Sports

Baseball

In 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers shocked everyone when they won the World Series against the New York Yankees, after losing the first two games of seven. In the Fifties the Giants and Dodgers made history by leaving New York City and moving to the West  Coast, becoming the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers. However, the New York Yankees managed by Casey Stengel was by far, the best baseball team of the Fifties. In 1956 their pitcher Don Larsen pitched the only no-hit, no-run game in World Series history.

Casey Stengel

Boxing

During the Fifties, Rocky Marciano defeated former heavyweight champ Joe Louis. Marciano reigned as heavyweight champion from 1952 to 1956.

Rocky Marciano

Football

The Cleveland Browns remained the dominant football team throughout the decade with African American Jim Brown, the greatest football runner of the times. One televised game in 1958 turned millions of Americans into fans of professional football.

Jim Brown

Track and Field

In the Fifties, American Parry O’Brien broke a record in the shot put when he tossed an iron ball more than 60 feet. Also, a new work mark in the high jump was set by Californian Charles Dumas, clearing the bar at 7’ ½”.

Parry O'Brien

Basketball

Two teams remained standouts during the Fifties, the Minneapolis Lakers and the Boston Celtics. African American player Bill Russell was a star on the Celtics team.

Bill Russell

Tennis

Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly won the National Women’s Singles Championship at age sixteen, the youngest national champion since 1901. Also in the Fifties, Althea Gibson became the first African American invited to compete in the United States Lawn Tennis Association’s National Championships. Pancho Gonzales was the outstanding male tennis player of the Fifties.

Althea Gibson

Golf

In the 1950s golfer Ben Hogan returned to the greens to win the United States Open, seventeen months after being badly injured in a near-fatal car crash. He went on to win five more major tournament events. Babe Didrikson, formerly named the most outstanding female athlete of the first half-century by the Associated Press died in 1956.

Babe Didrikson