Stan Musial wanted out. The Cardinals wanted to give away an out. The ninth inning at Brooklyn\u2019s Ebbets Field on Sept. 18, 1948, was, in a word, outlandish.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/stan_musial36.jpg\")
Musial, who hit .522 (24 for 46) at Ebbets Field in 1948, set the stage an inning earlier when he slammed a Paul Minner pitch out of the ballpark for his 36th home run of the season, tying the score at 2-2 in the eighth.<\/p>\n
Stan comes clean<\/p>\n
The score remained even when the Dodgers came to bat in the ninth against the Cardinals\u2019 best reliever, Ted Wilks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pee Wee Reese led off and hit a pop fly into shallow left. Shortstop Ralph LaPointe chased after it and called off left fielder Enos Slaughter.<\/p>\n (LaPointe had entered the game in the fourth for Marty Marion<\/a>, whose back ached. Marion committed two errors in the first, leading to a Brooklyn run.)<\/p>\n With the wind twisting the ball away from him, LaPointe changed direction at the last moment. He got his hands on the ball, then dropped it. Reese was safe at second with what was ruled a double.<\/p>\n Then Musial, playing center field, called a timeout, trotted toward the dugout and conferred with manager Eddie Dyer.<\/p>\n To the surprise of all in the ballpark, Musial took a seat on the bench and Erv Dusak<\/a> went out to center field to replace him.<\/p>\n A day earlier, as it turned out, when Musial made a somersaulting catch of Tommy Brown\u2019s short fly to center with two on in the eighth, he strained his left arm.<\/p>\n Musial kept quiet about the ailment because he didn\u2019t want to remove his bat from the lineup. However, now that the Dodgers had the potential winning run in scoring position, Musial confessed to Dyer that he didn\u2019t think he could make a strong throw from the outfield to the plate if Reese tried to score on a single to center, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.<\/p>\n According to the Irv Goodman book \u201cStan The Man Musial,\u201d Musial knew he was due to bat second in the 10th inning and \u201cthis, too, had kept him quiet when he went out to the field at the bottom of the ninth.\u201d<\/p>\n Now that Brooklyn had a scoring chance, \u201cMy turn at bat wouldn\u2019t mean anything if there wasn\u2019t going to be a 10th inning,\u201d Musial told reporter Bob Broeg.<\/p>\n So he huddled with Dyer, who said, \u201cthanks,\u201d according to the Irv Goodman book.<\/p>\n Decisions, decisions<\/p>\n Next up for Brooklyn was Carl Furillo. He fouled off a bunt attempt, then tried again and the ball \u201cglanced straight down off the bat and wound up in fair territory on the left side,\u201d the New York Daily News reported.<\/p>\n According to reporter Dick Young, \u201cFurillo stood still at the plate for the longest moment and then decided to run.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilks fielded the ball and fired to first for the out, with Reese advancing to third.<\/p>\n Rather than accept the out, Eddie Dyer and Cardinals catcher Del Rice insisted to plate umpire George Barr that the ball struck Furillo\u2019s foot and thus was foul. After conferring with fellow umpires Lee Ballanfant and Al Barlick, Barr reversed his call, declaring Furillo\u2019s bunt try was a foul, and ordered Reese to go back to second.<\/p>\n Instead of one out and a runner on third, the Dodgers still had none out and a runner on second.<\/p>\n With two strikes on Furillo, a third bunt try was impractical. So Dodgers manager Burt Shotton sent a left-handed batter, Pete Reiser<\/a>, to replace Furillo and swing away against the right-handed pitcher.<\/p>\n A St. Louisan, Reiser drilled Wilks\u2019 first pitch into the alley between Erv Dusak in center and Ron Northey<\/a> in right. Reese raced home with the winning run. Reiser was credited with a single, though he easily could have reached second or third.<\/p>\n The victory, in the final 1948 matchup between the Cardinals and Dodgers, gave Brooklyn 12 wins in 22 games versus St. Louis. It was the first time the Dodgers won a season series against the Cardinals since 1932.\u00a0Boxscore<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brooklyn bizarre: Cardinals win argument, lose\u00a0game September 7, 2026 by retrosimba Stan Musial wanted out. The Cardinals wanted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-339815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}