Yogi Berra is so excited about the 1953 season he formally signs his new contract on January 30—he’s bumped to $36,000, worth $337,119 in 2019 dollars. He hires a housekeeper who’ll start when Carmen and the kids return from spring training and is the only regular on the field when camp opens in St. Petersburg in late February. The rest of the regulars will sign soon enough; Yogi is not the only Yankee eager to get started. They all think they have a good chance to do what no other team has done—win five straight World Series titles.
Yogi’s confidence revolves around three players. He expects Mickey Mantle to become the dominant star everyone expects the kid from Oklahoma to be. He thinks Whitey Ford, bigger and stronger at 24 after two years in the military, will perform as well as he did in his sparkling rookie season, maybe even better.
And Berra, soon to be 28 and at his athletic peak, is confident he’ll have a terrific season. If all three stars play up to their potential, the Yankees will be tough to beat. And Berra is right. All it takes is a slight change in Yogi’s diet.
Berra is hitting .192 with just two homers and 11 RBI in 21 games when he’s forced out of the lineup after taking a pitch on his right elbow on May 9. Yogi usually starts slow, but rarely has he looked this feeble. He’s also complaining of being tired after just three weeks, his stomach hurts all the time, and he says he’s “itching like a hound dog.” Perplexed, Weiss brings in a nutritionist, who discovers the probable cause of Berra’s discomfort—the quarts of chocolate milk Yogi drinks before and after each game, which trigger his chronic colitis.
“You should see him down that chocolate milk!” Phil Rizzuto says. “And who knows how much of that stuff he drinks at home?”
Berra returns to the lineup in Washington on May 21 and goes hitless his first two at-bats, dropping his batting average to .183. Maybe that’s why he’s so annoyed in the 4th inning when umpire Grover Froese says the first two pitches from Yankee pitcher Ray Scarborough are outside the strike zone. American League umpires are used to Berra’s running commentary on balls and strikes and most give the veteran All-Star a wide berth. But when Berra turns around and punctuates his remarks by kicking dirt at Froese, the ump gives him the hook.
Things change the very next game when Yogi raps out three hits, including a home run. He goes on a tear when the team starts an 18-game winning streak on May 27, hitting .315 with three home runs and 17 RBI. And yes, he’s cut back on his chocolate milk consumption.
The Yankees sweep four games from the Indians at the end of their streak, with Berra delivering the big blows in both games of a June 14 doubleheader before 74,708 dismayed Indian fans at Municipal Stadium. With the Yankees down 2–1 in the 8th inning of the opener, Berra blasts a three-run homer off Indian star Bob Lemon that sends New York to a 6–2 win. In the second game, Berra clubs a two-run triple in the 4th inning and guides Vic Raschi to a three-hit, 3–0 shutout that lifts New York’s record to a gaudy 41–11. The Indians, now trailing the Yankees by 10½ games, never recover. And the pennant race, for all intents and purposes, is all but over.
The fans once again select Berra to start the All-Star Game on July 14 in Cincinnati, but this one is special because of a player who is not in a baseball uniform. “Hey, Muscles, how ya’ doin’?” Yogi shouts when he sees his good friend Marine Corps Captain Ted Williams on the field before the game. “Well, now I know I’m home,” says a smiling Williams, who spent most of the last season and the first half of ’53 flying jets in combat in the Korean War.
Captain Williams, who was awarded three Air Medals—the same number of times he was hit by enemy fire—is in Cincinnati to throw out the game’s first pitch. He will be officially discharged July 28, one day after a permanent cease-fire goes into effect. The war claimed the lives of almost 40,000 Americans and more than two million Korean civilians. And left the peninsula split into two nations.
“I have a job for you,” Yogi tells his friend.
“Yeah, what’s that?” says Williams, playing along.
“You can be an intern for our barnstorming team in Japan,” says Berra, who’s recently agreed to join Ed Lopat’s All-Star team on a much-anticipated tour of Japan after the World Series.
“No thanks,” Williams says. “I’m in this country to stay.”
Williams throws the ceremonial first pitch, poses for pictures with Commissioner Ford Frick, then takes a seat in the American League dugout and watches the National League roll to an easy 5–1 win, the fourth straight All-Star loss for Stengel. Sure, Casey would like to win one of these exhibition games, but as long as his team keeps winning the final game of the World Series, he can handle these midsummer defeats.
