The Dodgers lead the Yankees 2-0 heading into the bottom of the 6th inning. Southpaw Johnny Podres, who had beaten the Yanks 8-3 in Game 3, has held the Bronx Bombers to just four hits.

Brooklyn 1B Gil Hodges, who had suffered the miserable 0-for-21 in the 1952 World Series against the Yankees, drove in both the Dodger runs with a single in the 4th and a sacrifice fly in the 6th.

Manager Walt Alston tells Podres as he leaves for the mound, "They got to catch us. We don't have to catch them." Even though it is only the sixth inning, Alston makes a defensive switch that proves to be a game-saver for the Dodgers. Junior Gilliam moves from left field to second base to replace Don Zimmer. Alston sends fleet Cuban Sandy Amoros out to left field. Sandy bats lefthanded but, more importantly as it turns out, throws lefthanded.

Podres makes Dodger fans in the crowd of 62,465 groan by walking the leadoff man, Billy Martin, on four pitches. Alston has Clem Labine and Don Bessant working in the bullpen but stays with his lefty. Gil McDougald drops a bunt down the third base line. Podres' throw to first is late. The potential tying runs are on base just that quickly.

With Yogi Berra, the Yanks' toughest hitter (with Mickey Mantle reduced to pinch hit­ting because of a leg injury) coming up, SS PeeWee Reese comes to the mound. Reese asks, "You all right, Johnny?" Podres nods. Then Alston and C Roy Campanella arrive. Walt asks his catcher, "Has he still got it?" Campy tells his pitcher, "Take it easy now." Then to the manager: "He'll be all right."

Podres recalled what happened next.

The crowd has risen to their feet. Would the fly go into the stands for a home run, slice foul into the stands, be held up by a left-to-right wind and drop for a double, or be caught? Amoros, playing Berra to pull as instructed by the dugout, races fearlessly over from left-centerfield and, at the last moment, sticks out his right gloved hand and spears the ball. Then, just as remarkably, he stops before careen­ing into the low fence. Hearing Reese yelling for the ball, Amoros turns and throws straight at the chest of Pee Wee, who stands just inside the third base line at the back of the infield dirt. Having taken a peek at the run­ners while awaiting the throw, Reese whirls and fires a strike across the diamond to 1B Gil Hodges, who stretches his entire 6'1" height to double McDougald by a hair.

A few feet further left and Berra's fly would have landed foul in the stands. A few feet further out and it would have landed in the bleachers for a three-run homer.

Asked after the game how he caught the ball, Amoros answered in his Cuban accent. "I don't know. I run like hell. ... I kept my eyes on the ball ... never looked anywhere else. It stayed up just long enough to fall into my glove ... I never hit the fence, but I was only this far from it" (holding his hands about 20" apart).

Yankee 2B Jerry Coleman, watching from the dugout, recalled: "We just couldn't believe it. In the dugout, we just shook our heads. There's no way he should have made that catch. There was no way he should have been playing Yogi so close to the outfield fence. It was a great play, but at the same time it was also a colossal fluke."

Podres: "My juices were really flowing after that."

Johnny retired the next batter, RF Hank Bauer, on a groundout to end the inning.

The Dodgers were unable to give Podres any more runs in the last three innings. But he didn't need any more. In the seventh, Mantle pinch hit with two out and a man on base, but Johnny got him to pop up to Reese.

In the eighth, Amoros made another fine play, cutting off Phil Rizzuto's liner in left-cen­ter field to hold him to a single. After an out, Phil went to third on McDougald's bad hop single to bring up Berra again. But Yogi hit a short fly to right field, and Hank Bauer struck out.

When the Yanks went down in order in the bottom of the ninth, the Dodgers had their first World Series championship in franchise history.

In addition to the celebrations in Brooklyn and across all boroughs of New York City, hun­dreds of joyous Cubans gathered in Amoros's hometown of Havana in the city's Central Park.