It’s difficult to accurately gauge the impact of the Indians’ embarrassing pratfall in the 1954 World Series on the community and the future of the franchise itself. There are those who will argue that it took the team 41 years to recover, since the Indians didn’t win another pennant, or even qualify for post-season competition, which became somewhat easier when the American and National Leagues split into divisions, until 1995. While the bottom line is that a series of well-meaning but dreadfully underfinanced ownerships were mainly responsible for the Indians’ four-decade-long journey through baseball’s wilderness, the seemingly unbeatable Indians loss in the 1954 Series reinforced a belief among Cleveland fans, which can be traced back to the franchise’s earliest days, and which they hold to this day, that something was bound to go wrong. Some how, someway, the Indians would screw up and find a way to disappoint the city and their supporters. Only twice, in 1920 and 1948, had the Indians overcome the stigma and brought home a world championship. If the 1954 Indians, winners of a league record 111 games, couldn’t win the World Series, what Cleveland team ever could or would? And none since has.
As noted elsewhere in this book, it took Clevelanders a long time to warm up to the 1954 Indians. Not until September 12, when 86,000 fans packed Municipal Stadium to cheer the Tribe on to a sweep of the Yankees, reducing the team’s magic number for clinching the pennant to three and convincing even the most pessimistic fans that it was, indeed, the Tribe’s year, did the city truly embrace the team. And the season attendance of 1,335,472 drew Hank Greenberg’s attention. So did the crowd of 71,555 at the third game of the World Series. It was far short of a sell-out, as the Indians already trailed the Giants, two games to none, and a lot of Clevelanders, many of whom had jumped on the team’s bandwagon only two weeks earlier, had jumped off. It doesn’t take much to convince a Cleveland sports fan that the roof is caving in, and, in October of 1954, it was. Home cooking and the friendly confines of cozy League Park had been all the 1920 Indians needed to propel them past the Dodgers to the franchise’s first world championship. The same recipe didn’t work in 1954 (and there’s no way Municipal Stadium could ever have been referred to as “cozy”).
Al Lopez earned a new contract for bringing home a pennant. The 1955 Indians, with key performers Al Rosen, Larry Doby, Vic Wertz, and the “Big Three” of Early Wynn, Mike Garcia and Bob Lemon each a year older, blew a September lead and slipped back to their accustomed position of second place, three games behind the Yankees. The Indians held on to the runner-up spot in 1956, but they didn’t seriously challenge New York, which won its seventh pennant in eight years by a comfortable nine-game margin.
The contract Lopez signed in the fall of 1954 expired after the 1956 season. Greenberg wanted Lopez to return in 1957 and professed to be stunned when his manager resigned on September 28. “These have been six rugged years, and I think a change might do us all some good,” Lopez said.1
According to Gordon Cobbledick, Greenberg asked two writers he encountered in the catacombs of Municipal Stadium why Lopez quit. In unison, the writers replied “because of you!” Cobbledick contended that Lopez would’ve returned had Greenberg offered him a new deal anytime in September of 1956. But Greenberg stubbornly stuck to his belief that a manager should never be rehired during the season, and Lopez, weary of being left twisting in the wind each time he was in the final year of his contract, resigned.
Lopez denied that friction between himself and Greenberg led to his decision. “That isn’t true at all. Hank and I may not have seen eye-to-eye on everything, but we managed to get along. The strain of six rugged years was the main factor in my decision. Another was the fact that I was disappointed because I thought we could have done better in the last six years.”2 The fans, who came to Municipal Stadium in ever decreasing numbers in 1955 and 1956, thought so, too, and weren’t shy about letting Lopez know it.
