The Forgotten Home Run
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by user
Harold Friend
Sometimes a great accomplishment is overshadowed by a greater accomplishment. Sometimes, an individual is remember for a negative, which obliterates the memory of a wonderful positive. Such is the case with Loren Dale Mitchell, an excellent outfielder and fine hitter for the Cleveland Indians and briefly, for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Dale Mitchell hit the home run that clinched the 1954 American League pennant for the Cleveland Indians. When the Indians beat the Tigers on September 18 by a score of 3-2, the New York Yankees streak of five consecutive pennants and five consecutive World Championships ended.
At the time of the game, the Tribe led the Yankees by a comfortable 8 games, so it is almost certain that if the Indians had lost that game, it would only have postponed the inevitable, but it is not widely known that one of Dale Mitchell's 41 career home runs won a pennant.
What is synonymous with Dale Mitchell is a called third strike that Mitchell claimed, to his dying day, was a ball. Mitchell was a tough hitter to strike out, ranking as the fifteenth most difficult batter to strike out in the history of the game. He averaged only 1 strikeout for every 33.5 at bats, but all that is usually remembered is that he was the batter Don Larsen struck out to end his perfect World Series game.
When the game was over, Yogi Berra insisted that the pitch was a strike, but Mickey Mantle, like Mitchell, thought it was off the plate for a ball. While Berra was closer to the pitch than Mickey, he wasn't closer than Mitchell. The umpire who made the call was Babe Pinelli, a great umpire who announced that he would retire after the Series.
Babe had been an infielder during the 1920s and was an umpire from 1935 until 1956. He was considered one of the top arbiters in the game, working many World Series, All-Star games, and the 1946 playoff series between Brooklyn and St. Louis, which really was a playoff series since only a tie between teams after 154 regular season games could produce a playoff series. Pinelli was the crew chief for the 1952 and 1956 Series.
Many in the media believe that the called third strike was Pinelli's final game but since the Series went seven games, he umpired two more games. A source as scholarly and "accurate" as the New York Times, stated in his obituary that "In the final act of his umpiring career, Mr. Pinelli called Dale Mitchell of the Brooklyn Dodgers out on strikes to end the only perfect game in Series history. He retired after that game." Don't believe everything you read.
No one really knows if Larsen's last pitch were a strike, but since the home plate umpire called it a strike, it was a strike. What would have happened if QuestTec were available? A better question is, "If technology instead of humans is used in the future to umpire games, would the Dale Mitchell of the future be called out on strikes?"
References
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/mitchda01.shtml
http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/chronology/1954SEPTEMBER.stm#day18
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/ABpSO_career.shtml
http://www.travel-watch.com/donlarsen.htm
http://www.vintagesportsshoppe.com/postwarmisc.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babe_Pinelli
"Babe Pinelli, Former Umpire; Called Larsen Perfect Game." New York Times 25 October 1984.
