The World Series : Minnesota Twins vs. St. Louis Cardinals : 1947: A Series of Surprising Stars : Lavagetto, Bevens and Gionfriddo Had Their Moments

Forty years ago this month, a couple of big-name teams played a World Series that is best remembered for some thrills and derring-do provided by three no-names.

In 1947, it was the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees. Sound familiar so far? It really wasn’t a routine matchup then, however. Those clubs had met only once before, in the 1941 Series, with the Yankees winning in five games.

After 1947, the Dodgers and Yankees, went on to meet nine more times in the World Series, through 1981.

The World Series of 1947 wasn’t short on superstars. Joe DiMaggio was there, although at 33, he had had what for him was an off-year. In 141 games, he’d hit .315, driven in 97 runs and hit 20 home runs.

Brooklyn’s rookie infielder, Jackie Robinson, who earlier that season had become the first black player in the major leagues, was about to become the first in the World Series. He had batted .297, driven in 48 runs and hit 12 home runs. He also had stolen a National League-leading 29 bases.

The Dodgers’ fabled outfielder, Pete Reiser, had been hobbled by leg injuries all season and had played in only 110 games but still had hit .309 and driven in 46 runs. The Yankees had a hot young rookie catcher, 22-year-old Yogi Berra, who, after winning the starting job midway through the season, drove in 54 runs and hit .280 in 83 games.

Some other participants in the Series of ’47 included the Yankees’ Allie Reynolds, Tommy Henrich, Johnny Lindell, Phil Rizzuto and Joe Page, and the Dodgers’ Eddie Stanky, Dixie Walker, Pee Wee Reese and Carl Furillo.

The Series went seven games, and the Yankees won it. But two games and one fielding play are better remembered today than the Series winner:

--In Game 4 at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, Yankee pitcher Floyd (Bill) Bevens looked for a while like a pitcher looking for the hook. By the middle innings, the Yankees had a 2-1 lead, but Bevens was on his way to walking 10 batters--and pitching a no-hitter.

Despite his wildness, he continued to flirt with the no-hitter until two were out in the ninth, when Cookie Lavagetto, longtime Dodger third baseman who had become a little-used pinch-hitter, hit a two-out, two-run double to right in the ninth, winning it for the Dodgers, 3-2.

--In the sixth inning of Game 6 at Yankee Stadium, with the Dodgers protecting a three-run lead, a third no-name appeared to steal some thunder, Al Gionfriddo.

With DiMaggio at bat and two men on, the Dodger outfielder, who had hit .177 in 37 Dodger games and had been put into the game for his defense earlier in the inning, ran, stumbled, tripped and back-pedaled for what seemed like 50 yards, crashed into the bullpen fence in Yankee Stadium, put up a glove--and made what those who saw it claim is still one of the greatest plays by an outfielder in the sport’s history.

Series announcer Red Barber called it like this: “DiMaggio belts one! It’s a long one--deep to center! Gionfriddo goes back, back, back, back, back, back--heeeeeeee makes a one-handed catch against the bullpen! Ohhhhh, doctor!”

Bevens, Lavagetto and Gionfriddo. For a few hours, maybe a few days in 1947, there wasn’t a baseball fan in America who couldn’t describe their unlikely roles in that World Series.

Who could have foreseen that after that World Series, not one would ever again play in a major league game? Bevens pitched 2 innings in Game 7 of the Series and was never heard from again. And the playing careers of both Gionfriddo and Lavagetto ended with the 1947 World Series, although Lavagetto later returned as a coach with the Dodgers and manager of the Washington Senators.

For years, Gionfriddo ran a restaurant called Al’s Dugout in Goleta, Calif., and on a wall he displayed an enlarged photograph of himself, bouncing off the Yankee Stadium fence at the 415-foot sign, capless, with DiMaggio’s home run ball in his glove.

Ever since Game 6 of the ’47 Series, he has started nodding when people say: “Gionfriddo. Say, are you the same Gionfriddo who made that catch . . . ?”

To this day, he says, he gets requests for autographs from people who tell him that they were there to see his catch, or their father was there, or their uncle.

“If everyone who says he was there to see me make that catch really was there that day, we must have had a million people in the stands,” he said.

And he has also had to explain why that catch was not only the highlight of his career, but why it practically was his career.

“Branch Rickey told me the next spring that if I went to Montreal (the Dodgers’ Triple-A team) and had a good year, he’d bring me back,” he said.

“Well, I hit .310, 25 homers and almost 100 RBIs, and never got the call.”

