The Great Bambino, Babe Ruth, hit 15 World Series homers in his career, but not one of them came with the bases loaded. Lou Gehrig, who held the Major League record for grand slams for nearly eight decades, never hit one in the Fall Classic (although he did have an even-rarer inside-the-park home run in the 1928 Series). Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio played in 10 Fall Classics, homering in seven of them — but nary a grand slam.
Just making it to the World Series is a rare feat for most ballplayers, but to hit a grand slam during baseball’s grand finale, the stars truly need to align. With so much riding on each pitch, the guys on the mound are as dialed in as can be. When they do run into trouble, managers often give ’em the hook before there’s a full-blown traffic jam on the base paths. But on those rare occasions when a batter gets a pitch he can let fly in that childhood backyard dream scenario …
“I doubt if I’ll ever have many bigger thrills,” a 21-year-old Mickey Mantle said after his jackpot helped down the Dodgers in Game 5 of the ’53 Classic. “This is only the fourth time it has been done in a World Series, which makes it a great honor.”
In the 120 World Series played since 1903, just 23 grand slams have been hit, the most recent being Anthony Volpe’s shot off Dodgers right-hander Daniel Hudson in Game 4 last year. There were none in the dead-ball era, and after Cleveland’s Elmer Smith hit the first World Series grand slam in 1920, it took 16 years before baseball fans witnessed a second. Half a century later, a similar drought took place: Between 1969 and 1986, the only player to hit a grand slam in the Fall Classic was Orioles pitcher Dave McNally in 1970.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a team that has played in more than a third of all World Series, the Yankees have had more players — nine, to be exact — go deep with the sacks full than any other club. (Minnesota and Atlanta, with two players each, are the only other clubs with more than one; 17 active franchises have never had it happen.) Those nine Yankees all accomplished great things in their careers, so much so that, in some cases, their grand slams are mere footnotes. Yogi Berra’s knack for historic feats on and off the field was so remarkable that hitting one out of Ebbets Field off the best pitcher in the NL in 1956 wasn’t even the most impressive thing he did that Series.
In the moment, though, nothing meant more, and each slam remains a story worth retelling — nine chapters in Yankees history that will live on forever.
“Hopefully,” Volpe said, “we’ll keep adding to the list.”
Tony Lazzeri — Game 2, 1936 World Series
Tony Lazzeri, the Yankees’ pugnacious 170-pound powder keg of a second baseman with wrists of steel and dynamite in his bat, had already made grand slam history in 1936. On May 24 at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park, he set an American League single-game record that still stands by knocking in 11 runs, eight of which came on two swings. Returning to the World Series for the first time since his two Game 4 homers at Wrigley Field helped finish off a sweep of the Cubs in 1932, the 32-year-old Lazzeri was part of an explosive lineup that would kick-start the Yankees’ late-’30s dynasty.
After getting stymied by Carl Hubbell in Game 1 of the ’36 Fall Classic, the Yankees would even the score at the Polo Grounds the following day by putting up a World Series single-game-record 18 runs. In the top of the third, with Lou Gehrig due up and the Yankees ahead, 2-1, Giants manager Bill Terry summoned Al Smith with nobody out and the bases loaded. The left-hander managed to hold the Iron Horse to a two-run single; it wasn’t until four batters later, when Smith was yanked for Dick Coffman, a 29-year-old right-hander making his World Series debut, that the first Yankees grand slam in World Series history took flight. Lazzeri, batting eighth, parked one into the stands in right-center, receiving an emphatic smack on the backside from Yankees third base coach Art Fletcher as he headed for home.
“I got a wire that night from Elmer Smith, the old Cleveland outfielder who’s the only other guy who ever did that in a Series,” The Terror of Telegraph Hill told sportswriter Bob Considine during a 1945 interview at Lazzeri’s bar in San Francisco. “Still got it … but nobody wants to see it, I guess. All they want to talk about is that damn time I struck out.”
Lazzeri was lamenting his famous at-bat against Grover Cleveland Alexander, when a would-be grand slam curved just foul. Instead, the battle ended in favor of the reportedly hung-over hurler, as recounted on Alexander’s Hall of Fame plaque: Won 1926 world championship for Cardinals by striking out Lazzeri with bases full in final crisis at Yankee Stadium.
