Johnny Kucks

Johnny Kucks threw a baseball that didn't behave like other baseballs. It dove. Hitters swung where the ball had been a tenth of a second earlier and hit the ground instead, over and over, and on October 10, 1956, at Ebbets Field, that sinking fastball won the Yankees a World Series. Kucks was 24 years old, coming off a September where his elbow had gone sore and his manager had all but benched him. He'd already lost twice in relief earlier that same Series. Then Casey Stengel handed him the ball for Game 7, and Kucks threw the best game of his life.

Hoboken to the Bronx

John Charles Kucks Jr. was born July 27, 1932, in Hoboken, New Jersey, and served in the US Army before he ever pitched professionally. He debuted with the Yankees on April 17, 1955, at 22 years old, and Stengel used him as a swingman -- 29 games, 13 of them starts, an 8-7 record and a 3.41 ERA. He even got into the 1955 World Series against Brooklyn, working two relief appearances in a Series the Yankees lost in seven. Nobody outside the Bronx clubhouse had any real reason to know his name yet.

The Breakout Season, Then the Sore Elbow

In 1956, Kucks became a real pitcher. He went 18-9 in 224.1 innings, made his only All-Star team, and looked for a stretch like a 20-game winner in the making. Then his elbow started barking in September. He dropped his final two decisions of the regular season, and the injury cost him his rotation spot right as October arrived. Stengel used him out of the bullpen in Games 1 and 2 of the World Series against Brooklyn -- both Yankees losses, and Kucks didn't pitch well in either one. By the time Game 7 rolled around, tied at three games apiece after Clem Labine had thrown ten shutout innings to force it, nobody in Brooklyn was losing sleep over Johnny Kucks.

Twenty-Seven Outs at Ebbets Field

Stengel's Game 7 choice was a surprise -- Kucks had struggled in relief twice already that October, and this was a win-or-go-home game on the road. The Dodgers sent out Don Newcombe, who'd go on to win NL MVP and the inaugural Cy Young Award once the season was tallied up, in the ballpark where Brooklyn had won so many big games before. None of it mattered. Yogi Berra took Newcombe deep for a two-run homer with two outs in the first inning, then hit another two-run shot in the third. Elston Howard added a solo homer, and Bill Skowron put it away with a grand slam off Roger Craig in the seventh. By then the only question left was whether Kucks could finish what he'd started.

He could. Working his sinker low and away, Kucks got ground ball after ground ball -- 16 of his 27 outs came on balls hit into the dirt, including each of the first eight batters he faced. He walked three and struck out just one all afternoon. That single strikeout came on the final pitch of the game: Jackie Robinson, swinging at a sinker that never came close to where he expected it, for the last out of a 9-0 Yankees win and the last at-bat Robinson would ever take in the major leagues.

Nobody in that ballpark knew they were watching Robinson's final swing. Nobody knew it would be the last World Series game Ebbets Field would ever host, either -- Brooklyn packed up for Los Angeles after the following season. Kucks just knew he'd thrown a three-hitter to win a championship, on a day when almost no one had expected him to take the ball at all.

The Fast Decline

Kucks won a second ring in 1958, when the Yankees beat Milwaukee in seven games, but the sinker that carried Game 7 never fully came back. He went 8-10 in 1957, still bothered by the elbow trouble that had started the previous September. By 1959 the decline had turned into collapse -- he opened that season with an 8.64 ERA across nine outings, a number that ends careers, and in May the Yankees moved him. New York sent Kucks, Tom Sturdivant, and infielder Jerry Lumpe to the Kansas City Athletics for third baseman Hector Lopez and pitcher Ralph Terry -- a trade that helped set up New York's next pennant runs and effectively ended Kucks's time as an effective big-leaguer. He pitched two more seasons in Kansas City, going a combined 12-21, and threw his last major-league pitch on September 25, 1960. He was 28.

After the Mound

Kucks left baseball for good after the 1960 season and built a second career, first as a stockbroker and later as an account executive for CSX in New York. He settled in Hillsdale, New Jersey, and stayed there more than fifty years. He died of cancer on October 31, 2013, at 81.

Johnny Kucks pitched five seasons for the Yankees and only one of them mattered to history. That's enough. A 24-year-old with an aching elbow and a sinker that dove into the Brooklyn dirt threw the best game of his life on the one afternoon the Yankees absolutely needed it, then spent the rest of his career fading toward Hillsdale, New Jersey, and a desk job at CSX. Baseball doesn't always let a man's talent match his moment. On October 10, 1956, for nine innings, it did.