Thus, Gionfriddo’s major league career consisted of parts of four seasons, from 1944 through 1947.

Now 65 and working as an equipment manager and trainer for the 19 sports teams at San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara, Gionfriddo rates that spectacular catch as one of two highlights of his career.

The other was in the same series, when Bevens had his no-hitter going and Gionfriddo went in to run for Carl Furillo in the ninth and stole second base before Lavagetto drove him in.

Lavagetto talked recently about breaking up Bevens’ no-hitter.

“I was pinch-hitting for Stanky, with men on first and second,” he recalled. “I’d never faced Bevens before, but he’d been wild all day, so I went up to the plate looking for a fastball up.

“He gave me what I was looking for on the first pitch, but I swung and missed. Most guys threw me up and in.

“The next one was right over the plate, and I tagged it pretty good. It went off the right field wall, hit Henrich in the chest, and rolled away from him.

“We were down, 2-1, and I knew damn well Gionfriddo (the pinch- runner at second) would score from second, because he could really run. I wasn’t sure about (Eddie) Miksis (the runner at first) until I got to second. I never saw Miksis score, but I knew he had because fans were running all over the field, running wild. That was it. We’d won.”

Breaking up a World Series no-hitter. Highlight of a career, right? Not necessarily.

“I had 10 years in the majors, I had some other big hits,” he said.

“I had some big hits for the Dodgers in September, 1941, when we won the pennant. I hit second and drove in 87 runs in 1939. Heck, I hit a game-winning double in a 1932 Oakland semipro all-star game that gave me the opportunity to play major league ball.

“To this day, I’m not certain if I’d ever have had a chance to play major league ball if it hadn’t been for that double, because four or five scouts were interested immediately afterward. Before that, I had doubts if I’d ever have the chance.”

Lavagetto, 74, still lives in the Orinda, Calif., home that he built in 1947, paid for in part by his World Series losers’ share of $4,800.

As for Bevens, 70, retired in Salem, Ore., he never got a chance to come back for redemption, World Series or otherwise.

“My arm just went dead,” he said.

He went back to the team in 1948 but he couldn’t shake the soreness. After a two-year rest, he returned to the minors and played for San Diego and Sacramento and eventually went to Salem, where he won 20 games. After that showing, the Cincinnati Reds drafted him, then 35 years old, in 1952. “But by 1953, I began to see the writing on the wall,” he said.

Bevens returned to Oregon and spent the rest of his working career as manager of a trucking firm.

He said he is glad to be remembered for the game, even if it is as the loser, a man who let a no-hitter go amid a welter of walks.

“A lot of people never play in a World Series,” he said. “A lot of people are never remembered. I was so happy just to be a part of it.”

Gionfriddo stresses the memories, too, especially because he never made much money playing baseball and had some reason to be “a little sour” on the game when his career ended 60 days short of what he needed to draw a pension.

“They say fame is fleeting and that is true, so true,” Gionfriddo said. “Who would have thought after that series that none of us (he, Bevens and Lavagetto) would ever play another game in the big leagues?

“It was disappointing, because Mr. Rickey had told me he’d bring me back up. He said he wanted to showcase me and try to draw some people to see his other clubs, either with the Hollywood Stars, which was our Triple-A club on the West Coast, or with Montreal. I chose Montreal because it was closer to home. So he sent Chuck Connors to Hollywood, and that was where Chuck stayed.”

Gionfriddo chuckles about that now.

“Who knows? Maybe if I had been sent to the Stars, I would have ended up in the movies,” he said. “Probably not. Chuck always knew that was what he wanted to do. He was a big, tall guy and he always told us, ‘One day, you’ll see me in pictures.’ ”

Gionfriddo played for two more years in Montreal, hoping to get the call back to the major league team. Rickey offered him a chance to play at St. Paul in the American Assn., but Gionfriddo didn’t want any part of that.

“To the public, baseball looks like a nice, clean game, but it’s a dirty game,” Gionfriddo said. “They can do what they want with your life. At least they could back then. We didn’t have agents and lawyers then. The players now make demands. We begged.

“I was on the Pittsburgh team in 1946 that got the players’ union started. I’ve always wondered if that had anything to do with the way I was left out of the major leagues when I just needed 60 more days to draw a pension. I wrote to every club and so did a sportswriter friend of mine. But I never got back up.”

At least he had his moment of glory. And he still has it, preserved in a blown-up photo.

“I didn’t make any money out of it, but I left the game with some great memories,” he said.

Times staff writers Tracy Dodds, Richard Hoffer and Mal Florence contributed to this story.