Unless Joe Torre is making the story up, the administrators at St. Francis Prep High School in Brooklyn on October 8, 1956 excused him from school because he showed them he had a ticket to the World Series Game that afternoon at 1 o'clock between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Yankee Stadium.
Joe had been hoping to see his brother Frank playing for the Milwaukee Braves against the Yankees that afternoon, but a late surge in the pennant race saw the Dodgers become the National League pennant winners. Thus, it was the Dodgers vs. the Yankees that afternoon in Game 5, with the Series tied at two games apiece, each team winning their first two home games.
The series was a rematch between the Dodgers, the 1955 World Champs over the Yankees, which was the only Brooklyn-based team to win a World Series. And in 1956, that didn't change, when the seven games were over, with the Yankees prevailing in Game 7 at Ebbets Field, 9-0.
So, is this from Joe Torre's obituary? No, Joe is still very much with us, but the story of the excuse from school is in the obit for Don Larsen, the Yankees pitcher who that afternoon pitched a perfect game, 27 up, 27 down, in what was the first World Series perfect game, and what has remained the only perfect World Series game.
My father was at that Game 5. His boss from the Brooklyn Navy Yard took him. In that era of daytime World Series games, there was A LOT of workplace absenteeism when the Yankees played at home. I never found any souvenirs from that game. No ticket stub, no program. Nothing. I did find a ticket stub from Game 7 of the 1957 World Series played at Yankee Stadium, a game the Yankees lost to the Milwaukee Braves, with Don Larsen as the losing pitcher. so I guess that's something.
The stub is from a Lower Stand, reserved seat, Section 26, row Q seat 10, with a face value of $7.35! (tax included) I wasn't at that game either, but I was at Game 5 for the 1960 World Series game against the Pirates. Maybe there's another stub somewhere.
It you weren't already up on Yankee lore, you learned from Larsen's obit that he was a bit of what you'd call a partyer, a stay out-at-night drinker who was probably seeking female companionship. Larsen was most likely part of a group of hard-core Yankee players that Stengel observed were distracted not by women per se, but by spending the night looking for women. Larsen would recount that his hangover was only starting to lift as the perfect game progressed.
Larsen was also among the players that might have been reported to be seen in the hotel lobby at 4 A.M., to which Stengel replied the observation still needed to be looked at, because the player might have been arriving very late, or leaving very early. Stengel always saw distinctions that others missed.
In another obit, this one for George Laurer, 94, Creator of the Bar Code, we learn that young George was drafted into the Army during WW II before graduating high school. Talk about needing bodies to put in uniform.
In my own family, my great-uncle Peter, a bachelor and my paternal grandfather's younger brother, was drafted into the Quartermaster Corps, serving in Kentucky, at the age of 47 in 1942. Even if he wasn't sent overseas, that is certainly middle-age for a florist to be expected to get through basic training. The reach of the draft was extensive for a nation that put nearly 10% of its overall population in uniform.
As lastly, going through my stack of clippings at year end, I came across one for 'Werner G. Doehner, 90, Last Hindenburg Survivor.'
Years ago, Mike Lopresti, a reporter at USA Today, in 2002 observed:
There were but 11 Triple Crown winners in the last century, only three in the last 54 years. And with Seattle Slew’s passing the other day, all of them are dead. This we know because living Triple Crown champions are kept track of like ex-presidents and Titanic survivors.
Mr. Lopresti might just as well have mentioned Hindenburg survivors, because apparently someone has been tracking them. But he is absolutely right. We track numbers. There are now 13 Triple Crown winners, with American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018 joining the 11.
Tyler Kepner, perhaps the best baseball writer there is these days, writes his lede for the NYT story of Don Larsen's achievement (separate from the obit by Richard Goldstein) telling us:
"The ultimate pitching achievement comes with no warning. For a while, even as a perfect game unfolds, nobody suspects a thing."
And because we count things, we know there still has only been ONE World Series perfect game; not even a no-hitter.
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