Manager Fred Haney's big gun was outfielder Hank Aaron, who in his fourth big-league season pounded 44 home runs, knocked in 132 runs and batted .322. Third baseman Eddie Mathews bashed 32 homers and outfielder Wes Covington popped 21 in 96 games. (Milwaukee clubbed 199 homers overall.) The Braves were strong up the middle with Del Crandall behind the plate, Johnny Logan and Red Schoendienst serving as the keystone combination and Billy Bruton in center field. After the swift Bruton went down with a season-ending knee injury, Milwaukee summoned Bob Hazle from its Wichita farm team. All Hazle did in 41 games was bat a cool .403.
Warren Spahn, Bob Buhl and Lew Burdette combined for 56 pitching victories, with Spahn reaching 20 victories for the eighth time in his major-league career.
Milwaukee fans, understandably giddy over their club's ascension to World Series participant, had to wait until Game 3 to cheer their troops at County Stadium. There wouldn't be much cheering that day.
The Series was tied 1-1, with New York winning the opener, 3-1, behind Whitey Ford's five-hitter and the Braves winning Game 2, 4-2, thanks to Burdette's pitching and left fielder Covington's rally-killing catch in the second inning.
Tony Kubek, a 20-year-old rookie outfielder/infielder for the Yankees, made a triumphant return to his hometown of Milwaukee by lashing two home runs in Game 3 -- one with two teammates aboard, the other with the bases empty -- as New York blitzed the Braves, 12-3. Things were looking up for Milwaukee the next day when Spahn carried a 4-1 lead into the ninth. The crafty lefthander retired the first two batters, only to yield singles to Yogi Berra and Gil McDougald. Then, on a 3-2 pitch, Elston Howard walloped a long, game-tying home run into the left-field stands.
Stung by this last-gasp charge of a Series-tested team, Milwaukee fans and players probably thought the other shoe would drop at any moment. Then, in the top of the 10th, Hank Bauer tripled home Kubek, and the Yankees, one strike from defeat the inning before, had slipped ahead, 5-4.
As it turned out, though, another shoe would drop (in a manner of speaking). This one was on the foot of Braves pinch-hitter Nippy Jones.
Jones led off Milwaukee's half of the 10th, batting for Spahn. Umpire Augie Donatelli called Tommy Byrne's first pitch to the 32-year-old reserve first baseman a ball, but Jones insisted he had been struck on the foot, and he set out to prove his point. Jones retrieved the baseball, showed Donatelli a smudge of shoe polish on it and was awarded first base. The hit-batsman ruling proved crucial as Felix Mantilla, running for Jones, scored on Johnny Logan's double off Bob Grim. With the game tied, 5-5, Mathews put an electrifying end to the proceedings by belting a home run to right. After winning, 7-5, in a game they seemingly had frittered away, the Braves went into Game 5 on an upbeat note.
Burdette, the fidgety righthander whose increasing success in the majors paralleled mounting charges that he was throwing a spitball, got the call in that fifth game and beat Ford, 1-0. The game was scoreless in the fourth when the Yankees' McDougald smashed a leadoff drive to deep left field. Crashing into the fence, Covington made a homer-saving grab by reaching up and spearing the ball. Milwaukee then scored the game's only run in the sixth. After two were out, Mathews, Aaron and Joe Adcock singled. For Adcock, it was a particularly rewarding blow after a frustrating year. He had slugged 38 home runs in a banner 1956 season, but Adcock broke his leg during the '57 season and got into only 65 games (finishing with 12 homers).
Whether he threw the spitter or not, Burdette no doubt used the specter of the pitch to great psychological advantage. Winner of 114 games for Milwaukee from 1956 through 1961, he was in excellent form in Game 5 of the '57 Series, allowing seven hits (all singles), walking no one and striking out five Yankees.
Game 6 was a low-scoring but power-packed struggle, with Casey Stengel's Yankees coming out on top, 3-2, at Yankee Stadium on the strength of Bauer's seventh-inning home run off Braves reliever Ernie Johnson, who otherwise pitched brilliantly in a 4 1/3-inning stint. Milwaukee had forged a 2-2 tie in the top of the inning on a bases-empty homer by Aaron. Earlier, Berra had belted a two-run shot for the Yanks and Frank Torre had connected for the Braves. Besides the two homers, Yankees righthander Bob Turley allowed only two other hits.
One year and two days after his Series perfect game against Brooklyn, Don Larsen had another chance to be a hero in the fall classic. But as the Yankees' starting pitcher in Game 7, Larsen couldn't get through the third, an inning in which Mathews stroked a two-run double and the Braves scored four times. In the eighth, Crandall tacked on another run with a homer and Milwaukee, behind Burdette's second straight shutout, befuddled the Yankees, 5-0.
Without major-league baseball until 1953 following the shift of its American League team to St. Louis after the 1901 season, Milwaukee now ruled the majors.
Aaron provided the heavy firepower for the Braves in the World Series, batting .393, hitting three home runs and knocking in seven runs. Burdette pitched three complete-game victories and made the most of a [real or imagined] weapon -- the spitter. Then there was the polish, as pointed out so ingeniously by Nippy Jones in a momentum-shifting turn of events in Game 4.