Here you go, my friend:
In 1944, the Dodgers, Yankees and Giants faced off in a single nine-inning game to support the war effort
By Roger Rubin
Once upon a time three teams met on hallowed ground in Manhattan and played one another in a single nine-inning game for New York baseball bragging rights before 50,000 fans.
It sounds like the opening of a city baseball fairytale, right? But it's actually a true story.
If you thought the Subway Series, which gets underway again in this town on Monday — couldn't be matched for baseball entertainment then you don't know about the "Tri-Cornered Baseball Game" that was played June 26, 1944, at the famed Polo Grounds.
The Giants, Dodgers and Yankees came together that day for an exhibition to raise money for the war effort. The results were unprecedented in so many ways. There were to be three ceremonial first pitches by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (though a sore arm limited him to one). The event raised $5.5 million in war bond purchases. And the final score was Dodgers 5, Yankees 1, Giants 0.
"We got a great crowd," recalled Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca. "For the players in the game, what was happening was very strange: three teams playing in one nine-inning game. But you couldn't beat the cause. In New York, the newspapers were writing all about it."
In the Daily News, Dick Young called it "the wackiest diamond battle ever conceived" and described the crowd as "amused and confused."
"Each team was playing the field for six innings, three against each opponent. Each team was at-bat for three innings, against each opponent," said Dr. Michael Huber, Professor of Mathematics at Muhlenberg College, who is writing an academic paper about the event. "This was like nothing the New York fans had ever seen."
The hometeam Giants and Dodgers were bitter rivals in the National League and each wanted nothing more than a setting where the American League Yankees were in the other dugout - because that would mean a World Series. But on this occasion the Giants looked out from the home dugout to see the Dodgers and Yankees sharing the opposing dugout.
"It was 70 years ago, but I remember feeling like there was something else that I wanted," Branca said. "I wanted games with the Yankees in the other dugout and not ours. I wanted the World Series. We won that game, if you can call it that, so why didn't we win the pennant?"
These were the war years, and so many of baseball's best players were serving in the military. It was not Joe DiMaggio in center field for the Yankees but Johnny Lindell. The Dodgers' roster was an hourglass with older players like 41-year-old Hall of Famer to-be Paul Waner alongside 16-year-old rookie shortstop Tommy Brown, the youngest player in MLB history until 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall made the Reds' big league roster earlier that month. The Giants had Phil Weintraub at first base while Johnny Mize was in the service.
New York Jounral-American sports editor Max Kase was a driving force in assembling the game, Huber said. "He was an important figure in New York sports," he explained. "Kase played a role in the formation of the Knicks and later won a Pulitzer."
During the war years Kase was deeply committed to the effort overseas. In 1944 he was the chairman of the Fifth War Loan Sports Committee and helped arrange a series of events that involved buying bonds, including one at Aqueduct Racetrack and the Tri-Corner game, whose format was designed in part by Columbia University mathematics professor Paul A. Smith, according to a report in the New York Times.
Fans could buy tickets at the War Bond office in Times Square, at Macy's or at the Polo Grounds. The purchase of a $25 bond came with a ticket to the game.
Huber explained that 40,000 fans bought $25 bonds, 5,809 fans bought $100 bonds and 3,796 bought $1,000 bonds for admission for an afternoon filled with events that culminated in the game. Bond Clothing Stores paid for $1 million in bonds for a game program signed by all the players. And LaGuardia pledged another $50 million in bonds that day on behalf of the City of New York. Huber said that, using the consumer price index, the $4.5 million raised with ticket sales was the equivalent of about $59 million in today's dollars. And the $56.5 million in combined sales meant the day's events raised over $750 million in today's dollars.
"It's a fantastic number by today's measure," said Huber, a retired Army Colonel who served in Desert Storm. "That day was much more than just the game. For a baseball fan it had to be something special."
The Daily News' Jim Culley called the afternoon "a fantasy."
There was a contest between catchers for throwing accuracy to second base, won by the Dodgers' Bobby Bragan, and a long-distance fungo hitting competition where first place went to the Giants' 18-year-old Cal McLish (Calvin Coolidge Julius Cesar Tuskahoma McLish to his family) for a 416-foot shot.
"I remember they set up a barrel at second base for the six catchers (two from each team) to throw the ball into," Branca recalled. "None of them got the ball into the barrel."
There were also three competitions running the bases, again featuring two players from each club. In each of the three heats, one player started at second and the other at home plate in a two-base sprint. The Yankees' Snuffy Stirnweiss, who would have a league-leading 55 steals that season, won his heat in 7.8 seconds which was the fastest among the six.
Some 500 wounded servicemen from area hospitals were brought in and received a raucous ovation, according to accounts in the Daily News and New York Times. Milton Berle did a short routine and the Coast Guard band played. Baseball comedian Al Schacht - he was dubbed the 'Clown Prince of Baseball,' so think the Phillie Phanatic for that era - performed.
And legends from the two clubs - including Bill Dickey of the Yankees, Zack Wheat of the Dodgers and John McGraw and Roger Bresnahan of the Giants - were welcomed.
According to the Daily News, it was at that event that the 37-year-old Dickey said he would return from the military to baseball. He was the Yankees' player/manager for part of the 1946 season.
"Babe Ruth was supposed to come to the game and that was one of the most-anticipated parts," Huber said. "But Ruth's health was in decline and he did not go to the event."
The format for the game called for the Giants to sit out the first, fourth and seventh innings, the Giants to rest the second, fifth and eighth innings and the Dodgers to take the pine for the third, sixth and ninth.
The Dodgers took the lead early on a Dixie Walker RBI single off the Yankees' Al Lyons in the first. They tacked on two more in the second inning on a run-scoring double by Ed Stanky and a run-scoring single by Frenchy Bordagaray against the Giants' Johnny Allen. Branca pitched two innings, one against the Yanks and one against the Giants.
"Maybe the craziest thing about the game was we left before it was over," Branca said. "We won and weren't there to see it finish."
The Dodgers were scheduled for a doubleheader in Chicago on June 28 and had to leave after the eighth inning to catch their train. When they exited the park, their lead was 5-0-0. The Yankees got their lone run in the final frame when Giants shortstop Buddy Kerr committed a pair of errors after Stirnweiss singled off Crip Polli.
In Young's Daily News game story he wrote "this represented the most drastic development in the National sport since its birth over a hundred years ago" and that "it is assumed Col. Abner Doubleday's ghost has no objection."