“There isn’t a night goes by but what some guy leans across the bar, or comes up behind me, at a table in this joint, and brings up the old question,” Lazzeri said. “Never a night.”
Gil McDougald — Game 5, 1951 World Series
The 1951 World Series had ended, the Yankees were world champs for a third straight year, and the great Joe DiMaggio — having won his ninth ring in 10 trips — had officially announced his retirement when a question was posed to baseball’s elder statesman, Connie Mack: Who would succeed Joltin’ Joe as the Yanks’ marquee player?
He might have said Mickey Mantle or Whitey Ford, but without hesitation, the Tall Tactician replied, “Gil McDougald, of course! This lad can’t miss. Now that DiMaggio is retired, he’ll be the one who’ll make the Yankees go.”
Mack’s confidence was well founded. With an unusual crab-like stance in the batter’s box and his bat drooped low over his shoulder, McDougald didn’t look like a prototypical hitter. But from day one, Yankees manager Casey Stengel sensed that this was no ordinary rookie. For one, McDougald couldn’t afford to blow his opportunity — the 23-year-old was already married with four children. Stengel’s instinct proved prophetic when McDougald was thrown into the middle of a dynasty at the start of the ’51 season and immediately made headlines. In just his seventh game in the big leagues, his grand slam against the St. Louis Browns was part of a then-record six-RBI inning for the impressive young infielder.
Thanks to Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World,” the 1951 World Series pitted the AL and NL Rookies of the Year — McDougald and Willie Mays — against each other. The Series was tied at two games apiece, and the Yankees were trailing, 1-0, heading into the third inning of Game 5 at the Polo Grounds when the Giants and their starter, Larry Jansen, started to unravel. DiMaggio advanced to second on an error by left fielder Monte Irvin following his two-out RBI single, prompting Jansen to intentionally walk Johnny Mize and face McDougald with the bases full. The pitcher delivered a first-pitch ball and, not wanting to fall behind 2-0, threw a fastball down the middle that McDougald launched into the upper deck in left field.
McDougald’s grand slam — the first in World Series play since Lazzeri, another Yankees second baseman from San Francisco, hit his 15 years earlier — opened the floodgates in more ways than one. It turned a tight contest into a 5-1 game that the Yankees eventually won, 13-1, on the back of Ed Lopat’s second complete-game five-hitter of the Series, and it was the first of five World Series grand slams in 10 years — all off Yankee bats.
Mickey Mantle — Game 5, 1953 World Series
In June of 1969, preparations were underway for a day at Yankee Stadium that no one in attendance would ever forget. More than 60,000 fans would fill The House That Ruth Built to pay homage to their hero, Mickey Mantle, as the Yankees retired his No. 7. In the days leading up to the June 8 celebration, the Commerce Comet recalled to Dick Young of the New York Daily News the top moments of his brilliant career — no easy task. There was the walk-off homer against Barney Schultz in Game 3 of the ’64 Classic that broke a tie with Ruth for most career World Series homers. There was the famous pinch-hit homer against Baltimore in ’63. He could have gone with the tape-measure shot at Griffith Stadium in ’53, the legendary blast that nearly left Yankee Stadium in ’56, No. 500 against the O’s, the catch to preserve Don Larsen’s perfect game, but …
“If somebody were to put a gun in my back, and say, name one,” Mantle said, “I suppose I’d rank the grand slam homer off Russ Meyer as my biggest thrill. I was young, and I guess things take on a little more excitement in your youth. Besides, it was against Brooklyn, and that was The Enemy in those days.”
While McDougald remains the only rookie in World Series history to hit a grand slam, Mantle still holds the title of youngest to do it — and the only switch-hitter. Playing in his third Fall Classic, The Mick was 16 days shy of turning 22 when he turned the feat in Game 5 of the ’53 Series — a game he nearly didn’t play in at all.
The Series was tied at two games apiece, but after winning Game 2 with a two-run homer off Preacher Roe, Mantle had gone cold, striking out six times over the next two games. Eager to tune up his swing in the batting cage during pregame warmups, Mantle turned the corner a moment too soon and took a liner to the hand off the bat of Irv Noren. It seemed the star center fielder would be a late scratch, but trainer Gus Mauch kept the fist iced all game, and The Mick stayed in the lineup.
