Three Key Events
One team's misfortune is another team's gain. On their way to five straight World Championships (1949-1953), the Yankees had outstanding teams, clutch performances, shrewd additions such as Johnny Mize, Johnny Sain, and Johnny Hopp (going to the John can be a positive experience), some good luck, and the unforeseen benefit of some of their rivals' bad luck. Three key events helped make the Yankees the 1950 American League pennant winner.
The Yankees and Red Sox battled to the last day of the 1949 season before the Yankees prevailed. Going into the 1950 season, it was expected that it would again be the Yankees and Boston with Detroit and Cleveland also factors. The Yankees were a balanced team, the Red Sox were an offensive powerhouse with weak pitching, the Indians had outstanding pitching, and the Tigers were a sleeper whose strength was in strong pitching and a fleet outfield. The Tigers' pitching didn't stay strong very long.
On May 19, the first of three pivotal events occurred. The Tigers' ace right hander, Virgil Trucks, who had won 19 games with a 2.81 ERA and led the league in strikeouts and shutouts in 1949, suffered a sore arm. He was lost for the rest of the season. Trucks' misfortune was a fatal blow to the Bengals pennant hopes and they finished second, three games behind the Yankees. The Tigers loss of Trucks certainly helped the Yankees, Red Sox, and Indians.
The beauty of baseball is that one can speculate endlessly without reaching a definitive conclusions (kind of like life). After losing Trucks, the Tigers hung tough and as late as August 21 led the Yankees by 3 ½ games, the Indians by 4 ½, and the Red Sox by 6 ½. New York finally caught them on August 29 but on September 7 the Tigers regained the top spot by percentage points. The Red Sox were only 1 ½ games behind.
It stayed close and on September 19, with only ten games remaining, the Yankees were ahead of the Tigers and Red Sox by a mere ½ game. The Yankees finally pulled in front to stay but If the Tigers hadn't lost Trucks, the chances are things would have been different, but they didn't and they weren't.
The second key event occurred when the Yankees brought up twenty one year old left handed pitcher Ed Ford, who would eventually become Whitey Ford. After a June 30 12-7 loss to the Senators, which was their seventh loss in nine games, the Yankees announced that they had purchased Ford's contract from their Kansas City farm team (No, not the A's. This was 1950 and the A's were still in Philadelphia) where he won 6 while losing 3.
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