On the 1950 season's closing day, at Ebbets Field, with the game tied at one, Sisler hit a tenth-inning, opposite-field three-run home run against the Brooklyn Dodgers that led to the "Whiz Kids" Phillies winning the club's first National League pennant in 35 years. Had Philadelphia lost, the Phillies and Dodgers would have finished in a flatfooted tie for the NL championship and a best-of-three playoff would have resulted. The home run made Sisler world-famous in both baseball and literary circles; Ernest Hemingway immortalized him in his novel The Old Man and the Sea. In a conversation between an aging Cuban fisherman and his young apprentice discussing the unfolding 1950 big-league season, the older man says:
"In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia, I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives in the old park. There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen."
His father, George Sr., was a scout for Brooklyn in 1950. When asked after the pennant-winning game how he felt when his son beat his current team, the Dodgers, George replied, "I felt awful and terrific at the same time." In the 1950 World Series that followed, however, Sisler would collect only one single in 17 at bats, as the Phillies were swept by the New York Yankees in four games. Earlier, in 1946, he had gone hitless in two at bats as a pinch hitter for the Cardinals in that season's Fall Classic, but picked up a World Series ring when the Redbirds defeated the Boston Red Sox in seven games. Twenty-one years later, while serving as the Cardinals' first base coach, he earned his second ring when St. Louis again defeated the Red Sox in a seven-game series.
Coaching and managerial career
After managing in the minor leagues with the Double-ANashville Vols and Triple-ASeattle Rainiers, Sisler became a coach for Cincinnati in, serving under manager Fred Hutchinson. In August, he was promoted to acting manager when Hutchinson, suffering from terminal cancer, was forced to give up the reins. He led the Reds to a 32–21 record, and the team finished in a second-place tie, one game behind the Cardinals. After his formal appointment as manager in October 1964, he brought the Reds home fourth in with an 89–73 mark before being fired at season's end. He then returned to the major league coaching ranks with the Cardinals, San Diego Padres and New York Mets. In his late sixties, he was still working with young players as a roving hitting instructor in the Cardinal farm system. He died November 20, 1998, at the age of 78 in Nashville, Tennessee.