Mantle remembered the details of his third-inning at-bat vividly all those years later:
We had just taken a 2-1 lead against Johnny Podres. The bases were full, and Charlie Dressen came out and yanked Podres, a lefty, and brought in Meyer, a righty. I stepped across the plate to bat left-handed and hit Russ’ first pitch upstairs in Ebbets Field, in left-center.
While home runs at Ebbets Field were not uncommon for left-handed sluggers, seeing a lefty hammer a ball the opposite way into the second deck was astonishing. The Yanks went on to win the game, 11-7, and they put the Series away the following day for their unprecedented fifth consecutive world championship.
Yogi Berra — Game 2, 1956 World Series
Prior to 2024, when Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani met in the World Series, 1956 was the last time the regular season’s home run leaders in each league faced off in the Fall Classic. But it wasn’t Mickey Mantle or Duke Snider who went deep with the bases full in Game 2 — it was Yogi Berra, the 31-year-old perennial All-Star in the prime of his career. Had it not been for Mantle’s stunning Triple Crown season, Berra — who hit .298 with 30 homers and 105 RBI while catching 135 games — would have won a third straight AL MVP Award in 1956, and he stayed red hot against Brooklyn in the World Series.
The lasting image of Berra from the ’56 Fall Classic is, of course, him leaping into Don Larsen’s arms after catching the only perfect game in postseason history. But three days earlier at Ebbets Field, it was Berra’s bat that made history: His second-inning homer remains the only grand slam hit by a catcher in World Series play.
The defending-champion Dodgers had won the opener at home and had their imposing right-hander Don Newcombe — who won Major League Baseball’s inaugural Cy Young Award as well as the 1956 NL MVP after going 27-7 during the regular season — lined up for Game 2. But the Yankees were a tough matchup for Newk, who had lost all three of his prior World Series clashes with them. By the second inning, he had already given up two runs on five hits when Berra strode to the plate with two outs and the bases full of Yanks. The left-handed-hitting catcher crushed Newcombe’s second offering over the wall in right field and out onto Bedford Avenue, sending Brooklyn’s ace to the showers.
When Dodgers trainer Doc Wendler went to find Newcombe in the clubhouse and treat his arm, he was nowhere to be found; he had already headed for the parking lot, where he punched an attendant in the stomach for heckling him about always folding in tough spots. Had the pitcher hung around, Newcombe would have seen that Berra’s slam went for naught. Larsen didn’t make it out of the second frame either, and the Dodgers won, 13-8.
Afterward, Newk’s teammates came to the pitcher’s defense. “He’s been unfortunate to get tagged with that ‘choke up’ label, and it just isn’t so,” said Jackie Robinson. “He’s got plenty of guts, but he’s had some bad luck.” Brooklyn had withstood Berra’s grand slam to take a 2-games-to-none lead that had fans in Flatbush thinking repeat. But the Series — and Berra’s torment of Newcombe — was far from over.
Moose Skowron — Game 7, 1956 World Series
Bill “Moose” Skowron was coming into his own in 1956. Regularly batting fifth behind Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, the Yankees’ 25-year-old first baseman batted .308 with 23 homers and 90 RBI. The muscle-bound former Purdue football player was the meanest looking guy on the team, but in truth he was a sweetheart, a friend to all who preferred to avoid confrontation. After going 0-for-4 in the ’56 World Series opener, Moose didn’t make a peep when manager Casey Stengel benched him.
Skowron struck out in his lone pinch-hit appearance in Game 2, then continued to show up to the ballpark only to see Joe Collins’ name in the lineup. Don Larsen’s Game 5 perfecto capped off three straight Yankees victories at home that Skowron watched from the dugout.
