Remembering Johnny Podres

We lost another one of the few remaining links to the old Brooklyn Dodgers on Sunday night, when franchise icon Johnny Podres died at the age of 75 in Glens Falls, NY. Podres had been in ill health for several years, culminating in the amputation of one of his legs, a circumstance brought about by a life of chain smoking.
One of the acclaimed “Boys of Summer,” Podres is best remembered for shutting down the hated Yankees in Game Seven of the 1955 World Series, clinching Brooklyn’s only World Championship. That will always be Podres’ lasting legacy, but his career encompassed a large sampling of achievements, both as a pitcher and as a coach.

*Podres was a durable left-hander who lasted 15 seasons in the major leagues before retiring in 1969. A winner of 148 games with a win percentage of .561, he posted double figures in victories seven straight seasons. He completed 77 games over his career, three times reaching double figures in a season. With three quality pitches—a fastball, slider, and curveball—Podres reached his peak in the late 1950s; he led the National League with a 2.57 ERA in 1957 and earned the first of his four All-Star Game selections the following summer.

*Though he will always be referenced for pitching the final game of the 1955 World Series, that represented only the top of his postseason accomplishments. Clutch to the extreme, he also won the third game of the ’55 Series, a complete game effort over the Yankees. Over the course of four World Series, Podres started six games, won four of five decisions, and logged an ERA of 2.11. He was also a terrific World Series hitter, collecting five hits in 16 at-bats for a .313 batting average.

*After his playing days, Podres forged a well-regarded reputation as a pitching coach. He repeatedly taught his young pitchers the change-up, with burgeoning Twins ace Frank Viola becoming his most prized disciple. Podres did arguably his best work with the 1993 Phillies, who went to the World Series after bringing up the bottom of the National League in team ERA the previous season. Like many players of his era, Podres had little use for pitch counts, which he considered overdone and overrated.

*Podres is well represented in Cooperstown. Though not a member of the Hall of Fame, he is depicted in a statue just outside of the museum complex, in a small grassy area that is known as Cooper Park. (As visitors walk the rampway from the Plaque Gallery to the Library, they can see the statue through the glass windows that line the edge of the park.) The life-size statue shows Podres in the midst of his windup, as he prepares to deliver a pitch during his 2-0 shutout in the seventh game of the ’55 Series. Standing exactly 60 feet, six inches away is another statue—one of Roy Campanella, the Dodgers’ Hall of Famer and Podres’ catcher that day at Yankee Stadium.

Every time I walk through Cooper Park and glance at those statues, I’ll be served with a small reminder of Podres’ legacy.