The Indians host the Dodgers for the sixth game of the best of nine World Series on October 11, 1920. It comes down to a pitching duel between Sherry Smith of Brooklyn and Duster Mails of Cleveland. Both go the distance, but Mails comes out on top 1-0 to give the Indians a 4-2 lead. They need to win just one of the remaining three games to take the crown.

Mails got into trouble in the second thanks to his defense. With two outs, he allowed one of the three Brooklyn hits to Ed Konetchy. That was followed by an error by the shortstop and one by the third baseman to load the bases. Pitcher Smith was up next, and he flew out to center, “which is no place to lift a pill when Tris Speaker is ranging the territory.”

The Indians scored in the sixth inning on a single by Speaker, who comes home to score on a double by George Burns. The best offensive game of the day goes to Joe Evans, the Indians lead-off hitter. He picked up three singles in four trips to the plate.

Grantland Rice notes that this series has been Mails’s revenge:

In the meanwhile Mail’s revenge is complete. In 1917 the Dodgers cast him aside as one unworthy of their select pitching society. Back in Booklyn last week, after Ray Caldwell had been hammered out, Mails held the Dodgers scoreless for seven innings. To-day he added nine more. For sixteen innings he has held his old mates dangling at the end of a wire, working them like mannikins made of wood.

It’s the old story of the cast-off returning to bite the hand that refused to feed him. Baseball is fairly littered with such examples, but few revenges have been more complete than that of Mails.

New York Tribune

The series has now taken in $480,880 on an attendance of 150,832.