1957 World Series and Controversy
The highlight of his season occurred on July 26, when he hit a walk off home run in the eleventh inning to lift the Braves to a 6-3 victory over the New York Giants. After finishing second to the Brooklyn Dodgers two years in a row, the Braves won the National League in 1957, and faced the New York Yankees in the World Series.
Jones is remembered for being involved in a controversial "Shoeshine incident" in the 1957 Series, that would be repeated twelve years later by Cleon Jones in the 1969 World Series. Jones pinch hit in games one and three of the 1957 World Series, grounding out both times. Both of which games were also won by the Yankees. Game four went into extra innings, and when the Yankees took a 5–4 lead in the tenth, the Braves were looking at the possibility of falling three games to one in the series.
Jones led off the Milwaukee half of the tenth inning, pinch hitting for Warren Spahn. He jumped back from a low pitch that home plate umpire Augie Donatelli called a ball. Jones protested that it had hit his foot, and he was awarded first base after showing Donatelli a shoe polish mark on the ball to prove it. Yankees manager Casey Stengel vehemently protested the call, but to no avail. The Braves scored three runs in the tenth, including a two-run home run by Eddie Mathews to end the game and even the series at two games apiece. The play was the turning point in the series, as the Braves went on to win the series in seven games.
Read more about this topic: Nippy Jones
Famous quotes containing the words world, series and/or controversy:
“When I read of the vain discussions of the present day about the Virgin Birth and other old dogmas which belong to the past, I feel how great the need is still of a real interest in the religion which builds up character, teaches brotherly love, and opens up to the seeker such a world of usefulness and the beauty of holiness.”
—Olympia Brown (1835–1900)
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)