The Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers were the antagonists in the 1959 World Series and that was the first World Series I was old enough to be aware of, as opposed to the World Series of 1958 that I knew had been won by the Milwaukee Braves and that’s it.
In those days all World Series games were played in the afternoon, but they always started before school let out, so we missed the first couple of innings. I didn’t know much about either team. Given that I was in elementary school, I didn’t know much about anything, actually. But I decided to root for the White Sox because they represented the American League like my Red Sox.
Not that I was particularly aware of it at the time, unless broadcasters mentioned it, but this was the White Sox’s first appearance in the World Series since the 1919 Black Sox Scandal when the team was accused of throwing fixing the results so the Cincinnati Reds would win. It was also the Dodgers’ first time in the Series since they fled Brooklyn.
The things I remember best are the Dodgers’ home stadium, their temporary headquarters, the Los Angeles Coliseum, players named Wally Moon and Chuck Essegian for LA, and Early Wynn, Luis Aparacio, Nellie Fox and Ted Kluzewski for the White Sox. We all thought it was pretty cool that Big Klu had the muscles of a rassler and wore his game jerseys with cut-off sleeves to enhance the view of his bulging biceps.
Back to the Coliseum. Mostly used for football and Olympic games, the vast building was misshapen for baseball. I do remember the high screen in left-field and how close the wall seemed (251 feet from home plate, a gimmee shot for home runs by right-handed batters). That, and all of the sunshine. It was the sunshine of California dreaming, the same bright sky that lured transients west by the millions over the years as the state grew into our most populous one.
The Dodgers beat the White Sox–just practice for being a Red Sox fan as it so happened–and it took until 2005 before the White Sox returned to a Series, and in a serendipitous year, won it.
Decades later, I was living in Chicago and got to know a handful of the surviving members of the 1959 American League pennant winners. None of them felt any warmth towards the Coliseum. The pitchers despised that short left-field wall. It almost haunted them. Center fielder Jim Landis, a superb fielder, was bugged by the shadows that interfered with him catching fly balls.
But the players did have good memories of the 1959 club, one very fondly recalled by White Sox fans.
“We were very proud to win in 1959,” said left-handed pitcher Billy Pierce a half-century later.
Pierce makes his home in the Chicago area and a few years ago the team erected a statue of him at U.S. Cellular Field, not far from a statue of the doubleplay combination of Fox and Aparicio together. Pierce and a few of the remaining living members of the 1959 club appeared at SoxFest, a winter gathering for fans and dragged out memories of that team’s achievements and remembrances of the Series.
“Fifty years ago,” Landis said. “It’s unbelievable that it’s that long ago. To be remembered, what a feeling it is for us. We’re so glad we can come back.”
Just being physically able to journey to Chicago for 75- and 80-year-olds was indeed precious. Early Wynn, the American League Cy Young Award winner in 1959, is deceased. So is Klu. Fox died young. Aparicio spends most of his time in Venezuela. Jim Rivera came. So did Bob Shaw. But stunningly, Shaw, who seemed as energetic as anyone, soon after contracted a swiftly moving cancer and died in September of 2010.
Old age has claimed most of the participants from that 1959 World Series, but not the Coliseum, which opened in 1923. In March of 2008, essentially as a gimmick, the Coliseum was used for an exhibition game between the Dodgers and the Red Sox. The 115,300 fans that crammed in sent a Guinness Book of World Records mark for the largest attendance at a baseball game. That darned left field fence still looked like a monster looming over the right shoulder of the pitchers.