Ebbets Field World Series, 1955
Photographer: Hy Peskin
Photo Subject: Game Five of the 1955 World Series where right fielder Carl Furillo is fielding a Yogi Berra hit that caromed off the scoreboard. Dodger centerfielder Duke Snider is seen backing up Furillo. Furillo was able to hold Yogi to a single.
Fun Fact: Roger Kahn, in his book the Boys of Summer called Carl Furillo the “Emperor of Right Field”, which is saying something if you ever played right field in Ebbets Field - or so I have heard.
The right field wall was a billiard player’s nightmare. A nineteen-foot-high metal screen balanced between a scoreboard that jutted out from fence with a Bulova clock atop the scoreboard. The lower wall was concrete and concave, a vertical top half and an angled bottom half. According to Philip J. Lowry in Green Cathedrals, there were nearly 300 angles a ball could take after hitting different parts of the wall.
Furillo described how he played the wall. “Will it hit above the cement and hit the screen? Then you run like hell toward the wall, because it’s gonna drop dead. Will it hit the cement? Then you gotta run like hell to the infield, because it’s gonna come shooting out. I can’t even tell you if it’s gonna hit the scoreboard. The angles were crazy.”
Painting Detail: Printed on 13 ” x 19” canvas and painted using Schmincke Mussini and Marshall’s oil paints. Finer details were made using Prismacolor pencils.
Acknowledgement: Peter Golenbock. Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers.