Dodger History Today – 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers clinch pennant on Sept 8th – Karl Spooner last hurrah

MLB Standings on Sept 8th, 1955

The only Brooklyn Dodger World Championship team did things in style in 1955, with a 10 – 2 thumping of the Braves, clinching the NL Pennant on Sept 8th.  This was the earliest a NL pennant had ever been clinched.  The game featured three hits by Jackie Robinson and Gil Hodges.  Future 1955 MVP Roy Campanella would get hit be a pitch in the first inning, and be removed from the game but the rest of the lineup picked him up.  The Dodgers put up four runs in the 1st and never looked back. Roger Craig started the game but it was Karl Spooner who finished it with five shutout innings.

Karl Spooner had one of the most interesting and short-lived careers you will ever hear about.

Southpaw pitcher Karl Spooner exploded onto the Major League Baseball scene with two record-setting games at the end of the 1954 season. His flame quickly faded following a shoulder injury during spring training 1955, and he struggled through that season. A member of the only Brooklyn Dodger team to win a World Series, his major league career came to a humiliating end in Game Six of the 1955 Fall Classic.

Spooner had just thrown two complete game victories before winning this game with five relief innings giving him three victories in a row and a 8 – 5 record. Karl would never win another MLB game.

The 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers continue to be one of the most interesting and written about teams in baseball history and Karl Spooner deserves his own spot. Not many have ever started a career so brightly and left so quickly.  Karl did not even have a long life, dying at the age of 52  in Vero Beach.