One of the great guys of baseball died Monday night. Bobby Thompson had been in ill health. Never close to being a Hall-Of-Famer, Thompson was a good player. He described himself as an accidental hero. On October 3, 1951, the New York Giants were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers at The Polo Grounds The two teams hated each other. Baseball was the #1 game in the country and New York City had 3 Major League teams...two of them in the National League. The Dodgers and Giants were playing game 3 of a three game playoff series for the National League Pennant. Down 4-1 in the ninth, the Giants began to rally when Alvin Dark and Don Mueller led off with singles against Don Newcombe. After Irvin fouled out, Whitey Lockman hit an RBI double that made it 4-2. Mueller broke his ankle sliding into third and was replaced by pinch-runner Clint Hartung — in fact, a little more than a month ago, Hartung died. Branca then relieved Newcombe and on an 0-1 pitch, Thomson connected. And the rest, really, was history. It was "The Shot Heard 'round The World!" Russ Hodges, the Giants' announcer repeatedly screamed, "THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!"
The remarkable thing about the Giants winning the pennant was the fact that they won 37 or their last 44 games before the playoff series.
A couple of footnotes, a few years later, Thompson was traded to the Milwaukee Braves. Thompson broke his ankle and was replaced on the roster by a rookie named Hank Aaron.
The guy who coined the phrase, "It ain't over til it's over," Yogi Berra, was at the game where Thompson hit the home run. Yogi had left the ballpark early in hopes of beating the traffic.
In New York, the Giants are gone, The Polo Grounds are gone, now Bobby Thompson is gone...the memory remains! 
No comments:
Post a Comment