Game 6 was a tense pitching duel at Ebbets Field between Bob Turley and Clem Labine that stayed scoreless into the 10th, when Jackie Robinson hit a liner to left that Enos Slaughter misplayed, allowing Junior Gilliam to race home with the winning run and put a stop to the Dodgers’ 18-inning scoreless streak. The Yankees’ clubhouse afterward was “like a morgue,” Mantle wrote in My Favorite Summer 1956. A bawling Billy Martin went into Stengel’s office and pleaded with his manager: “Casey, you gotta get Moose and Ellie [Howard] in the game tomorrow. They can help. They can do the job. They’re young, and they’re hungry. Give them a shot. You won’t be sorry.”
Stengel mulled it over, and his gut told him to do what Martin had suggested. He started the right-handed-hitting Skowron at first base against the righty Don Newcombe over the more experienced, left-handed-hitting Collins.
Newk’s nightmare Series concluded with Berra hitting a pair of two-run homers and Howard leading off the fourth with a solo shot. The score was still 5-0 when Walter Alston brought in Roger Craig to start the seventh. Craig went single, walk, wild pitch, intentional walk to load the bases. Just as Skowron began making his way toward the batter’s box, Stengel called him back.
“I figured he was taking me out for Collins,” Skowron told Newsday’s Stan Isaacs. “But he told me only that they were feeding me inside pitches and that I should wait for one on the outside.”
Moose promptly sent Craig’s first pitch into the left-field stands for a 9-0 Yankees lead that sent some of the Flatbush faithful toward the exits. As he approached third base, Skowron looked up and found his wife, Virginia, in the second deck with tears in her eyes. His lone hit of the Series remains the only Game 7 grand slam in Fall Classic history.
Johnny Kucks finished off his three-hit shutout with one final sinker — a swinging strike by Robinson that squirted away from Berra’s mitt. No. 42 sprinted out of the batter’s box as Berra picked up the ball and fired it to first base. Skowron squeezed it in his glove, and the Yankees were back on top again. It marked Robinson’s final time in uniform, and the final Subway Series featuring the Dodgers or Giants, who left for California a year later.
Bobby Richardson — Game 3, 1960 World Series
The first World Series grand slam in The House That Ruth Built came off the bat of a light-hitting second baseman who had cleared the fence at Yankee Stadium only one time in his career. Bobby Richardson was a terrific ballplayer who spent his entire 12-year career in pinstripes, making eight All-Star teams and winning five Gold Glove Awards. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a power hitter. In 1960, he hit one homer in 150 games, his eighth-inning shot on April 30 providing the final run in a 16-0 win at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium.
But the World Series seemed to bring out the best in Richardson. In a 16-3 Game 2 win at Forbes Field, he collected three hits and scored three runs. The Yanks liked their chances in Game 3 with World Series stalwart Whitey Ford on the mound. They felt even better in the first inning, when they chased Pirates starter Vinegar Bend Mizell after just five batters. The ex-Dodger Clem Labine relieved him, and with the bases loaded, one out and two runs already across, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility for Casey Stengel to go for the early dagger by sending in a slugger off the bench to pinch-hit for his starting second baseman.
Richardson approached the plate expecting to hear the Old Perfessor yell out, “Hold that gun!” Instead, Stengel put on the bunt sign. After Richardson fouled off two bunt attempts, third base coach Frank Crosetti yelled to the right-handed hitter to slap one to right. But Richardson got a full-count fastball from Labine that he could pull and sent it a few rows past the short chain-link fence in left, beyond the reach of Gino Cimoli.
“I was just trying to meet it and keep out of a double play,” the 25-year-old said afterward. “Matter of fact, when I got to first, I thought it had been caught. Then the umpires waved me around.”
Richardson came up with the bases loaded again in the fourth and drove in two more runs with a single through the left side, giving the Yankees a 10-0 lead and establishing a record (yet to be surpassed) for RBI in a World Series game. The humble South Carolinian was a bit embarrassed seeing the feat reported on the Yankee Stadium scoreboard. “It’ll sure look funny seeing my name alongside all those other great players,” he said. “People will think it’s a misprint.”
The grand slam and the six-RBI day were part of a monster Series for Richardson; his 13 hits and 12 RBI set standards that have been matched but not bested. And although Pittsburgh’s furious late rally in Game 7 and Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off homer gave the Pirates the championship, the Series MVP votes were already in, making Richardson the first (and still only) player from a losing team to win the award.
