Lew Burdette

He threw four outs for the New York Yankees in September 1950 and nobody wrote a word about it. Seven years later, he threw twenty-seven innings against that same franchise in the World Series, won three complete games, and left Yankee Stadium as the most dangerous man the Bronx had faced all decade. Lew Burdette pitched for the Yankees for exactly one month before they traded him away as an afterthought. He spent the rest of his career making sure they never forgot it.

Path to the Bronx

Selva Lewis Burdette Jr. was born November 22, 1926, in Nitro, West Virginia, a Kanawha River town that got its name from the WWI explosives plant that built it. Yankees scout Bill McCorry signed him in 1947 for a contract that paid $200 a month (a bus-fare wage even by 1947 standards), and Burdette started climbing the organization's low minors the unglamorous way -- six games at Norfolk in the Piedmont League, then a full season at Amsterdam, New York, in the Class C Canadian-American League, where he went 9-10 with a 2.82 ERA.

By September 1950, the Yankees were the defending World Series champions and about to sweep the Phillies for another title. When rosters expanded that month, Burdette got the call. He debuted September 26 against the Washington Senators, coming on in relief in the fifth inning and getting Gil Coan to ground out. He made one more relief appearance after that. Two games, 1.1 innings, no record either way. He never sniffed the postseason roster.

The Trade That Cost Them

George Weiss needed pitching for a 1951 pennant race, and the Boston Braves had Johnny Sain, a four-time 20-game winner starting to fade at 33. On August 29, 1951, Weiss sent Sain to New York and shipped Burdette and $50,000 the other way to close the deal. Sain won three rings as a Yankees swingman before his career wound down in 1955. The Yankees got exactly what they paid for.

Burdette, meanwhile, was the throw-in nobody in the Bronx thought twice about. He spent 1951 and part of 1952 in Boston's bullpen and rotation, mixed results, no real signal that he'd become anything more than organizational depth. Then the franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and something clicked. Burdette became a full-time starter, paired up with roommate Warren Spahn to give the Braves the best one-two punch in the National League, and by 1956 he'd led the league in ERA at 2.70. New York, four years removed from trading him for cash, wasn't paying attention yet. It would.

The Vengeance of October 1957

Milwaukee won the pennant in 1957 behind Spahn, a 23-year-old Hank Aaron hitting .322 with 44 home runs, and a 30-year-old Burdette who'd gone 17-9 during the season. Nobody outside Wisconsin expected him to be the story of the World Series. He didn't overpower anybody -- no blazing fastball, no strikeout binges (13 whiffs in 27 innings was plenty for him). He worked off a sinker and a slider, changed speeds, and used a fidgety delivery that hitters could never time.

Game 2 went to Burdette, 4-2, a complete game that tied the Series. Game 5 was a pitchers' duel against Whitey Ford that came down to a single run -- Eddie Mathews, Aaron, and Joe Adcock strung together three straight singles in the sixth, and Burdette made the 1-0 lead hold up for a shutout. Then, on two days' rest, he took the ball again for Game 7 at Yankee Stadium against Don Larsen and shut the Yankees out again, 5-0. Three complete games. Two shutouts. Nobody had won three complete games in a single World Series in 37 years, and nobody had thrown two shutouts in one since Christy Mathewson in 1905.

Burdette always denied throwing a spitter -- "my best pitch is one I do not throw," he liked to say -- and let the suspicion do the work for him. Whether the Yankees hitters believed him or not, it didn't matter. He walked off with the Series MVP, and the Braves had their first championship in 43 years.

1958: One Pitch Too Many

New York got a rematch in 1958, and the Yankees clawed back from down 3-1 to force a Game 7 in Milwaukee. Burdette started it on four days' rest, the same pitcher who'd tortured them a year earlier, and for seven innings it looked like more of the same -- a 2-2 tie, the home crowd sensing a repeat title. Then Elston Howard and Yogi Berra set up an eighth-inning rally, and Moose Skowron turned a Burdette slider into a three-run homer. Final score, 6-2, Yankees.

The margin between a Milwaukee dynasty and a one-year wonder came down to that single location. Burdette kept pitching well past it -- 21 wins in 1959, tied with Spahn for the league lead -- but Milwaukee never got back to the World Series. He very nearly got the Braves there again that September, taking a 5-2 lead into the ninth inning of a win-or-go-home pennant playoff game against the Dodgers before Los Angeles rallied to win it, 6-5.

Legacy

Burdette pitched until 1967, finishing with 203 wins, a 3.66 ERA, and a Hall of Fame vote that never got close -- he topped out in the low-to-mid-20s percent across fifteen years on the ballot (Cooperstown wanted 75), nowhere near induction. He died February 6, 2007, in Winter Garden, Florida, at 80.

He belongs to Yankees history the way a foul ball belongs to a box score -- barely, and only in retrospect. New York had him for two relief innings and let him go for a proven veteran who won them three rings. Both sides can point to a good outcome. Only one of them had to watch the other man beat them three times in October.