New York Yankees tickets

BROOKLYN ASSEMBLED AN EVEN MORE powerful team for their 1953 rematch with the Yankees after taking a wrecking ball to the rest of the league, going 105-49 and winning the pennant by thirteen games. The 1953 Dodgers were widely hailed as the greatest team in Brooklyn history, and were heavily favored to win the World Series despite their loss to the Yankees in 1952. "Statistically, this year, the Dodgers are champions of the world before they ever take the field to play the series," Rud Rennie wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune.

The Yankees started the World Series with a bang at Yankee Stadium, scoring four runs and knocking Brooklyn pitcher Carl Erskine out of the game after just one inning. The Dodgers tried to come back in the seventh, scoring a run and seeking more with runners on first and second and nobody out. The Dodgers tried to sacrifice the runners over twice, but both times Yogi Berra threw the lead runner out at third base, effectively ending Brooklyn's chances. They lost the game, 9-5, and even worse, National League MVP Roy Campanella was hit on his right pinky finger by a pitch from Allie Reynolds, putting his availability for the rest of the Series in doubt. The Yankees also took Game 2, as Billy Martin hit a game-tying homer in the seventh inning and Mickey Mantle smacked a go-ahead shot in the eighth.

The Series now moved across town to Flatbush, where the teams played, as Roger Kahn wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune, "a game that offered one climax after another, each more grinding than the one before, a game that will be remembered with the finest." Ebbets Field was filled with an enthusiastic crowd that included Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. "You talk about excitement," Yankee Gene Woodling said. "You'd go into Ebbets Field with the small field and colorful billboards, and their little band would be playing in the stands and the crowd would be going crazy. The Ebbets Field fans were wilder than Yankee Stadium fans." With the Dodgers down two games to none, Jackie Robinson and Campanella called a special 10 a.m. bat¬ting practice session before Game 3. It must have worked. In the sixth inning Robinson doubled off the wall, went to third on a balk, and scored on a squeeze bunt. Meanwhile, Carl Erskine was pitching a masterpiece, holding the Yankees hitless until the fifth inning, when three infield singles-all of which glanced off the gloves of Dodger infielders-netted a run for New York. Aided by the throng of white shirts in the center field bleachers, which made it hard for batters to pick up the ball, Erskine set a new Series record by striking out fourteen Yankees, including Mantle four times. "He had a beautiful change of pace," Campanella said, "with his best pitch being his overhand curve to those left-handers."

Howard Ehmke, who had set the pre¬vious record of thirteen strikeouts in 1929, listened to Erskine's game on his car radio while on a country drive with his wife. The game got so exciting that they couldn't turn it off when they reached their destination. The car battery then died and they were left stranded. "Records are made to be broken, I guess," Ehmke sighed. Meanwhile. Campanella, playing despite the broken finger sustained in Game 1, hit the decisive home run in the seventh inning. After the game, Campy told the press that he'd heard Stengel shout "stick it in his ear" to pitcher Vic Raschi while Campanella was batting. though Stengel denied the charge. "I don't care what they say," Stengel said. "How can they watch me instead of watching the game? I'm interested in our runs, not their opinions."