Bill Bevens

October 3, 1947. Bill Bevens stood one out from throwing the first no-hitter in World Series history, and he did it while walking half of Brooklyn's lineup. He didn't get the last out. Cookie Lavagetto's double off the right-field wall in the ninth turned an eight-and-two-thirds-inning masterpiece into a footnote, and turned Bevens into the answer to one of baseball's cruelest trivia questions.

That single afternoon defines him now, and there's an argument he'd have wanted it that way -- a journeyman control artist who, for one game, was one pitch from immortality.

From Hubbard, Oregon, to the Bronx

Floyd Clifford Bevens was born October 21, 1916, in Hubbard, Oregon, and everyone who ever called him Bill never bothered with Floyd again. The Yankees signed him at 20 in 1937, and he spent seven full seasons working through their farm system before New York ever saw him pitch.

He was already a no-hit pitcher before he got the call. Bevens threw one for the Class B Wenatchee Chiefs in 1938, then did it again in 1939 -- an 8-0 win over the Tacoma Tigers on September 21, with the only Tacoma baserunner reaching on an error. Seven years and two no-hitters in the low minors is a long apprenticeship for a 6-foot-3 right-hander with a good arm and shaky command (the command issue, it turns out, was the whole story of his career, for better and eventually for worse). It just got more famous later.

Bevens made his major league debut on May 12, 1944, at age 27, against Detroit -- 2 2/3 innings of relief, six hits, one earned run. Not a memorable start (six hits in under three innings rarely is). Nobody remembers it, and nobody should.

Four Seasons, One Ceiling

The shape of Bevens' career was consistent: durable, hittable in stretches, wild in others, occasionally brilliant. His rookie half-season in 1944 was his tidiest -- 4-1, a 2.68 ERA in 43 2/3 innings, the Yankees using him carefully as the war thinned out rosters across the league. He settled into a full-time rotation spot in 1945, going 13-9 with a 3.67 ERA, then had the best year of his career in 1946.

That 1946 season is the one scouts would've pointed to. Bevens went 16-13 with a 2.23 ERA across 249 2/3 innings, striking out well over 100 hitters, working deep into games as one of the more reliable arms on a Yankees staff that finished third in the American League. It's the season that made him a rotation fixture heading into 1947. It's also the season nobody remembers, because of what happened the following October.

Joe DiMaggio and the rest of the 1947 Yankees rolled to the pennant that summer while Bevens slipped -- 7-13, a 3.82 ERA, the command issues that had always lurked under the surface finally costing him. Bucky Harris still trusted him with a World Series start. It's the kind of decision that looks either reckless or prophetic depending entirely on how the next nine innings go.

One Out From History

Game 4 of the 1947 World Series, at Ebbets Field, is the whole reason anyone still says his name. Bevens held the Dodgers hitless for eight full innings and two-thirds of a ninth -- issuing 10 walks along the way, a World Series record that stands to this day -- while the Yankees clung to a 2-1 lead built without much help from Bevens' control. One out from the finish, Brooklyn had the tying run in scoring position at second. Bucky Harris chose to put the go-ahead run on base anyway, ordering an intentional walk to Pete Reiser rather than pitch to him with first base open. It didn't matter. Cookie Lavagetto, pinch-hitting, lined a double off the right-field wall. Two runs scored. Dodgers 3, Yankees 2. No no-hitter, no shutout, no win -- just the closest anyone has ever come, before or since.

The Yankees absorbed the gut-punch and won the World Series in seven games days later. Bevens never got to enjoy much of it. He'd strained his arm during that Game 4 start, and it never came back right.

The Arm That Wouldn't Heal

Nobody could save what was left of Bevens' arm, though the Yankees tried. He never pitched in the majors again after that World Series -- not one more inning, for New York or anyone else. Spring training 1948 ended with his unconditional release. The club held onto a sliver of hope even after that, selling him conditionally to the White Sox in January 1949, only to have him returned in March and released outright that April. The arm simply wouldn't cooperate.

He kept pitching in the minors, because that's what you did when the alternative was quitting outright. In 1951, with the Salem Senators of the Western International League, Bevens found something close to his old form -- 20-12, a 3.08 ERA across 263 innings, matching his career big-league ERA to the decimal (baseball has a strange sense of symmetry when it wants to). A 1952 spring tryout with the Reds went nowhere; he was sold to the San Francisco Seals before he ever got into a regular-season game, and that was that.

Bevens died October 26, 1991, in Salem, Oregon -- the same town where his career took its last meaningful bow, four decades earlier. He was 75.

A Career Defined by Nine Innings

Bevens finished his four Yankees seasons with a 40-36 record, a 3.08 ERA, and one championship ring he barely got to savor before his arm gave out. Those are solid, unspectacular numbers for a solid, unspectacular pitcher -- exactly the kind of career that fades from memory within a generation. It hasn't faded, because for eight and two-thirds innings on an October afternoon in Brooklyn, Bill Bevens was the best pitcher who ever lived, and the record book still can't decide what to do with that.