Don Denkinger was wrong.
The video evidence is overwhelming. Denkinger blew the call at first base in ninth inning of Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, calling Jorge Orta safe when he was clearly out. For those that don’t remember or weren’t born yet, here it is:
Like I said, pretty clear. I was, and still am, a Royals fan when they aren’t playing the Red Sox, and I have no problem acknowledging that this was a bad call.
But a couple of things need to be pointed out, because Cardinals fans have not stopped complaining about this call and they probably should.
The first and most obvious point is that if the rest of that inning had played out the same, only with Orta called out on that play, closer Todd Worrell still would have blown the save. I wrote about this on the anniversary of that call last October, laying out the inning in a couple of scenarios, neither of which ended with the Cardinals still holding the lead.
The next point, just as obvious as the first, is that the Cardinals simply didn’t show up for Game 7. They had their best pitcher on the mound, John Tudor, on full rest. He had shut out the Royals in five hits in Game 4 and had surrendered just one run in 15.2 innings to that point in the Series. They had every reason to think they could still win the game and Series, but instead they were shutout out by Bret Saberhagen and blown out by Kansas City, 11-0. Tudor was shelled early and both Joaquin Andujar and manager Whitey Herzog lost their minds and were ejected in the fifth inning. It was an embarrassment.
But let’s ignore all of that. Let’s go with the argument that the Cardinals were robbed of a championship by the evil intentions of Don Denkinger, and should be flying a title flag from 1985 at their stadium. If we’re going to give them that argument, then we also have to note that the robbery they suffered in 1985 was one that St. Louis had coming to them.
See, the Cardinals were already the proud owners of a championship that they’d robbed from another team, under eerily similar circumstances.
In 1934, the Cardinals were not the favorites to win the World Series. They’d had a very good year, winning 95 games and the National League pennant by two games while leading the league in runs, but the Detroit Tigers were the favorite. They’d won 101 games (just as the Cardinals did in 1985), beating the Yankees for the American League pennant by seven games and scoring 117 more runs than the next closest team in the league. Half of Detroit’s regular lineup was comprised of future Hall of Famers; second baseman Charlie Gehringer, first baseman Hank Greenberg, left fielder Goose Goslin, and catcher/manager Mickey Cochrane.
The Series would open in Detroit, and close there, too, if it went that far. St. Louis, behind the pitching of Dizzy Dean, surprised everyone by winning the first game, but Detroit won three of the next four, and needed to win just one of the final two games back on their home field in Detroit to claim their first World Series title.
Then came Game 6.
Schoolboy Rowe was on the mound for Detroit, having already won his first outing in the Series, a 12-inning complete game victory in Game 2. He gave up an RBI single in the first inning to future Hall of Famer Joe Medwick, but then settled down for the most part. His counterpart, Dizzy Dean’s younger brother, Paul, was also solid early, but he gave up an unearned run in the third to tie the game.
That score held until the fifth, when Cardinal shortstop Leo Durocher led off with a single, went to second on a sacrifice, and scored on a single to left field by Pepper Martin. A bad throw by Goslin allowed Martin to reach third base, from which he scored an unearned run on a groundout to make the score 3-1 St. Louis.
One inning later, Detroit was in a position to take the lead, but this is where a bad call on the basepaths helped the Cardinals.
Jo Jo White (no, not the Hall of Fame basketball player) walked to lead off the inning for the Tigers, then went to third on a single by Cochrane. Gehringer followed with a tapper back to Dean, but Dean threw the ball away, allowing White to score and Gehringer to reach safely. It was now 3-2. St. Louis still had the lead, but the Tigers had runners on first and second with no one out and Goslin coming up.
Now, in 2024 there is virtually no chance that Goslin would be asked to bunt in this situation. He was Detroit’s cleanup hitter and had a .321 lifetime batting average at that point in his career. He had batted .305 that season with 100 RBI, and in two prior World Series, in 1924 and 1925, he’d batted .344 and .308. There was no one in the Tigers’ lineup more likely to get a base hit in that situation.
But the game wasn’t played in 2024. It was played in 1934, when teams still played for one run more often than they should have and sacrifice bunts were considered smart baseball. Goslin was given the bunt sign, and he dutifully dropped one down in front of Cardinals catcher Bill DeLancey. With Cochrane the runner on second base, and his speed compromised by nagging injuries that had been aggravated on a play at first base in the third inning, DeLancey decided to fire the ball to third in an attempt to get the lead runner.
The call was that Cochrane was out. The visuals in the newspaper the next day weren’t terribly clear:
Clear photo or not, Cochrane insisted that umpire Brick Owens had blown the call. Malcom Bingay, writing under the pen name “Iffy the Dopester”* for the Detroit Free Press, agreed with Cochrane. “Mickey vowed to Brick Owens, his majesty, the Umps [sic] at third, that he was safe. And so he was or these old eyes can’t see plainly any more.”
(*Note: We really need more colorful sportswriter pseudonyms these days. It might revive the newspaper industry.)
Cochrane himself wrote the same the next day in his syndicated column. “I am as sure that I beat Delancey’s throw to Martin on Goslin’s bunt as I am that my name is Cochrane.”
Called the other way, the Tigers would have had the bases loaded with no one out. Instead the runners were at first and second with one out, so Billy Rogell’s ensuing fly ball to center field didn’t score anyone. It moved Gehringer to third, and he scored from there on a single by Greenberg to tie the game, but the Detroit threat ended one batter later when Marv Owen grounded out.
The general consensus later was that Brick Owens blew the call. If he hadn’t, Detroit scores at least one more run, and possibly more, and takes the lead. They may also have chased Paul Dean from the game, but instead he recovered and held the Tigers scoreless the rest of the game, while also singling in Durocher in the seventh inning for the Cardinals’ fourth and final run.
Just like in 1985, the heavy favorite that was on the wrong side of a bad call in Game 6 simply didn’t show up for Game 7. The underdog that had been given a reprieve by the umps trotted out a hot starter (Dizzy Dean for St. Louis instead of Bret Saberhagen for Kansas City) who promptly shut down the league-leading offense and won in a blowout, 11-0. The parallels are striking, only it was the Cardinals who came out on the winning side in 1934.
So yes, St. Louis faithful, there was a blown call in Game 6 in 1985. And if you want to claim that cost your squad a title, that’s fine. In that case, though, you have to use the same reasoning for the 1934 World Series. Haul down that title flag, sew an “8” and a “5” over the “34” it currently has, and hoist it back up the pole with pride if that’s your preference.
But the number of championships your team has won remains the same, because 1985 was just karma catching up with the Cardinals for 1934.
Thank you for this article. I’ve been a Cardinals fan for 60 years, and don’t recall ever reading about Game 6 of the 1934 World Series. I’ve read a lot about that Game 7.