First you'll see a special World Series Preview - a rundown of each player on both teams before the series begins! Shown are some of baseball’s greatest players of the 1950’s including Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Carl Furillo, Jim Gilliam, Duke Snider, Peewee Reese, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, Whitey Ford, Bill Skowron, Tommy Byrne, Billy Martin, Hank Bauer, Gil McDougald, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle! As a bonus, we’re also including the last two innings of the original NBC TV broadcast (with original TV commercials) of Game 2 from Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, with Mel Allen doing the play-by-play!

Game 1 at Ebbets Field: Sal Maglie vs Whitey Ford – One of the highlights of this game is Mickey Mantle’s two-run homer in the first inning! The ball is shown flying out of the park, bouncing on Bedford Avenue and rolling into a gas stadium across the street! But the Brooks have the last laugh, as third inning singles by Reese and Snider and a 3-run homer by Gil Hodges lift the Dodgers to an eventual 6-3 victory! Jackie Robinson homers in the second inning and Enos Slaughter raps out 3 hits!

Game 2 at Ebbets Field: Don Newcombe vs Don Larsen – Yogi Berra’s grand slam in the second inning off “Big Newk” helps Larsen to a nice fat 6-0 lead. But Bums battle back, chasing Larsen by the end of the second inning and by the third, Brooklyn has taken the lead! This wild slugfest sets record for longest series game by time, and Stengel uses 7 pitchers, also a new record! Every pitcher who comes to bat has at least one hit, as Brooklyn wins 13-8 and grabs a big 2-0- lead in the series! After last year’s championship, it now looks like the Dodgers finally have the Yank’s number! HR, Duke Snider.

Game 3 at Yankee Stadium: Whitey Ford vs Roger Craig – Enos Slaughter’s three-run homer in the 6th turns this game around! Ford pitches 5-3 complete game victory and Billy Martin also hits a homer.

Game 4 at Yankee Stadium: Tom Sturdivant vs Carl Erskine – Mickey Mantle’s second homer of the series pads Yank’s 3-1 lead in the 6th, and Hank Bauer hits two-run shot In the 7th to wrap up nice 6-2 complete game win for Sturdivant as Yanks come back to even the series, 2-2.

Game 5 at Yankee Stadium: Don Larsen vs Sal Maglie – Probably the most famous of all World Series games is still referred to 50 years later as simply “Larsen’s Perfect Game”! Maglie is even better than in his opening game victory, allowing only 5 hits and striking out the side in the home 8th, but Larsen is perfect! Mickey Mantle is certainly the other hero of the game, with a great running catch and his 4th inning home run! Duke Snider also makes great catch and just misses a homer (foul ball), but Larsen has now brought Yanks into the series lead, heading back to Brooklyn!

Game 6 at Ebbets Field: Clem Labine vs Bob Turley – Back at Brooklyn’s band box ballpark, Labine holds powerful Yanks scoreless thru 10 innings! Turley also goes 10, but Jackie Robinson’s game-winning hit over Slaughter’s head provides Dodgers with vital win and ties the series at three games each!

Game 7 at Ebbets Field: Johnny Kucks vs Don Newcombe – Kucks and Bill Skowron are heros, as Johnny tosses 3-hit 9-0 shutout and Yank’s 5th straight series complete game! 27-game winner Newcombe becomes the goat of the series, this time giving up 5 runs in the first three innings, including a pair of 2-run homers by Yogi Berra and a solo blast by Elston Howard. In the 7th, Bill Skowron’s grand slam off Roger Craig in relief wraps up the series, as New York has now beaten Brooklyn 6 out of 7 times in the World Series!

Rare bonus footage included:

     The last two innings and post-game show is all that still exists of the original NBC TV broadcast of Game 2 of the 1956 World Series at Ebbets Field, Brooklyn! Mel Allen does the play-by-play, while young Vin Scully handles the post game summary as happy Brooklyn fans are shown filing out of the old ballpark! Included throughout are the original TV commercials for Gillette Safety Razors and Tip Toni Hair Curlers! Indeed, it was a different style of broadcasting in the good ol’ days, with less than a minute commercial break between innings, barely giving Mel Allen a chance to plug “tonight’s 10-round heavyweight fight on NBC at new Capitol Arena in Washington, with Tony Anthony going against Clarence Hinnant”! During another commercial, Yankee Hank Bauer tells Mel how his Gillette razor keeps his face feeling and looking great!

     As this segment begins, Billy Martin is leading off the top of the 8th inning, with the Yankees trailing 11-7. During the rest of the game, you’ll see three more runs scored, each man in the Yankee order come to bat, plus Dodgers Carl Furillo, Campanella, Gilliam, Reese and Duke Snider all make plate appearances. You’ll see the power of Mantle, a nice catch by Snider and excellent plays by Reese and Robinson. As an aging Robinson trots off the field at the end of an inning, Mel Allen says “and Jackie can still play ball”!

     Live TV baseball broadcasts from before 1965 are very rare. Only a very few complete game broadcasts from pre-1965 are known to exist and all are World Series games. The two oldest (1952) are stored in the Museum Of Broadcasting in New York City. The others are all in our own private collection! Because each game required at least four reels of kinescope, the reels were easily lost and scattered, and when a TV broadcast did show up, it was always one or two reels (an inning or two) at best. Such is the case with Game 2 of the 1956 World Series. But what a treat nowadays to be able to see almost half an hour of a piece so rare and nostalgic!

You can get your own copy of this rare film footage all on one DVD for only $29.95 plus $4.00 for shipping (Illinois residents must add $2.00 sales tax).