Casey received some criticism when he left his own ace off the All-Star roster, but there is no question that Whitey Ford—who was 9–3 with a 2.75 ERA in the first half—is now the Yankees’ most important pitcher. Despite always squaring off against the opposition’s ace, Ford goes 4–2 against the Indians and 5–0 against the White Sox, including a 3–2 win in Chicago on September 1 that gives the Yankees a 9½-game lead and ends any Chicago hopes for a miracle finish.
The future Hall of Famer has a wide array of pitches—a devastating curveball is his best—and pinpoint control of all of them. And he’s savvy enough to let his friend Yogi call the game for him. “I probably throw more of what Yogi calls than any other pitcher,” Ford tells reporters. “A batter can’t believe the combination of pitches he’ll call. He knows what the hitters are looking for. He just has a natural instinct.”
Ford instantly befriends Mantle, who may have been the team’s best player for the first half of the season, leading the team in home runs (13) and RBI (57) while hitting .314. Mantle carried the team when Yogi struggled in May, hitting .441 during a 14-game stretch. And when Yogi hit his stride, Mantle continued to excel, hitting .394 with four homers and 24 RBI during a 16–1 Yankee run.
Mantle still strikes out too much—55 times in 75 games before the All-Star break—and fans have become accustomed to watching Mickey vent his frustration by kicking the dugout water cooler. This happens so often that Yogi begins taping a piece of heavy cardboard around the base of the cooler. “Mick, look!” Yogi sings out as soon as he sees Mantle. He kicks the cooler to demonstrate. “It gives ya protection when you kick that thing later on.”
It’s Berra who carries the Yankees in the second half of the season, getting stronger even as the summer heat and the number of games he catches continue to rise. Berra puts together a 17-game hitting streak in August (five home runs, 20 RBI, .380 batting average) and an 11-game streak to start September (3-9-.383). From his nadir on May 21 to season’s end, Yogi is New York’s most productive hitter, batting .318 with 25 home runs and 97 RBI in 112 games.
Berra’s 25th home run comes in the 4th inning on September 3 against the Browns in St. Louis. As always, Berra’s father Pietro is in a box seat to watch his son and the Yankees win, 8–5, but he doesn’t have much company. Only 2,330 fans show up to see the four-time defending champions play the home team, and for good reason—the Browns will be playing elsewhere in 1954. Baltimore is the leading candidate to get the team, but Browns owner Bill Veeck is still holding out hope to relocate to Los Angeles.
The Yankees are back in New York 11 days later to face the Indians with a chance to clinch the pennant. Ford has one of his worst outings of the season, giving up five runs—two on bases-loaded walks—before leaving the game after three innings. But the Yankees push across four in the 4th and another in the 6th to tie the score. Then Berra wallops a towering two-run homer in the 7th, Billy Martin gets his fourth RBI of the game, and two innings later the Yankees have won their fifth straight American League pennant.
The postgame celebration is subdued, befitting a team that has just won its 20th pennant in 33 years, and almost all the fuss is just for the cameras. As always, Stengel is the center of attention, taking a seat on a bench between co-owners Dan Topping and Del Webb as players come by to tousle his hair. Berra is the next to get the roughhouse treatment, making sure the photographers and cameramen get all the pictures they need.
The real celebration takes place a few hours later in the Stadium Club, where steaks are served and champagne flows until 11 p.m. The next day there is another pennant in the flag room in Yankee Stadium, and everyone’s attention shifts to the Dodgers, whom the Yankees will face in a fortnight. And once again, history is on the line.
Sometimes there are certain plays, coming at just the right moment, that not only alter the outcome of a game but set the tone for an entire World Series. The 7th inning in Game 1 of the 1953 World Series is one such moment.
The backstory: the Yankees have squandered an early 5–1 lead—their last run coming on a long home run by Berra—and are on the verge of blowing the game in the 7th inning with the score tied 5–5, Dodger runners on first and second, and no outs. Up steps Billy Cox, a .291 hitter in the regular season who has already rapped out a single and double in three at-bats.
Dodger manager Chuck Dressen signals bunt, and Cox executes perfectly, the ball rolling into no-man’s-land up the third baseline. Almost every one of the 69,734 fans at Yankee Stadium groans, convinced Berra will take the sure out at first, leaving two runners in scoring position with just one out. But Yogi has a different idea. He scrambles up the third baseline, grabs the ball bare-handed, and rifles it to third, getting Gil Hodges by inches.
The fans have barely stopped buzzing about Berra’s successful gamble when Dodger pitcher Clem Labine lays down another seemingly perfect bunt, this one rolling just a bit farther than the one before. Berra once again scrambles from behind the plate, scoops up the ball, and throws it to third, this time getting Carl Furillo by a half step. The Dodger rally, so promising just moments ago, is all but dead. It ends, fittingly, when Yogi catches a foul pop off the bat of leadoff hitter Junior Gilliam.
