Lincoln A. Mitchell - Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues

All baseball fans with a sense of the games history are familiar with the events of October 3, 1951. That was the day when the New York Giants completed a comeback from what had at one time been a 13-game deficit, and clinched the National League pennant on the final pitch of the final game of an exciting three-game playoff against their archrivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. That game ended with perhaps the most dramatic and famous single play in baseball history. The Giants went into the bottom of the ninth inning trailing 41, but managed to get one run in and two runners on with one out and Bobby Thomson, one of their best players, at bat. Thomson hit a clutch three-run home run to give the Giants a 54 victory and the National League pennant. In the almost 70 years since, millions of baseball fans have seen the video of that home run and heard Giants radio announcer Russ Hodges, famously repeating the phrase The Giants win the pennant.

It is an eerie coincidence, and one about which most fans are entirely unaware, that the two teams met again in the final game of a three-game playoff to decide the National League pennant 11 years later. That game also occurred on October 3. The Dodgers led the third game of the 1962 playoff against the Giants in the ninth inning as well, but this time by two runs, and, like they had done 11 years earlier to the day, found a way to lose that gameand the pennantto the Giants. In 1962, no single play was as famous or important as Thomsons home run. Instead, the Giants sent ten players to the plate in the top of the ninth inning, and managed to stitch together four runs on two singles, four walks, and one Dodgers error.

There are other similarities between these two series. In both years the Giants won the first game, the Dodgers won the second, and the Giants the third. The Giants in both 1951 and 1962 went on to lose in the World Series to the New York Yankees. Alvin Dark, who was part of the winning rally in 1951, managed the Giants in 1962. Willie Mays was a rookie and on deck when Thomson hit the home run in 1951; he got a big single in the 1962 winning rally. Duke Snider, the Dodgers star center fielder in 1951, was still on the club in 1962, but only as a useful backup outfielder.

A glaring difference between the events of October 3, 1951, and October 3, 1962, is that while the earlier game is something that almost every more-than-casual baseball fan knows, the later game is something that few people knowunless they are big Giants or Dodgers fans and over 60 years old. This is partially due to the unparalleled drama of Bobby Thomsons home run, but also because the first series occurred in New York City and the second series in California, after the Dodgers and Giants had moved west. The disparity between how the 1951 and 1962 DodgersGiants playoffs are remembered reflects how the history of those two teams, and of baseball in general during these two decades, is usually understood. This is particularly true in New York and the Northeast, but it is also the case in the United States as a whole.

The year 1951 may have been the high point of baseballs long history in New York City. The Dodgers and Giants ended the 154-game season with identical records of 9658, fully 15 games ahead of the third-place Cardinals. In the American League, the Yankees went 9856 and won the pennant, their third of what would be five consecutive pennants, by five games. Thus, the New York teams had the three best records in baseball.

The 1951 season was also significant because both the Yankees and the Giants had rookie outfielders, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, respectively, who not only helped their team win the pennant, but went on to become the biggest stars of their generation. Mantle played 86 games in the outfield that year, but only appeared in center field three times. The primary center fielder on that Yankees team was Joe DiMaggio, who in 1951 was in the last year of his storied career. DiMaggio started 113 games for the Yankees that year, all in center field. The Dodgers center fielder that year was Duke Snider, who was just entering the prime of his Hall of Fame career. Thus, 1951 was both the beginning of the era of Willie, Mickey, and the Duke and the end of the Joe DiMaggio era in New York.