As exciting as the 2014 St. Louis Cardinals were, the team fell a bit short of the electricity generated by the Cardinals club of 50 years ago. As a very old television program used to say as a lead-in to the show,” Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.”
The 1964 regular season featured one of the biggest folding jobs ever, one which allowed St. Louis to scratch their way back into one of the most dramatic pennant races ever. On Aug. 23, the Philadelphia Phillies had the Cards in their rear view mirror, left in their dust, some 11 games behind. On Sept. 20 the nosedive began; with just 12 games left on their schedule, the Phils started to see their 6 1/2 game lead vaporize.
Going into the season finale, two teams were tied atop the National League, and the Phillies weren’t one of those two clubs. The Cincinnati Reds and hot Cards shared the league’s best records at 92-69 and the moribund, but not yet dead Phils were one game back. A Jim Bunning victory for the Phillies over the Reds and a Bob Gibson win on the final day of the season gave St. Louis the pennant.
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The Cards won the opener over the New York Yankees, 9-5, over a 35-year-old Whitey Ford who experienced arm issues in the game. The “Chairman of the Board” would never again pitch in a Series.
Gibson, coming off a 19-win season, was saddled with the loss in the second game of the Series, and the Yanks tied things up after exploding for four ninth-inning runs in an 8-3 contest. The see-saw ride had just begun.
Game 3 featured New York’s Jim Bouton (later of Ball Four fame) and Curt Simmons locked in a pitchers’ duel. After eight innings, the score read 1-1. In the last half of the ninth, St. Louis reliever Barney Shultz entered the game, threw one pitch to Mickey Mantle and figuratively got whiplash as he swiftly spun his head around in anguish as he watched the trajectory of Mick’s game-winning blast.
The next game featured an early 3-0 Yankees lead before a grand slam off the bat of NL MVP Ken Boyer gave the Cardinals all the runs they would need in a 4-3 win, tying the Series at two games apiece. The St. Louis bullpen was a key with Roger Craig and Ron Taylor working 8 2/3 innings of shutout ball, giving up just two hits.
The fifth game saw Gibson take the ball once more. Up by two runs, he faced Tom Tresh with two outs in the ninth. A very un-Gibson-like result ensued when Tresh’s two-run shot tied things up. However, a three-run tenth inning gave the Cardinals ace the win.
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It was back to St. Louis and Busch Stadium for Game 6. Back-to-back homers by the M & M boys, Mantle and Roger Maris, along with an eighth inning Joe Pepitone grand slam allowed the Yanks to breeze to an 8-3 win and set up a deciding Game Seven.
In that contest, Mel Stottlemyre and the future Hall of Famer Gibson squared off. One key blow came via a homer by a 25-year-old Lou Brock, another future Hall of Famer who had been acquired by St. Louis in June from the Cubs for an aging Ernie Broglio in what has since been labeled one of the worst swaps in baseball history. Gibson struggled to hold on to a 6-0 lead through five innings, tiring and surrendering home runs to Mantle, Phil Linz, and Ken Boyer’s brother, Clete, with the latter two homers coming in the ninth.
Gibson managed to hang in there, though, to raise his record in the Series to 2-1. He fanned 31 in 27 innings while putting up an ERA of 3.00 ( 0.01 points lower than his regular season ERA). He had prevailed, nailing down the championship with a 7-5 decision. It marked the first world title for the Cardinals since 1946.
Other highlights and points of interest from the ’64 World Series:
- The Boyers became the first brother combo to homer in the same Series. In fact, they both connected in the same game once in the ’64 Series.
- One day after the Fall Classic ended, both the Cardinals manager, Johnny Keane, and the Yankees skipper, Yogi Berra, were no longer their club’s manager. Berra was fired and Keane quit his job. In a strange twist, the next season would open with Keane as the new manager of the Yankees.
- The Yankees of this time period were on the decline— just two seasons later, their tumble was complete, going from winning the ’64 flag to winding up in the cellar in 1966, in tenth place with just 70 wins. The loss of the ’64 World Series, coupled with their being swept in the World Series the year before by the Dodgers, marked the start of a long hiatus for the Yankees in postseason play. After playing in the Autumn Classic in 14 of 16 seasons from 1949 through 1964, they would not make it back until 1976, nor would they win another World Series until 1977.
- One of the greatest baseball quotes ever came out of the 1964 World Series. Gibson started the deciding game on, get this, just two days’ rest. When he was getting hit hard in the ninth inning many observers thought his manager would have to lift him. Later, when asked if he had indeed entertained the idea of going to his bullpen, Keane replied, “I never considered taking him out. I had a commitment to his heart.”
No matter what the 2014 Cardinals did and no matter what this solidly-built club does next season, it will be difficult to match their counterparts’ heroics from 50 years ago.