“This is like closing a chapter on a book,” said Greenberg.3 Despite the rigors of being a major league manager, which Lopez had told Frank Gibbons would lead to an early retirement, he signed with the White Sox for 1957 and led that club to its first World Series in 40 years in 1959. The “Go-Go Sox” lost in six games to a Los Angeles Dodgers squad some baseball historians consider to be among the weakest National League pennant winners ever. Lopez would manage the White Sox through 1965, finishing second in 1963, 1964 and 1965. He came out of retirement to pilot the White Sox again for 47 games in 1968 and the first 17 contests of 1969 before retiring for good.
Greenberg insisted Lopez’s resignation blindsided him, and he had no candidates to replace him. He decided on Kerby Farrell, the manager of the Indians’ top farm team, who lasted just one season. After employing only two managers, Lou Boudreau and Lopez, from 1942 through 1956, with the departure of Lopez, the club may as well have installed a revolving door in the manager’s office. The Greenberg-Lopez partnership may have run its course. But Indians fans of longstanding can be excused for wondering what the team’s future would have been like had Lopez stayed. Maybe the deterioration that began in 1957 would’ve begun anyway.
Greenberg noticed that the Indians’ 1954 attendance was half of what it had been during the world championship season of 1948. The combination of a contender, owner Bill Veeck’s promotional genius, a huge stadium and a booming post-war economy created what might today be termed a “perfect storm.” The red-hot love affair between the city and its baseball team couldn’t last. Cleveland cares about its Indians, but baseball isn’t an all-consuming passion in northeastern Ohio, as it is in New England or on the north side of Chicago. Rather than receiving a pennant bump, Clevelanders were so turned off by the World Series flop that attendance declined to 1.2 million in 1955 and fell even further, to 865,000, in 1956. It was the first time since 1945 that the Indians had failed to draw a million paying customers. Greenberg was convinced that the steady attendance decline since 1949, interrupted only slightly by the 1954 pennant, indicated that Clevelanders were tired of baseball. If Cleveland would no longer support a major league team, Greenberg knew of a metropolitan area that would.
After the 1957 season, during which the Indians had fallen to sixth place, and again after the lackluster 1958 campaign, Greenberg, who owned 19 percent of the team’s stock and sat on the board of directors, urged his fellow directors to move the Indians to the growing metropolis of Minneapolis/St. Paul. The directors rejected the idea in 1957 and fired Greenberg as general manager. Greenberg made another pitch in 1958 and was joined by brothers Andrew and Charles Baxter, who also owned 19 percent of the club’s stock. The other directors put down the insurrection by purchasing the stock owned by Greenberg and the Baxter brothers and sending them on their way. Greenberg would join Veeck’s front office in Chicago and (re-united with Lopez) be part of the White Sox’s 1959 championship.
Both of the participants in the 1954 World Series soon fell on hard times. The Giants, who drew fewer fans than the Indians in 1954 (admittedly, with competition from the Yankees and Dodgers, but also drawing from a much larger population base) finished third in 1955, 18½ games behind the arch-rival Dodgers, and sank to sixth in 1956. Once the flagship franchise of the National League, the Giants were bound for San Francisco in 1958. The Indians, thanks to some civic-minded members of the board of directors, resisted the temptation to relocate to greener pastures and stayed in Cleveland. A succession of underfinanced and just plain unlucky ownerships (the team changed hands in 1962, 1966, 1972, 1975, 1978 and 1986) kept the club on the shores of Lake Erie but failed miserably to produce competitive teams until real estate moguls Richard and David Jacobs, natives of nearby Akron with extensive business holdings in Cleveland, purchased the team and convinced Cuyahoga County voters to approve financing for a shiny new park built exclusively for baseball in 1990. Jacobs (now Progressive) Field opened in 1994, and the following season ushered in the Indians’ “Era of Champions” during which they won six division titles and two pennants, by far the most successful stretch in franchise history. A World Series title continues to elude Cleveland, however.
Lopez’s exemplary managerial record earned him election to the Hall of Fame in 1977. His teams won 1,410 games and fashioned a winning percentage of .584, but he always looked back on 1954, and the World Series in particular, which should’ve represented his crowning achievement, with regret. He called it the lowest point of his career.
