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Sports Arena
They Were Giants
Bobby Thomson won the pennant!
When Bobby Thomson, the man who hit the most famous home run in the history of Major League Baseball, died last week it led me to do some thinking. It led me to think about the circumstances that so improbably brought Thomson and the 1951 New York Giants a National League pennant. It also led to me to think about how those circumstances affected my father, his family, and his neighbors in the Bronx, who were transfixed by what was happening before them.
This was a time when the Big Apple had three big league teams — the New York Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. In those early years, the Giants were the most successful of them. Between 1883 and 1937, the Giants captured 13 NL pennants. The Giants won four consecutive pennants between 1921 and 1924. No NL team has matched this achievement.
But the Giants would fall hard. Between 1938 and 1950, the Giants finished in the second division six times including two last place finishes. During this period, the Giants finished no better than third. When the 1951 season began it looked like yet another long season. In April, the Giants rattled off eleven losses in a row and finished the month 3-12, including five losses to the Dodgers.
The Dodgers entered 1951 having won two of the last four NL pennants. Their roster included four future Hall of Famers in the prime of their careers — Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider. Throw Gil Hodges and Carl Furillo into the mix and it’s a wonder that any opposing pitcher could get through an inning. The dynamic duo of Don Newcombe and Preacher Roe anchored their starting rotation. They also had a gritty bullpen which included Carl Erskine, Clyde King, and Ralph Branca.
The Giants, on the other hand, did not stand so tall upon first sight. Campanella’s batting average was more than 100 points higher than that of Giants catcher Wes Westrum (although Westrum drew nearly twice as many walks as Campy). Alvin Dark and Eddie Stanky might have been scrappy but how could they stack up against Jackie and Pee Wee? Then there was The Duke, who was only the premier centerfielder in baseball. And what did the Giants have to offer but a 20-year-old rookie named Willie Mays?
Now before Mays became “Say Hey Kid” the patrons at the Polo Grounds were asking, “Say what?” After Mays was called up from Minneapolis in late May he struggled at the plate. The despondent Mays wanted to be sent back down to the minors but Giants skipper Leo Durocher wouldn’t have any of it. Durocher told Mays, “You’re my center fielder. Don’t worry about anything else.” In his next game, Mays hit a long home run off Boston Braves ace Warren Spahn. It would be the first of 660. While Durocher is famous for having said, “Nice guys finish last,” his kindness to Mays in his hour of need would be crucial not only to his success but that of the team.
The Giants slowly but surely began to win ballgames and would climb into contention. Sal Maglie and Larry Jensen proved to be as formidable a tandem for the Giants as Newcombe and Roe were for the Dodgers. Monte Irvin, a Negro League All-Star, was having the best year of his all too short big league career. Whitey Lockman and Don Mueller provided steady if unspectacular offense while Bobby Thomson led the team in home runs.
On August 11, the Giants had a respectable 59-51 record. But they seemed light years away from the Dodgers, who at 70-36 (plus one tie) were winning nearly two out of every three games they played. The Giants were 13½ games back of the Dodgers. The following day the Giants swept the Phillies in a Sunday doubleheader marking the beginning of a 16-game winning streak en route to winning 37 out of 44 games.
The Dodgers didn’t collapse so much as the Giants ascended to new heights. The boys from Brooklyn went 26-22 over this same period. In any other season it would have been enough. But the Giants had tied the Dodgers for first place, forcing a three game playoff.
Thomson took Branca deep to put the Giants on top 3-1 in the first game. The Dodgers got even the following day 10-0. It all came down to one game.
My father’s family was one of the few households that had a television set. The basement apartment on Longfellow Avenue in the South Bronx became an ad hoc clubhouse for the neighborhood kids, who were heartily rooting for the Giants. With the Giants down 4-1 entering the bottom of the ninth, the gang inexplicably decided to make hats out of paper bags. They had invented the rally cap without even knowing it.
And what a rally it was. Dark and Mueller hit back to back singles. After Irvin popped out to Hodges, Lockman doubled home Dark. But Mueller broke his ankle sliding into third and was pinch run for by Clint Hartung. Meanwhile, Dodgers manager Chuck Dressen removed Newcombe in favor of Branca to face Thomson. He hit Branca’s second pitch over the left field wall. Giants win 5-4. Russ Hodges exclaimed, “The Giants won the pennant!!! The Giants won the pennant!!!” Dad and the whole gang ran out onto the street along with the entire neighborhood to celebrate “the shot heard ‘round the world.”
