October 15, 1946: Enos Slaughter's Mad Dash

October 15, 1946, 80 years ago: The World Series goes to a deciding Game 7 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Fans of the Boston Red Sox are confident: After all, no Boston team has ever lost a World Series. The Braves won one in 1914; the Red Sox won them in 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916 and 1918. Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals are also confident: They have Game 7 at home.

Sportsman's Park

In the top of the 8th inning, Sox center fielder Dom DiMaggio, brother of Joe, ties the game 3-3 with a 2-run double, but pulls his hamstring on the play, and has to be replaced by Leon Culberson. In the bottom of the 8th, Enos Slaughter is on 1st for the Cards, and Harry Walker is up.

Slaughter takes off for 2nd on the hit-and-run. "Harry the Hat" drives the ball to center. Slaughter sees Culberson bobble the ball, and thinks he can score. He does.

It became known as "the Mad Dash" or "Slaughter's Sprint," and in the telling of the legend, Slaughter is usually said to have scored from 1st on a single. Not really: Walker did make it to 2nd and was credited with a double. But it is the go-ahead run, and the Cardinals win, 4-3.

For the Cardinals, led by Slaughter and the sensational Stan Musial, it is their 6th World Championship, their 3rd in 4 tries in the last 5 seasons. For the Red Sox, it is not only their 1st-ever World Series defeat, after not getting that far for 28 years, and the 1st-ever World Series loss for any Boston team, but it is the beginning of a stretch of 4 seasons in which they will end up bitterly disappointed 3 times.

Billed as the duel between the 2 best hitters in baseball‚ the Series sees Musial go 6-for-27 (.222) and Boston's Ted Williams 5-for-25 (.200 -- combined, the Splendid Splinter and Stan the Man batted .212). This will be the only Series of Williams' career, and the only one the Red Sox will play in a 49-year stretch from 1918 to 1967.

The Cardinals, at first, will fare little better, as they won’t play in another Series for 18 years. Musial, who spent the '45 season in the Navy, and that was the only season from '42 to '46 when the Cards didn't win at least the Pennant, had won a Pennant in each of his 1st 4 full seasons, he will play another 17 seasons without winning one, despite close calls in '47, '48 and '49 and 2nd-place finishes in '56 and his final season of '63.

Harry Brecheen wins 3 games for the Cardinals‚ the 1st lefthander ever to accomplish this. It is a feat that has been matched only by Mickey Lolich in 1968 and Randy Johnson in 2001. Brecheen won Games 6 and 7‚ a feat matched only by the Big Unit.

In the telling of the legend of the Mad Dash, Culberson threw the ball to the cutoff man, shortstop Johnny Pesky, who "hesitated" or "held the ball," and threw home too late. In 1986, in an interview on the 40th Anniversary -- and right before Bill Buckner committed an even more shocking World Series defensive miscue for the Sox -- Pesky said, "Even now, people look at me like I'm a piece of shit."

When the Sox finally won the Series again in 2004, all the old goats and ghosts began to be forgiven, and Pesky, a longtime player, coach, broadcaster and scout with the team, became known as "Mr. Red Sox." He would receive standing ovations at Fenway Park, the last on the ballpark's Centennial in 2012, as he died 4 months later, at the age of 93.

The truth is, he never should have been blamed in the first place. DiMaggio's injury meant that it wasn't him playing center field to handle Walker's drive. Culberson was, and he not only bobbled the ball, but his throw to Pesky was a bit off. If Pesky had hesitated, that may have been the reason.

Culberson was a decent player, playing 6 seasons in the major leagues, and batting .266. He hit for the cycle in a game in his rookie season, 1943. Unfortunately, this is all he's remembered for -- if that. (After all, Pesky is the one who tends to get the blame, or else this sequence wouldn't be necessary.)

You can also blame the Boston bats. The Sox scored a grand total of 20 runs in the 7 games. They got shut out on 4 hits in Game 2. As I said, Ted Williams, the so-called "greatest hitter that ever lived," went 5-for-25 (.200) in his only postseason appearance. Roy Partee went 1-for-10 (.100). Tom McBride went 2-for-12 (.167). Pinky Higgins went 5-for-24 (.208). Culberson went 2-for-9 (.222). If you're looking to blame Pesky for something, look not at his fielding, but at his batting: 7-for-30 (.233). If any one of those guys had had a good Series at the plate, the result might have been different.

Williams hit the most home runs in the 1940s, with 234, to Musial's 146 and Joe DiMaggio's 180, But 1 in the 1946 World Series might have made a huge difference.

Also, Slaughter would have scored anyway. I've seen the film of the play many times. Culberson gets the ball to Pesky, and I simply cannot see that with which Pesky has been accused for the last 76 years: "Hesitating" or "holding the ball." And I don't think it would have mattered, as Slaughter scored by plenty.

Besides, the Cardinals were better. Certainly, they were more experienced. This was their 4th World Series in the last 5 years. They'd won in 1942, lost in 1943, and won in 1944. They'd just missed Pennants in 1941 and 1945. It could have been 6 straight Pennants with a few breaks.

In contrast, most of the Red Sox had never been in a Series before. And most of them would never get into another. The Sox fell off in 1947, lost a 1-game Playoff for the Pennant to the Cleveland Indians in 1948, went into the last 2 games of the 1949 season needing to win just 1 against the Yankees and lost them both, and hung close for most of 1950 and 1951 but didn't win either time.

Johnny Pesky was a .307 lifetime hitter, a good shortstop, and a good guy. The Red Sox rightfully retired his Number 6, and elected him to their team Hall of Fame. If he were ever to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York, I wouldn't mind at all.

He deserves better than to be remembered for a mistake, especially when it's not completely clear that he made a mistake -- and when, if he made a mistake, it was hardly all his fault, and not at all the biggest reason his team lost that World Series.