Al Rosen’s career peaked with his pursuit of the Triple Crown in 1953. Injuries, mainly the chip fracture of his finger, drastically reduced his effectiveness during the Indians’ record-setting 1954 season, and his batting average continued to fall. After batting .244 in 1955 and .267 in 1956, combining for 36 homers (seven fewer than he’d hit in 1953) and 142 runs batted in (three fewer than he’d driven home in 1953), Rosen retired and became a successful businessman in Cleveland. He, along with another prominent Clevelander, George M. Steinbrenner III, put together a group that tried to buy the Indians from owner Vernon Stouffer in 1971. Stouffer rejected the $8.6 million offer. When CBS was looking to unload the Yankees the following year, Steinbrenner’s group bought them instead. Rosen would serve the Yankees in several capacities, and once he’d had enough of Steinbrenner, he joined the front office of the San Francisco Giants. Thus, he was employed by both of the teams he tried mightily to defeat during his career with the Indians.
It will never be known if Bob Feller could’ve prolonged the 1954 World Series with a victory in the fourth game, had Lopez given him the chance. Feller had proven an effective “doubleheader pitcher” in 1954, but he had just four more wins remaining in his stout right arm. Feller appeared in 25 games in 1955, starting 11 and posting a 4–4 record and 3.47 ERA. He retired after going 0–4 in 19 games in 1956, leaving him with a career mark of 266–162. Feller was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962 and remained an occasional coach and full-time goodwill ambassador for the only team he ever played for, until his death in 2010. A statue of Feller’s classic high leg-kicking windup stands in Bob Feller Plaza outside Progressive Field, the Tribe’s home park.
It was often speculated by writers in the off-season of 1953–1954 what it would take for Greenberg to break up the “Big Three.” The answer turned out to be: more than Greenberg was ever offered. The trio of Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and Mike Garcia remained together through the 1957 season. Lemon’s 18 victories would top the American League in 1955, and he’d win 20 more in 1956. Lemon slipped to 6–11 in 1957 and retired after posting an 0–1 record in 11 games (one start) in 1958. He’d return to the major leagues as a manager in 1970, taking the reins of the second-year expansion Kansas City Royals. Veeck hired Lemon to manage the White Sox in 1977, and was rewarded with a strong third-place (90–72) finish in the American League’s West Division.
Weeks after Veeck fired Lemon, with the White Sox stumbling to a 34–40 start the following year, Steinbrenner turned to him to take over the Yankees from Billy Martin in July of 1978. Lemon’s calm demeanor was just the tonic needed by a talented team whose nerves had been stretched to the breaking point, and he guided the Yankees past the crumbling Red Sox to the East Division title. New York then won a thrilling five-game League Championship Series from Lemon’s former club, the Royals, and defeated the Dodgers in six games in the World Series. It was one of the most impressive jobs any manager has ever turned in, given the circumstances. It was also the high point of Lemon’s managerial career. He was fired by Steinbrenner 65 games into the 1979 season, and returned to pilot the Yankees for the final 25 games of the second half of the strike-shortened 1981 campaign, replacing Gene Michael. The Yankees, under Michael, had been in first place in their division when the players walked off the job and were guaranteed a spot in the post-season when action resumed. Lemon led New York to a victory over the second-half champion Milwaukee Brewers in the division playoff to earn a spot in the League Championship Series, which the Yankees swept from Martin’s Oakland Athletics in three games. The Yankees then won the first two games of the World Series from their ancient rivals, the Dodgers, before Los Angeles did what the 1954 Indians couldn’t do. Down two games to none and heading home, the Dodgers won three one-run games before returning to Yankee Stadium and blowing Lemon’s club out in the sixth and final game, 9–2. Steinbrenner dismissed Lemon after just 14 games in 1982, and although the Indians made no secret of their desire to lure Lemon to Cleveland to manage the only club he ever played for, no deal was reached.
