It was the bottom of the 10th inning, two outs, scoreless, and the Dodgers had Jim Gilliam on second base and Duke Snider on first.
Jackie Robinson was coming up to face the Yankees’ Bob Turley for the fifth time in the game.
He stepped across home plate in front of Yogi Berra, rolled his shoulders and gently wagged his bat before finding his place in the batter’s box. The Yankees outfielders played Robinson deep and swung over toward the left side. Mickey Mantle in center, Hank Bauer in right, Enos Slaughter in left. The shortstop, Gil McDougald, was playing well over into the hole, allowing Gilliam to take a substantial lead at second base, and the second baseman, Billy Martin, kept dodging over to try to lure Gilliam back to the bag.
So very much would happen in Robinson’s life over the weeks and months to come. Japan. The Spingarn banquet. The job at Chock Full. His trade, authorized by Walter O’Malley, to the New York Giants. Retirement from the game. Meetings with the NAACP. Letters to Martin Luther King Jr. But right now, there was only this.
Robinson fouled off the first pitch, and the second came in outside. One and one. Turley caught the ball back from Berra and got up on the mound and then stepped off and drew a long breath and then got back onto the mound again. Gilliam kept his hands on his hips as he edged off second base, and then, as he moved farther away from the bag, he dropped his arms so that his hands hung below his knees. Then he got up on the balls of his feet, ready to run. Turley looked in toward the plate, stepped forward and threw the ball, and Robinson swung.
You could tell it had a chance by the sound of it——a high line drive out toward the gap in left-center field. Slaughter moved sharply toward the ball and leaped with his glove outstretched. But the ball got over him and landed on the cinder path and took a hop off the ad for Schaefer Beer. Gilliam gathered speed as he rounded third, and when he touched home plate, his fellow Dodgers streamed out of the dugout and some fans spilled out of the seats. The big Brooklyn crowd thundered and roared, and the old stadium shook and shook and shook in the autumn air. The Dodgers had won. There would be a Game 7. When Clem Labine reached Robinson in the thicket of teammates surrounding him on the field, he kissed Robinson’s cheek for all he was worth.
This was in the late afternoon on Oct. 9, 1956: 10 years and 175 days since Robinson had played his first game as a Montreal Royal, nine years and 172 days since he officially broke in at Ebbets Field. It was the 314th day of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.—another 74 days would pass before it would end in success. This was the day on which the Dodgers beat the Yankees in a World Series game for the final time, and it was the day that Jackie Robinson stroked that game-winning single, the 1,550th—and final—hit of his Dodgers career.