That the Giants were dispatched in six games by the Yankees (who won their third of five straight World Series titles) was anti-climatic. Within the decade both the Dodgers and Giants would break their fans hearts by moving to California. But those memories aren’t going anywhere. You can take baseball out of New York but you can’t take New York out of baseball.
About the Author
Aaron Goldstein writes from Boston, Massachusetts.
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Dan Hirsch| 8.25.10 @ 8:59AM
Wirestripper,
I see you're a big baseball fan, too.
Did you make my mistake and follow every single Cubs game in '69? I'm glad I did, I haven't watched since. I have had 15% more time in my life because I recognized the true value of baseball. AVALANCHE!!!!
Bob K.| 8.25.10 @ 9:08AM
I remember this. I was 11 years old. There was a better game to end the season the year before when Philadelphia defeated Brooklyn to win the pennant! But in those days the NY press controlled everything. Remember? Curt Simmons was drafted after winning 17 games for Philadelphia and couldn't pitch in the World Series. It made it easier for the Yankees to win the World Series after that happened. Nobody writes about that.
Thompson's home run is famous only because it was hit in New York City and gave the press something to yell about. Personally, I have hit home runs that traveled further in both fast pitch and slow pitch soft ball games.
If this was written as a reminiscence of a time when the media was controlled by the New York Press then it is a good article. Otherwise, it was just another baseball game that ended a season and the rest of the Baseball world outside of NYC didn't much care.
Charles Steinberg| 8.25.10 @ 10:16AM
I was 8 years old at the time and just becoming a baseball fan. In fact I lived the next block over from Mr. Goldstein, on Bryant Avenue. I became a Giant fan on that day that lasted until Mrs. Payson brought Willie back to New York. Thompson was a big NY Rangers fan and you would see him at the Garden on the Eighth Avenue side
JohnD| 8.25.10 @ 1:23PM
An interesting side note; After the Giants won the pennant on Thompson's homer, the Dodgers, who had been keenly scouting the Yankees all through the late summer in anticipation of meeting them in the Series, shared their scouting reports on the pinstripers with the Giants.
A Giants employee gave the scouting reports to Sport Magazine after the Series, and Sport published them. One part of the published reports said of 36-year old Yankee CF Joe DiMaggiothat he could no longer get around on the fastball at the plate, and that in the field he had one good throw from center per game, and after that his arm was shot so you could take an extra base on him.
When DiMaggio saw this, he announced his retirement. When asked why, he cited the scouting reports and told Yankee brass, "I'm not Joe DiMaggio anymore." The Yankees offered him $100,000 to play for the 1952 season. The Yankee Clipper turned it down, not wanting to play if he was not 100% the player he had always been.
DiMaggio hit only .263 in 482 ABs in 1951, with 12 home runs and 71 RBI; the only time he hit below .300 previously was when he hit .290 in 1946 after returning from Military service.
But earlier that 1951 season the Yankees brought up a slick fielding, switch hitting, power hitter named Mickey Mantle. Mantle was put in RF, and one day a shallow fly ball (A Texas Leaguer as they say) was hit into shallow right center. The speedy young Mantle (before his knee and leg problems) ran as fast as he coluld to try and make a diving stab at the ball. At the moment he realized, while running full speed looking up at the fly ball, that it was going to drop in for a base hit, he heard a calm voice call out, "I got it." He looked down to see DiMaggio WAITING for the ball to drop. Unfortunately, Mantle tried to stop to avoid DiMaggio, caught his spikes in a sprinkler head, and tore up his knee and had to be carried off the field.
The point of this is that even at 36, DiMaggio could still cover all of the cavernous center field at Yankee Stadium. Those I know who saw him, like my father and uncles, said he used to lope effortlessly after long fly balls and cover a lot of ground while making such plays look routine.