Joe Pepitone — Game 6, 1964 World Series
Joe Pepitone, the sure-handed, well-coifed first baseman and life of any party, had some memorable moments as a Yank, both on and off the field — few greater than the afternoon of Oct. 14, 1964, in St. Louis.
Pepitone had grown up in Brooklyn idolizing Mickey Mantle, and the two had grown close after Pepi cracked the bigs as a 21-year-old in 1962. But he felt he let The Mick down in his first World Series, when he managed just two singles and made a costly error in Game 4 as the Yankees got swept by the Dodgers in ’63. The 1964 World Series — the Yankees’ 15th appearance in 18 years — was an opportunity for Pepitone to redeem himself.
The opener at Busch Stadium didn’t go well, as he went 0-for-5 and left four men on base in a 9-5 loss, but in Game 2, Pepitone’s luck started to change. He doubled and got grazed by a Bob Gibson pitch — a turning point in the game that the Cardinals disputed; St. Louis fans booed Pepitone’s every move the rest of the Series — then had a ninth-inning RBI single off Gordie Richardson in an 8-3 complete-game victory for Mel Stottlemyre.
Back at Busch for Game 6 after the Cards took two of three in the Bronx, Pepitone came up in the top of the eighth with the bases loaded and the Yanks ahead, 4-1. With two strikes, he tipped a pitch into Tim McCarver’s glove, but the catcher couldn’t hang on to it. Pepi glanced toward third, where Mantle took a short lead. The ailing veteran, whose knees were in terrible pain, gave his young teammate a little fist pump and a smile of encouragement.
That was all Pepitone needed. Moments later, he drove Richardson’s seventh pitch — a curveball right down the middle — onto the roof of Busch Stadium’s right-field pavilion, giving the Yankees an 8-1 lead that would allow them to fight another day.
“I hadn’t been hitting well, but I just kept swinging,” Pepitone said. “I’m bearing down all the time, and when the fans get on me, I bear down a little more. I hit two grand slams before, but nothing compares to this. I just wanted to make sure I touched every base.”
“There’s no telling what he’s liable to do tomorrow,” said Mantle. “Put a spark like that to him, and it’s like touching a match to kerosene.”
Despite Mantle’s 18th and final World Series homer, the Cardinals won Game 7. It would be 12 years before the Yankees got back to the Fall Classic, and 34 between Pepitone’s slam and the next one by a Yankee.
Tino Martinez — Game 1, 1998 World Series
The story of the 1998 Yankees — and of Tino Martinez’s career — might have turned out very differently if not for one fateful frame. Today, Martinez is revered as an October hero; his plaque in Monument Park reads, in part, “hit two of the most memorable home runs in Yankees postseason history.” But heading into Game 1 of the ’98 World Series, that was far from what was being written about him.
The 30-year-old first baseman had a great regular season, leading a 114-win Yankees team in home runs (28) and RBI (123). His postseason track record was not so great. During the ’96 World Series, when the Yankees traveled to Atlanta to play Games 3, 4 and 5 without a DH, it was Martinez who got benched. Two years later, in the Yanks’ six-game victory over Cleveland in the 1998 ALCS, he managed just two hits and one RBI in 19 at-bats. As if the pressure wasn’t high enough, Martinez was hearing whispers that the Yankees might go looking for a new first baseman if he kept coming up short when it mattered most. Meeting with reporters at his locker inside the home clubhouse the day before the World Series opener against San Diego, he acknowledged what he was going through, but held on to the idea that things could change.
“Nobody has to tell me I’m struggling. Believe me, I’m aware of that,” Martinez said. “But that’s why I know I have such a tremendous opportunity now. I have a chance to make a difference in the World Series. ... You can’t help thinking about making that one play. Making that one anything that wins the game for your team.”
The boos that rained down on him in the sixth after an inning-ending strikeout lowered his postseason batting average as a Yankee to .184 (18-for-98) did not suggest that a reversal of fortune was imminent. The Yankees were trailing, 5-2, and with nine outs to go and Padres closer Trevor Hoffman looming in the bullpen, it seemed like the NL champs might escape rowdy Yankee Stadium with a Saturday night victory.
