As the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees marched their way through the postseason, Kevin Cook couldn’t help but think about the possibility. “I was really fired up, I would have loved to see that,” he told DodgerBlue.com of a potential Dodgers-Yankees matchup in the World Series.
While Los Angeles upheld their end of the bargain by reaching the Fall Classic for the first time since 1988, the Yankees fell short in seven games in the American League Championship Series. Albeit heavily in favor of the Yankees, the two clubs share a rich postseason history.
They met in the World Series for the first time in 1941. From 1946-57, the Dodgers and Yankees played one another for a championship six times. They’ve had 11 World Series matchups overall, with New York winning eight of those series.
One was in the 1947 World Series, which Cook details in his ninth book and latest literary work, ‘Electric October: Seven World Series Games, Six Lives, Five Minutes of Fame That Lasted Forever.’
As a young child, Cook attended games in Cincinnati and Chicago. He grew up idolizing Pete Rose, and is well-versed in the Dodgers-Reds rivalry of the 1970s.
While admittedly “not knowing all that much about it,” Cook had long been captivated by the 1947 World Series. It was the first to be televised, though that could be a loose description considering the technical difficulties that often arose during broadcasts.
“Not only do you have Jackie Robinson and Joe DiMaggio, two of the most hallowed names who are still celebrated, but you’ve got the remarkable fact that it was the first televised World Series,” Cook said.
“The more I looked into it, the more you are struck by how much has been written about Jackie Robinson and Joe DiMaggio. But there had not been a book devoted to the ’47 World Series, which I thought was interesting.”
In his quest to fill that void, Cook focused on specific moments and players in the World Series, as opposed to the overall result. Bill Bevens, Algie Gionfriddo and Cookie Lavagetto are among those highlighted.
“There’s so much about those fellas and practically nothing about these men, who, fascinatingly to me, just had a moment in baseball spotlight,” Cook said. “Also, Bill Bevens. We’d still be talking about Bill Bevens in every World Series if he had gotten one more out.
“Bill Bevens is going to spend the rest of his life as the guy who almost threw the first no-hitter in the World Series. Cookie Lavagetto and Algie Gionfriddo, the Dodgers big stars of that series, once they get to the seventh game, that’s the last Major League game they would ever play.”
It’s with that angle Cook hopes to captivate readers. “Simply put, I think that’s what makes the book most distinctive,” he said.
“It’s really the story of these six lives and they all intersected in New York in October of 1947. And then they went their separate ways again. The series itself was fascinating, it was drama left and right.”