A team that blows a lead should be deflated, especially against a Dodger team that won 105 games in the regular season. Instead, the Yankees come off the field energized by the sparkling defensive play of their catcher. And when first baseman Joe Collins hits a solo homer to retake the lead in the bottom of the 7th, everyone in the Yankee dugout is convinced this game is theirs. Two innings later, the Yankees have a 9–5 victory and the familiar feeling that they will always find a way to win.
Berra’s performance even catches the eye of the man completing his first year in the White House. “I received a terrific kick out of Berra’s home run,” President Eisenhower says the following day to open his first press conference in two months. “That fellow really slammed the ball out of the park.”
The teams split the next four games, and Stengel sends out Ford to win Game 6 and the team’s fifth straight World Series. Berra enters the game with a hot bat—seven hits in five games—and belts a ground-rule double to right-center in the 1st inning, scoring Gene Woodling and sending Hank Bauer to third. Bauer scores on an error to make it 2–0, and the Yankees add another run in the 2nd inning for a 3–0 lead. With Ford allowing just one run through seven innings, the Yankees looked poised to win yet another championship.
And that’s when Stengel decides to tempt fate, bringing in Allie Reynolds to get the final six outs. “I’m not tired!” Ford tells Casey, but his manager isn’t listening. He wants his veteran star to close out this game. The move backfires in the 9th when Dodger outfielder Carl Furillo lines a 3–2 pitch into the right field stands to tie the game, 3–3.
But Dodger fans barely have time to celebrate their good fortune. Bauer leads off the bottom of the 9th with a walk, then takes second when Mantle beats out an infield hit. And when Billy Martin belts his 12th hit of the Series to drive in Bauer, the Yankees dance off the field as champions for the fifth straight year—with a place in the history books all their own.
Stengel is the first Yankee to reach the clubhouse and is immediately swallowed in hugs from co-owners Dan Topping and Del Webb. Allie Reynolds, Mantle, and Bauer are next, followed by the usual flood of reporters, cameramen, baseball officials, and celebrity well-wishers. By the time an exhausted Berra trudges in, the path to his locker is blocked, champagne spray is everywhere, and the backslapping and handshaking with teammates is so vigorous Berra wonders if anyone will get hurt.
It is still hard to comprehend what has just happened. Winning one World Series is hard. Winning back-to-back titles is really tough. Winning five in a row? How does that even happen? But there is Stengel, shouting loud enough for all to hear that he is still not content. “I am not going to be satisfied with just five straight championships,” Stengel says. “This team of mine is only now growing into greatness and will win again in 1954.”
Twelve men played part or all of each of the five championship seasons, and the Yankee front office presents each player with a ring featuring the number 5 in gold, with a large diamond encased in the bottom of the numeral. Berra falls in love with the gift instantly, and it’s the only World Series ring he will ever wear. One day in 2015, soon after Yogi passes away, his favorite ring fetches $159,720 when his sons put up most of their father’s baseball possessions for auction.
This is also the most lucrative World Series in the game’s history. The winner’s share of $8,280.68 and the loser’s share of $6,178.42—both record-high figures—are the players’ cut of $1,779,269 in ticket sales. Berra has collected $32,074.11 in World Series checks the last five years—and that doesn’t count the $5,830 he took home as a rookie World Series champion in 1947.
On November 27, Yogi learns he finished second in the MVP voting to Cleveland third baseman Al Rosen, who had a season to remember—leading the American League in home runs (43), RBI (145), and losing the batting title by a single point, .337–.336, on the final day of the season. Rosen received all 24 first-place votes. Despite his slow start, Berra hit .296 and led the Yankees in home runs (27) and RBI (108)—both fourth best in the league—his finest all-around season since 1950.
At 28, Berra is widely considered the best catcher in the game. Only his friend Roy Campanella, Brooklyn’s 32-year-old star, is in his class, creating a lively debate among Yankee and Dodger fans about who is the better player. Ebbets Field has the closest fences in all of baseball, Yankee fans argue. Yankee Stadium has the short porch in right field, Dodger fans counter. Both fan bases agree that Yogi and Campy are topflight defensive catchers.
But Berra has now finished first, second, third, and fourth in MVP voting the past four seasons, by far the finest performance in the game. Berra is the best player on the best team in baseball, the key performer on a team that has done something never done before—winning five straight titles—and is destined never to be done again.