NEW YORK — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…October 3, 1951:
Bobby Thomson hits the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World" in the deciding Game 3 of the National League playoff series between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. With two out in the bottom of the ninth—and the Dodgers leading 4-2—Thomson belted a three-run home run off Ralph Branca to give the Giants a 5-4 victory and the National League pennant. It was only the second playoff in NL history and the first to go three games.
It capped a stirring regular-season comeback by the Giants. On August 11, they trailed the Dodgers by 13½ games. It was long before Major League Baseball had any postseason beyond the World Series, so things weren’t looking good for the guys from Coogan’s Bluff. The Giants then went on a 16-game winning streak to get the margin down to six games. On September 20, Brooklyn still led by 4½, but on the final game of the season it was the Dodgers who needed a win to force a playoff (and they got it).
Just six years later, both the Giants and Dodgers played their final games in the New York metropolis—they moved to California in 1958. And history kind of repeated itself in 1962 when the Giants caught the Dodgers on the final day of the season. San Francisco won the playoff, but the ending wasn’t tinged with the drama of the one 11 seasons earlier. In the top of the ninth inning of Game 3, the Giants got two walks, a Willie Mays single, an Orlando Cepeda sacrifice fly, another walk and an error to score four runs and secure a 6-4 victory to win the NL pennant.
As a young Giants fan in the Bay Area, I heard this clip many times, especially going into the 1962 playoff series. As soon as Thomson’s homer cleared the wall in the Polo Grounds in 1951, Giants play-by-play man Russ Hodges bellowed, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” A legendary call cemented in baseball lore.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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