an insurance run.
That insurance policy would be needed to be cashed in by the 1958 Yankees when Duren, who struck out eight men in four and two thirds innings of work, finally tired in the bottom half of the inning. Hank Aaron, the future home run king, singled in a run, and when Adcock singled Henry to third with two outs, Stengal walked to the mound to get Duren. Frank Torre, Joe Torre’s brother, pinch hit for Del Crandall, and faced Bob Turley, who had just thrown a complete game the day before for the 1958 Yankees. When Torre lined out to second baseman McDougal, the series was knotted up. The Braves still had Lew Burdette to throw at the 1958 Yankees in Game Seven. New York would ask Larsen to be magical once more, after the magnificent work of Duren, whose relief effort was one of the best ever in a big situation.
On October 9th, the Braves hosted the 1958 Yankees in another Game Seven. The Braves manufactured a quick run in the first, but Frank Torre, playing first, made a pair of errors in the second to aid the 1958 Yankees, who scored a pair of unearned runs. In the Milwaukee third, with men on first and second, Stengal made another of his perplexing moves, removing Larsen. Into the deciding game of the World Series strode Bob Turley, who had just saved the previous contest after winning the one before that. Turley got the 1958 Yankees out of the jam with a pair of ground outs. When Del Crandall tied the game in the sixth with a home run off of the “Bullet”, Stengal stayed with him. Burdette meanwhile was settled down and dominating the 1958 Yankees until he ran into trouble in the eighth inning. With two outs, Berra doubled and Howard, who in this Series earned a place in Yankee fans’ hearts, singled him in, giving the 1958 Yankees a 3-2 lead. Another single put runners on first and second and up stepped Bill Skowron. The “Moose” hit a home run to finally slay Burdette once and for all, pushing the lead to an insurmountable 6-2. Turley escaped a two-on two-out situation in the bottom of the ninth when Red Schoendienst lined out to Mantle, giving the 1958 Yankees their revenge over the Braves in a thrilling seven game World Series.
Bob Turley, who was named the Series MVP for his two wins and one out save, would lose his fastball in 1959 and become a curveball pitcher. When he finally was sold to the Angels in 1962, Bob Turley had gone 82-52 for the Yanks while in the Bronx. Although Skowron, Bauer, McDougal, and Howard had all played big parts in the victory, it was “Bullet” Bob Turley who bailed out the 1958 Yankees, making them World Champs, and making Casey Stengal forever more the “Ol Professor”.
