1955 Brooklyn Dodgers World Championship Ring Presented to Pitcher Roger Craig....

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Consigned to auction by the Game Five winner himself!

1955 Brooklyn Dodgers World Championship Ring Presented to Pitcher Roger Craig. It's the great David and Goliath story in baseball. The Yankees represented the white collar crowd--bankers, lawyers and captains of industry--fittingly clad in stuffy pinstripes. The Dodgers were "the Bums," championing the downtrodden working class in this "lesser borough" of New York, and always coming up a little short in October. But after falling to the Yanks in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953, "Next Year" finally came on October 4, 1955, when Johnny Podres pitched the lovable losers to a shutout victory in Game Seven to bring the first ever World Championship to the Ebbets faithful.

Two days earlier, with the Series knotted at two games apiece, Hall of Fame manager Walt Alston had tapped twenty-five year old rookie Roger Craig as the starter for the crucial Game Five, an extraordinary exhibition of faith in a youngster who had yet to record one hundred Major League innings of work. But Alston's gamble would pay off, as Craig would allow just two runs in six innings of work before being lifted in the top of the seventh for ace reliever Clem Labine, who would inherit a four-to-two lead.

Each team would plate one more run in the eighth to conclude the score line with a five to three Dodgers victory, moving the long-suffering Bums to within a single game of glory. With the final two events of the Fall Classic contested in the Bronx, Craig's Game Five victory would be the last of the 1955 season in Brooklyn.

Heritage Auctions is proud and privileged to present to the collecting community one of the most coveted Championship rings that exists, consigned to auction by the man who supplied the Dodgers their penultimate victory in Brooklyn's sole World Series Championship. Mr. Craig informs us that the ring has endured decades of lonely seclusion in a safe deposit box, and the extraordinarily fine condition of the important relic supports the claim. A slightly musty smell of the original blue presentation case, embossed "Brooklyn Dodgers World Champions 1955" in gold, is the only apparent evidence of its advanced age.

A large, genuine diamond is set into a blue stone on the ring face, encircled by raised text reporting that long-awaited phrase, "Brooklyn World Champions." Left shank reveals a blue enamel facsimile signature from Craig atop crossed bats and ball imagery, while right shank features the team logo atop a world globe and text, "First, 1955." Interior band is stamped, "14 Karat, Dieges & Clust" and measures to a size ten (10). Total weight is thirty-four grams (34 g.). Letter of provenance from Roger Craig.