June 26, 1944: The Tri-Cornered Baseball Game

June 26, 1944, 80 years ago: A "Tri-Cornered Baseball Game" is played at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. The War Loans Sports Committee came up with the idea as a method of selling war bonds. The idea was that New York City's 3 major league teams -- the National League's Manhattan-based New York Giants, the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers, and the American League's Bronx-based New York Yankees -- would play each other in a three-way exhibition game.

Each team was to bat and field for 2 innings in a row, before taking a 1-inning break. By the end, each team would have played 6 innings of an otherwise standard 9-inning game. The game would only go 9 innings, regardless of who scored how many runs.

The Giants used their usual home clubhouse and dugout, while the Yankees and Dodgers shared facilities. In spite of it being a hot and humid Monday night, the official paid attendance was 49,605, and 500 returned injured veterans were admitted for free, pushing the total over 50,000, which still meant about 6,000 empty seats.

Ticket sales raised $4.5 million. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, a big Yankee Fan, pledged the City to buy $50 million worth of war bonds for the occasion. And, appropriately, Bond Clothing Stores contributed an additional $1 million. So the game was a roaring success before the umpire ever said, "Play ball!"

The teams came into the game with their rosters depleted: The Yankees were missing Joe DiMaggio, Bill Dickey, Tommy Henrich and Phil Rizzuto, among others, all in the service; the Giants were missing Johnny Mize; and the Dodgers were missing Pee Wee Reese. But there were some Hall-of-Famers playing, all near the end of the line: The Dodgers had Joe Medwick and Paul Waner, while the Giants had Mel Ott (also their manager) and Ernie Lombardi.

The teams came into the game with roughly equal records: The Dodgers were 33-30, the Giants 32-29, and the Yankees 31-29.

The game began at 8:45 PM. Why so late? Because, back then, that was the traditional time for raising the curtain on a Broadway show. (I grew up in the 1970s and '80s, and, for as long as I can remember, it's been 8:00.) The Dodgers scored a run on the Yankees in the 1st inning, and 2 on the Giants in the 2nd inning.

No additional runs were scored until the 8th, when the Dodgers got another off the Giants. That was the Dodgers' last inning. The Yankees scored a run off the Giants in the 9th. The final score: Dodgers 5, Yankees 1, Giants 0. Having the home-field advantage did the Giants no good. And the Dodgers weren't even on hand when the game ended: They left early, to catch a train for their next roadtrip, to Chicago.

Eddie Basinski of the Dodgers went 1-for-2 in the game. He was the last surviving man who played in it, living until 2022.