rest easy, duke. no more runners to move over.

With no outs in the top of the 6th inning of Game 7 of the 1955 World Series, Duke Snider — who’d hit four home runs in the pre­vi­ous six games — laid down a sac bunt to move PeeWee Reese to sec­ond. After Snider reached on an error, the next bat­ter, Roy Campanella, laid down another bunt to move Reese to third.

So the record books say that Gil Hodges had both the Dodgers’ RBI in that game. But maybe they should also note that the Dodgers’ sec­ond run came as a result of the MVP (Campy) and the run­ner-up in MVP vot­ing (the Duke) bunting over a run­ner who Hodges drove in with a sac fly. Can you imag­ine such a thing in today’s game?

Let me put a fine point on it. For his career, Duke Snider had 11 HR, 26 RBI, and 21 runs in 36 World Series games. (He’s the fourth best in WS his­tory.) This was the final game of a sea­son in which he had 42 HR, 136 RBI, 126 runs, and an OPS of 1.046. And this is the guy you want bunting with no outs in the sixth?

Darn straight. RIP, Duke.

(By the way: There are seven mem­bers of that team in the Hall of Fame. Or eight if you’re like me and you count the radio announcer.)