Aug. 18, 1964 - It was so quiet you could almost hear a pennant fall.
Comiskey Park had been filled with the sounds of bombs bursting in air as the scoreboard demonstrated the White Sox’ elation. Now, in the Yankee clubhouse, the half-clad players faced the backs of their lockers.
Al Downing (pictured) was pitching a brilliant two-hit shutout and took a 3-0 lead into the White Sox half of the eighth inning. Then the game exploded in his hands. Floyd Robinson jolted Downing with a three-run homer and, amid the rockets and Roman candles, the P.A. system sounded the Hallelujah Chorus from “The Messiah.”
With two out in the 10th, Mike Hershberger singled home Al Weis for a 4-3 White Sox victory, and dignified manager Al Lopez was bursting out of the dugout to pat Hershberger’s back and rumple his hair.
Manager Yogi Berra shook his head in his office. He appeared as near tears as a grown man who’s been around the block can get these days. It isn’t just a game in this league.
“He was breezing along real good,” Berra said, as if he couldn’t quite fathom what had happened. “Things happened so fast. Sometimes it’s a heartbreaker. Yeah, I get mad walking in from the field. But what good would it do to lose my temper? One pitch, what you gonna do? You don’t expect it; you don’t expect it from him. I would’ve bet on that game, the way he was going. You see how fast it could change? But the world didn’t end yet.”
Even though the statistics say the Yankees have done just about as well without Mickey Mantle as with him, it is apparent they miss him.
“It’s a big factor,” said Lopez. “He is a hell of a player.” It is Mantle — whose damaged left knee has not improved — who hits that three-run home run when the Yankees are three runs behind in the eighth. But
But this time it was Robinson, high and deep upstairs in right field, just inside the foul pole. “I just stood there and tried to push it over a little,” said Floyd.
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