Only once has a Cardinals player hit a ninth-inning home run that provided the winning run in the deciding game of a World Series.
Whitey Kurowski, a rookie third baseman, accomplished the feat for the Cardinals 75 years ago.
On Oct. 5, 1942, in Game 5 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, Kurowski hit a two-run home run in the ninth inning, breaking a 2-2 tie and carrying the Cardinals to a 4-2 victory. The win was the fourth in a row for the Cardinals over the Yankees in the best-of-seven World Series.
Kurowski’s home run rates with those by players such as Ken Boyer (1964), Tim McCarver (1964), Willie McGee (1982), Tom Lawless (1987), Albert Pujols (2011) and David Freese (2011) as being among the most prominent and most important in Cardinals World Series lore.
Beating the odds
George “Whitey” Kurowski, a Reading, Pa., native, debuted with the Cardinals on Sept. 23, 1941 _ six days after another Polish-American from Pennsylvania, Stan Musial, played his first game for St. Louis.
“Kurowski’s right arm, which flaps in the breeze like a seal’s flipper, is the result of a bone operation, in which a large piece was removed from the forearm,” wrote Tom Meany, a New York-based syndicated columnist. “As a kid, he fell off a fence and landed on some broken glass. Osteomyelitis was the result and osteomyelitis is no fun for an 8-year-old who can’t even pronounce it.”
Determined to earn a spot with the 1942 Cardinals, Kurowski was at spring training when he learned his father had died of a heart attack. Kurowski also had lost a brother who died in a coal mining accident.
Jimmy Brown opened the 1942 season as the Cardinals’ starting third baseman, with Kurowski in reserve. In late May, manager Billy Southworth shifted Brown to second base, replacing Creepy Crespi, and made Kurowski the starter at third.
Kurowski, 24, batted .254 with nine home runs and 42 RBI in 115 games for the 1942 National League champions.
Decision time
In Game 1 of the 1942 World Series, Kurowski struck out three times against Yankees starter and future Hall of Famer Red Ruffing.
Kurowski produced a hit in each of the next three games, all Cardinals victories. In the seventh inning of Game 4, with runners on second and third, one out, Kurowski was issued an intentional walk by the Yankees.
Needing one more win to clinch the championship, the Cardinals started rookie Johnny Beazley, winner of Game 2, against Ruffing in Game 5. Ruffing, 37, had seven World Series wins in his career.
In the ninth, with the score tied at 2-2, Walker Cooper led off for the Cardinals with a single to center. Johnny Hopp’s sacrifice bunt moved Cooper to second.
Kurowski batted next. With first base open, Ruffing looked to the dugout to see whether Yankees manager Joe McCarthy wanted him to give an intentional walk to Kurowski . On deck was the eighth-place batter, Marty Marion, who had no home runs during the regular season and who would bat .111 in the World Series. After Marion came the pitcher, Beazley.
McCarthy ordered Ruffing to pitch to Kurowski.
Dramatic ninth
Kurowski connected on a high, inside pitch and drove the ball through a fog toward the left-field corner. “Not one-tenth of the spectators saw the ball,” wrote Tom Meany.
The ball _ fair by about five feet _ cleared the fence for a two-run home run, giving the Cardinals a 4-2 lead.
Cooper and Kurowski “received a few pats on the back when they arrived at the bench,” the St. Louis Star-Times reported. “The Cards were not going to celebrate before the final verdict had been sealed.”
(Contrast that with the showboating antics of today’s players who flip bats, gesture to the dugouts and to the stands, pump their fists while rounding the bases and cross the plate with all the graceless theatrics of circus clowns.)
The Yankees threatened in their half of the ninth. Joe Gordon led off with a single. Bill Dickey rolled a grounder to second, but Jimmy Brown booted the ball for an error.
With runners on first and second, no outs, Jerry Priddy bluffed a bunt. The Cardinals’ catcher, Walker Cooper, fired the ball _ “a lightning peg,” The Sporting News called it _ to Marion, who was covering second. Gordon, caught off guard, was tagged out.
The pickoff took the steam out of the Yankees’ comeback hopes. Priddy popped out (Brown made a sprawling catch on the play) and George Selkirk, batting for Ruffing, grounded out, ending the game and clinching the championship for the Cardinals. Boxscore
Team player
In the victorious clubhouse, Cardinals players “hugged and pounded Kurowski on the back and then hoisted him on their shoulders,” the Associated Press reported. Teammates tore pieces off the back of Kurowski’s uniform pants and kept the shreds as souvenirs.
“I hope my brother, Ray, was listening to the radio,” Kurowski said. “He’s a Marine down in Parris Island, S.C. I got a letter from him congratulating me on getting into the World Series, but telling me I made him look silly by fanning my first three times at-bat. I got even with him today.”
Each member of the Cardinals earned a World Series championship share of $6,192.50.
Upon arriving in St. Louis by train from New York, the Cardinals were greeted by a crowd so thick on the station platform “it was hard to see who was coming out of the train,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Soon after, 13 of the Cardinals, including Kurowski, went to the Red Cross headquarters in St. Louis and donated blood for use in treating U.S. military members.
Wrote the Star-Times, “The team spirit that carried the Cardinals to the top of the heap can be best illustrated by Kurowski, the blonde-haired Polish boy from the hills of Pennsylvania who sidesteps all personal glory _ even after that epic smash.”
Previously: From Les Bell to David Freese: Cards 3rd base champs
Previously: Tom Lawless and his role in Cards World Series lore
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