Counting Down- The 12 Walk-offs of Stan Musial – On the 2nd Walk-off….
We continue our series on “The 12 Walk-offs of Stan Musial” with his 2nd one that took place on July 14, 1946. This was about four years after he crushed his first one.
For Part One of this Series, go HERE.
It was a warm Sunday afternoon in St. Louis as the Brooklyn Dodgers were in town for a doubleheader. There was 33,980 in attendance. The Cardinals were in second place and 4.5 games back of the first place Brooklyn Dodgers with a 45-33 record.
The first game saw Stan Musial go 2-for-3 and Enos Slaughter homered to lead the way for a 5-3 win. The second game was important in the standings because if Brooklyn could win it would be a two game swing in the standings. They sent Vic Lombardi to the mound with his 9-3 record to put the brakes on the Cardinals.
The Cardinals countered with Murry Dickson and his 5-2 record to complete the sweep. The Dodgers would be without their leadoff hitting spark plug at second in Eddie Stanky. He was injured in the first game due to a slide, which many thought was a “hard” slide, by Enos Slaughter.
Runs would be at a premium in game two. The Dodgers would score in the first inning and that would turn out to be their only run of the game. Ramazzotti (Stanky’s replacement) would singled to right and Lavagetto grounded out send Ramazzotti to second. With one out, Stevens would double him home and Dickson would close the door on Brooklyn for the rest of the game.
The game stayed at 1-0 until the bottom of the 8th inning when Stan Musial led off with a triple and was sent home on a sac fly by Whitey Kurowkski. The game was tied and stayed knotted until the 12th inning.
In the top half of the 12th frame, Dickson was still on the mound and showed no signs of wearing down as the Dodgers went down in order. In the bottom of the inning, Lombardi was still on the mound and he would be facing Musial, Kurowski and Slaughter to attempt to keep it tied.
It didn’t take long as Musial smacked his second walk-off homer of his career on a 1-1 count and sent the fans home with a doubleheader sweep. Now the Cardinals were ony 2.5 games back and would be poised to chase Brooklyn to the end.
The pitching line for Lombardi was 11IP/10H/2ER/3BB/2K and was losing pitcher and with a 9-4 record.
The pitching line for Dickson was 12IP/8H/1ER/4BB/5K and moved to 6-2 as the winning pitcher of record.
The umpires for the game was Al Barlick, Butch Henline and Babe Pinelli.
Final Totals R H E LOB
Dodgers 1 8 2 10
Cardinals 2 10 0 13
The Cardinals would sweep the Dodgers in a four game series with wins on Monday and Tuesday. Stan would hit a homerun the next day (July 15) to help take the lead. After this series, the Cardinals were only a half game back and would eventually propel to first place and end there.
The starting line-ups for this game:
Brooklyn Dodgers
1. Ramazzotti 2b
2. Lavagetto 3b
3. Reiser lf
4. Walker rf
5. Stevens 1b
6. Whitman cf
7. Anderson c
8. Rojek ss
9. Lombardi p
St. Louis Cardinals
1. Schoendienst 2b
2. Moore cf
3. Musial 1b
4. Kurowski 3b
5. Slaughter rf
6. Adams lf
7. Marion ss
8. Kluttz c
9. Dickson p
The List of Walk-off Dates are:
- 7-14-42
- 7-14-46
- 8-22-46
- 8-26-48
- 8-28-49
- 9-6-50
- 6-17-51
- 7-5-52
- 5-7-59
- 8-7-59
- 8-27-60
- 6-5-62
Be sure to check each one at as we countdown to Christmas.