Wynn won 17 games in 1955 and 20 in 1956, but his numbers slipped to 14–17 in 1957 and he was sent to the White Sox, pitching them to the 1959 pennant with a record of 22–10. That left Wynn 29 victories short of the 300 mark, an achievement he coveted. He won 28 more games for the White Sox from 1960–1962 but was released after a 7–15 record in his final season in Chicago ... one victory short of 300. He signed with the Indians, who hoped Wynn’s pursuit of history could boost attendance for an otherwise dull and mediocre team. Wynn notched the milestone victory in the second game of a doubleheader versus the Kansas City Athletics at Municipal Stadium on July 13, 1963. In what would today be termed a “five and fly,” Wynn pitched the first five innings and exited with a 5–4 lead. Jerry Walker held the Athletics scoreless the rest of the way and the Tribe added a pair of insurance runs for a 7–4 victory. The 43-year-old Wynn made 15 more appearances for the Indians but didn’t win another game, retiring with a career mark of 300–244. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972.
Garcia’s 2.64 ERA in 1954 was the lowest in the American League. It was his last big season for the Tribe. His spot in the starting rotation was taken in 1955 by a fire-balling young left-hander named Herb Score, who’d win 16 games in 1955 and 20 in 1956. Garcia’s victory totals shrank to 11, 11 and 12 in the three seasons following 1954, and he’d be released after winning three and losing six for Cleveland in 1959. The Big Bear pitched in 15 games for the White Sox in 1960 and 16 for the expansion Washington Senators in 1961, winning none of them. He retired with a career record of 142–97.
Larry Doby’s power numbers dropped dramatically in 1955. Although he raised his batting average from .272 to .291, his homers declined from 32 to 26 and his runs batted in plunged from 126 to 75. Greenberg had seen enough and traded Doby to the White Sox for outfielder Jim Busby and shortstop Chico Carrasquel. After two seasons in Comiskey Park, Doby was sent to the Orioles, who quickly traded him back to Cleveland for pitcher Bud Daley, infielder Dick Williams and outfielder Gene Woodling. Doby’s second tour of duty with the Tribe lasted just 89 games and produced a .283 average, 13 home runs and 45 RBI. The Indians traded him to Detroit for Tito Francona in March of 1959, and the Tigers sold his contract to the White Sox in May.
Doby served as a coach on manager Ken Aspromonte’s Cleveland staff in 1974 and made no secret of his desire to become a manager himself. When Aspromonte resigned with six games left in the season, Doby hoped he’d be considered for the job. He was disappointed when club president Ted Bonda and general manager Phil Seghi chose Frank Robinson, who’d been acquired by the team in mid–September while the Indians still harbored long-shot playoff aspirations, to become the first African American manager in major league history. Doby’s chance to call the shots came in 1978, when Veeck elevated him from coach to replace his close friend and former teammate Lemon as White Sox skipper. Doby wasn’t retained for 1979 after posting a 37–50 record and never got another opportunity to manage. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1998.
Maybe the 1954 World Series would have turned out differently had it been the American League’s year to host the first and second games. Maybe it would’ve turned out differently had Wertz’s clout eluded Willie Mays’s glove, or bounced off of it. Maybe, as Lopez insisted, the Indians slumped at the worst possible time. Or maybe the 1954 Indians truly were no better than the 1944 St. Louis Browns and took advantage of a pathetic American League to post a historic season. Regardless of what happened in the World Series, the Indians broke the five-year pennant streak of the hated Yankees. They won 111 games, an American League record that stood until 1998, when the Yankees reclaimed it. Cleveland’s winning percentage of .721 is still the best in American League history.
A team must win the championship of its sport to be considered among the all-time greats, and the 1954 Indians failed that test. Miserably. But their remarkable accomplishments deserve to be more than a mere afterthought ... or worse, something that Cleveland’s baseball fans have been trying ever since to forget.