Reynolds, Raschi and Lopat: New York's Big Three and the Great Yankee Dynasty of 1949-1953

by Sol Gittleman

When the 1949-1953 New York Yankees won an astounding five consecutive World Series, they did it without the offensive firepower that characterized so many of their championship teams before and after. The franchise came to rely instead on three aging pitchers, an unlikely trio that won 255 games during the five-year championship run.

This book focuses on the close relationship and quiet achievement of Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi and Eddie Lopat. Soon after Robinson and the cross-town Dodgers had publicly confronted the issues of race and ethnicity, these men from very different backgrounds--Creek Indian, Italian and Polish--established a deep communion with each other, became lifelong friends, and over a handful of years re-wrote baseball history.

230 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2007

Reviews

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's an almost impossible task now with free agency and no reserve clause to beat Casey Stengel's New
York Yankees record of 5 pennants and 5 World Series championships in a row. 1949 to 1953 and
even years after that the Yankees were the dominant team in baseball.

Sol Gittleman wrote a book that finally gave credit where credit was due. The Yankees had a core
three pitchers who were with all these teams. Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi, and Ed Lopat turned in
some great seasons. Their consistency is what led the Bronx Bombers.

Reynolds who was an American Indian from Oklahoma from the Creek tribe, Lopat a Polish kid from
New York City and Raschi an Italian-American from Springfield, Massachusetts were all late bloomers. Reynolds was considered a pitcher of great promise with the Cleveland Indians with whom
he originally signed that never lived up to it. Raschi with the Yankee system came up in his later
20s and was lucky he was called up that late as the Yankees had kind of sort of given up on him.

Both Reynolds and Raschi threw the high heat and were right handed. Lopat was a lefthander and
specialized in slow and slower. They call his kind of pitcher a junkballer. He signed with the
Chicago White Sox and came to the Yankees in a 1948 trade. Reynolds had been acquired a year earlier from Cleveland.

Author Gittleman gives credit to Stengel, to pitching coach Jim Turner, and to catcher Yogi Berra
who also came into his own in 1949 for their turn around. Most of the World Series games for the
Yankees from 1949 to 1953 were won by this trio. These guys were pressure pitchers. In 1950 a
kid from Astoria, Queens Edward Charles Ford known as Whitey came up. Then after a great
debut in 1950 the draft claimed him.

There was no rivalry at all between the three, the guys got along, the wives got along. When the
Yankees won the last championship by the time they won their next pennant in 1955 the big three
were gone. Whitey Ford headed the staff and beneath him was an array of pitchers who came and
left. He never had a second or third with him in the rest of his career/

I was so happy that Sol Gittleman wrote this book confirming a particular thesis of mine. These
guys were all a class act and winners all the way.

[Spiros · Rating 3 out of 5]

From 1949 through 1953, the Yankees ran off an unprecedented (and, safe to say, never to be equalled) five World Series championships. They did so with a patchwork line-up of mostly platoon players, plus a starting catcher who was basically apprenticing in the spotlight. The engine that drove this juggernaut was the Big Three, starting pitchers Allie Reynolds, Eddie Lopat, and Vic Raschi. This book gives those players their due, and exposes Yankees GM George Weiss for the weasely little snake which he undoubtedly was. Or, to quote Bill Veeck, writing in 1962: "George Weiss has been my unfavorite person for twenty years, and now that he has gone from the Yankees the spark may go out of the game for me."
On the back cover of this book, it states that the author is a "history and literature professor", which merely restates the case of "those that can't do, teach". This book is very poorly written, with many needless iterations, awkward sentence constructions, and uncertain use of commas. Perhaps he should read more literature and less history.