P.W.Littman| 8.25.10 @ 5:10PM
I was lying on the floor in my rooms at Trinity College Dublin (Eire)trying to follow the game on the Short Wave Radio.The signal was very weak but the excitement was electr0-magnetic.
The only hope seemed to be if Thomson would get to the plate before the inning & the whole shebang was over.
The rally brought him to bat with just the right number of runners on base for his speciality -usually delivered on a long count.This time -surprise,glorious surprise ,it was the 2nd pitch and as soon as we heard the crack of the bat from 3,000 miles away ,we knew it was GONE.
In refutation of Bob K.- though in foreign lands ,this epic Giant-Dodger duel was the most exciting baseball event in our lives despite being Brits !
Bob K.| 8.25.10 @ 6:49PM
P.W.
I can understand why you would be interested. Bobby Thomson was born in Scotland. He came to the US when he was 2 and was raised in New York City. He certainly helped out. There may be 8,000,000 stories in the naked city but there aren't 8,000,000 ball players. The best one to come from New York was Ludwig (Lou) Gehrig, son of german immigrants. He and George Herman Ruth, who was from Baltimore, used to sit in the dugout during games and converse in German. The New York teams needed all the ball players they could get from the provinces of the nation. We now call that area "fly over country." The New York Press made the most of it by ignoring the rest of the country for the most part in their coverage of the Great American Game and encouraged the New York Teams to spend great sums of money getting the talent the rest of the nation was producing to continue entertaining the citizens of the city on the Hudson thereby purchasing bragging rights to the game. That is how they played "Money Ball" in those days.
The owners of the Giants and the Dodgers were smart enough to realize that they could get more talent at better prices by moving to the west coast where the talent was growing and the weather encouraged 12 months of playing the game to stimulate that talent. After all, weren't the Di Maggio brothers from San Francisco and wasn't Teddy Ballgame from San Diego?
And that is it in a nutshell. The home run Thomson hit was the swan song of New York Baseball. And what we have here in these remembrances of this game is a memorial to those days.
Good Riddance!
Robert Graves| 8.25.10 @ 8:22PM
Cheap cynicism. You need an extra-strength enema.
Robert Graves| 8.25.10 @ 8:26PM
My response was to you, Bob K.
Bob K.| 8.26.10 @ 4:30AM
Who cares? Don't attack me. Defend the NY Press if you disagree. Baseball is a national game.
Tony Antetomaso| 8.26.10 @ 3:12AM
Aaron; great story. It reminded me of being 16 and that crazy summer of 1967. Back when a schoolboy had to sneak his transistor radio into bed so he could plug in his earpiece and catch the west-coast games.
As for Thompson's homer; it has to be said that it's a lot easier to hit a ball if you know what pitch is coming. Thompson should have manned up and fessed up to the spy with the binoculars stealing the signs and relaying then to the Giant dugout. I was very dissapointed in hin on this account.
Also, re: future Dodger HoF's you forgot one more; Dick Williams. True, he got in as a manager, but that's a technicality. He DID get in.
Bob K.| 8.26.10 @ 4:43AM
Now why did you bring up that canard about Thomson knowing the pitch would be a high inside fastball? That is the last pitch anyone would want to throw to a hitter in that ball park with it's short foul lines! What nonsense? It's tough enough to steal what pitch is coming let alone it's location and then get that info to the hitter. More hype from the press to make more publicity!
Tony Antetomaso| 8.26.10 @ 5:35AM
No. It's true. The Giants had somebody with a pair of binoculars watching the catcher and relaying the signs (by telephone, I believe) to the dugout, who then relayed the pitch to the batter.
Thompson KNEW what pitch was coming.
Don Cicchetti| 8.26.10 @ 6:25PM
Hey, I met Bobby Thomson on the subway! I was a little kid, going somewhere with my Dad in the late 50's and he spotted Thomson at the other end of the car. "Look it's Bobby Thomson!" he said, "let's go say hi". My Dad, never being shy (was anyone shy in NYC back then?) walked right up, introduced himself and then said "and here's my son". Thomson grinned, stuck out his hand; I shook it, remembering how big and powerful his hand felt. I listened to the two of them make small talk and of course, my Dad rave about the hit. Thomson seemed genuine, gracious, and a real nice guy. Your story brought this all back for me. He is missed.