But by the time the bottom of the seventh inning ended, the tables had turned, and the powerhouse 1998 Yankees were on their way to immortality. Chuck Knoblauch’s three-run homer off Donne Wall tied the game, and after a Derek Jeter single, Mark Langston came out of the bullpen to try and hold it there. After a flyout and then two walks, the 15-year veteran thought he had gotten out of a bases-loaded jam when his 2-2 offering to Martinez — known around San Diego as “The Pitch” — appeared to be strike 3, but home plate umpire Rich Garcia called it a ball. The BamTino took advantage of the second life, smashing Langston’s full-count pitch into the right-field upper deck and touching off bedlam in the Bronx. The 56,712 in attendance roared — “Tino! Tino!” — and wouldn’t stop until Martinez took a curtain call.
A game that had seemed to be in hand for San Diego was gone, and soon, so was the Series. The juggernaut Yankees rolled to a four-game sweep, and Martinez’s playoff swoons would become a thing of the past, as would any rumors about a new first baseman in pinstripes.
“The man who couldn’t seem to get a hit in the postseason came through with one of those World Series homers that define careers around here,” Ken Berger wrote for The Associated Press. “When they start playing the important games up here on 161st Street in the Bronx, Tino disappears.
“Until now.”
Anthony Volpe — Game 4, 2024 World Series
New York City is home for Anthony Volpe. Since being drafted in 2019 by the team he and his entire family have always rooted for, the Manhattan-born shortstop has become accustomed to getting recognized by Yankees fans when he’s out and about in the Big Apple. But during this past offseason, nearly everyone he met was eager to bring up one thing: the grand slam.
“I was in the City a lot, and every time someone would come up or I’d meet someone, they’d say, ‘Oh, we were at the game that you hit it,’ which was really cool,” Volpe said of his Game 4 salami against the Dodgers. “I would joke with some of my friends that, in my lifetime, I’ll probably have met everyone that went to the game.”
It had been 15 years since the Yankees last played in the World Series when they met up with their former crosstown rivals in the 2024 Classic. In 2009, Volpe was an 8-year-old New York City schoolkid who idolized shortstop Derek Jeter and whose mom let him and his sister miss school so that they could attend the Yankees’ championship victory parade. A decade and a half later, the 23-year-old was wrapping up his second season as the Yankees’ shortstop and playing in the postseason for the first time.
Volpe’s first World Series was no fairy tale, though. In the opener at Dodger Stadium, he went 0-for-4 and watched Freddie Freeman smack the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history. He went hitless again in a 4-2 Game 2 loss, then struck out three times in a 4-2 Game 3 loss at Yankee Stadium. Knowing that no World Series team had ever trailed 3-games-to-none and even forced a Game 6, let alone come back and win the whole thing, Volpe and his teammates decided to forget about their situation and just play the way they had all season — loose and relaxed.
“We were super confident, even though we were facing the end of our season,” Volpe said. “It was a really good vibe, really good attitude about the game, and everyone wanted to go out there and just play free. And I feel like that’s what we did.”
A first-inning Freeman homer put the Yanks in a 2-0 hole, but Volpe walked, stole second and scored in the second inning to cut the lead in half. In the third, he came up with two outs and the bases juiced and jumped on the first pitch he saw from veteran right-hander Daniel Hudson, sending it screaming into the left-field seats. It was the first time a Yankee had hit a grand slam in the Fall Classic with his team trailing — and the home fans were more than ready for it.
“You finally got to see the top blow off Yankee Stadium in a World Series game,” manager Aaron Boone said. “When Anthony hits that ball, it was fun to see Yankee Stadium erupt.”
Volpe’s magical night wasn’t over yet. After several sparkling plays at short, plus a double, another steal and a third run scored, he was serenaded by 49,354 fans chanting his name during the ninth inning of the Yankees’ 11-4 win. Becoming the ninth Yankee to go deep with the bases loaded was “definitely a nice memory, something I’ll always be able to remember and share with teammates and family and everything like that,” Volpe said. But he wants to connect with his pinstriped grand slam brethren in other ways.
“A lot of those guys won World Series,” he said. “Hopefully, I’ll have that in common with them.”