10 March 2009

there's a play at the plate on sandy amoros' 1956 topps card

gee. the title says it all, really. the catcher looks like yogi berra, too. of course, amoros and berra are linked by one of baseball history's greatest defensive plays, but it didn't come at the plate.

it happened in the 1955 world series. let's pick up the action from walteromalley.com (a great resource for dodger history): 'in the game 7 finale, johnny podres was to face left-hander (tommy) byrne. podres, who had said, “just get me one run today. that’s all i’ll need. just one” was true to his word. however, the dodgers got him two runs, both off gil hodges’ bat. alston decided to insert sandy amoros as the left fielder to shore up the defense in the sixth inning. in what was maybe his wisest move of the season, alston watched the yankees get runners on first and second with berra at the plate. to alston’s amazement, berra sliced one down the left-field line and amoros, who was a left-hand thrower, raced full speed over to the line and reached out his glove to barely flag the drive, assuredly preventing a double. amoros got the ball back to pee wee reese at shortstop who threw to gil hodges at first to complete a double play.'
the dodgers went on to win their first and only championship in brooklyn. the following year, it was back to business as usual, as the dodgers lost to the yankees in the 1956 fall classic.

it's too bad the one-handed catch in the left field corner wasn't the in-game play the artist used for this card.

1 comment:

Matt Runyon said...

Even though they didn't use the catch, it's still a nice looking action card. I wonder exactly when that play took place.