The Giants had trained in Phoenix since 1947. In 1951, the team swapped spring training sites with the New York Yankees, with the Yankees moving to Phoenix and the Giants training at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was a one-year arrangement and the Giants would return to Phoenix in 1952.[2]
Notable transactions
December 4, 1950: Tom Acker was drafted from the Giants by the Buffalo Bisons in the 1950 minor league draft.[3]
Prior to 1951 season (exact date unknown)
Dom Zanni was signed as an amateur free agent by the Giants.[4]
In June, future NFL Hall of Famer Andy Robustelli was offered a tryout with the New York Giants. The Giants offered Robustelli a $400 contract to play with Class AA Knoxville.[8]
After a slow start, the team went 50–12 over their final 62 games to complete one of the biggest comebacks in major league history. Longstanding rumors that the Giants engaged in systematic sign stealing during the second half of the 1951 season were confirmed in 2001. Several players told The Wall Street Journal that beginning on July 20, the team used a telescope, manned by coach Herman Franks in the Giants clubhouse behind center field, to steal the finger signals of those opposing catchers who left their signs unprotected. Stolen signs were relayed to the Giants dugout via a buzzer wire.[9][10]Joshua Prager, the author of the Journal article, outlined the evidence in greater detail in a 2008 book.[11] He noted that sign stealing, then as now, is not specifically forbidden by MLB rules and, moral issues aside, "has been a part of baseball since its inception."[12]
At the end of the season, they were tied with their arch-rivals, the Dodgers, for first place in the League, prompting a three-game playoff for the pennant. The Giants had home field advantage for the series.
The series moved to the Polo Grounds for game two. Sheldon Jones took the mound for the Giants against the Dodgers' Clem Labine. Jones was pulled in the third inning despite giving up just two runs, one of which was a Jackie Robinson homer. However, the game went downhill from there, as the Dodgers abused relievers George Spencer and Al Corwin for eight more runs, while Labine pitched a six-hit shutout for a 10–0 shellacking. Pafko hit his second homer of the series, while Gil Hodges and Rube Walker added home runs of their own.[14]
Game 3
Game three was also held at the Polo Grounds. Sal "The Barber" Maglie was on the mound for New York, while Brooklyn called on Don Newcombe. After Maglie walked two batters in the top of the first, Jackie Robinson singled home the game's first run. The score remained 1–0 until the bottom of the seventh. In that inning, Monte Irvin led off with a double for the Giants. He was bunted over to third, and scored on a sacrifice fly by Bobby Thomson.[15]
In the top of the eighth, the Dodgers came roaring back with three runs off Maglie. A pair of singles, a wild pitch, and two more singles made the score 4–1 Dodgers. Newcombe sat down the Giants in order in the bottom of the eighth, while Larry Jansen did the same in relief of Maglie.[15]
In the bottom of the ninth, Alvin Dark led off with a single, and Don Mueller followed with another. After Monte Irvin popped out to first base, Whitey Lockman lined a double to left-center field, scoring Dark and putting Mueller on third. Dodger manager Chuck Dressen summoned game 1 starter Ralph Branca in to relieve Newcombe, despite having only had one day's rest. On his second pitch, Bobby Thomson drove a pitch to deep left field for a walk-off home run to clinch the pennant for the Giants.[15] This home run, hit at 3:58 p.m. EST on October 3, 1951, came to be known as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World".
The phrase shot heard 'round the world is from a classic poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, originally used to refer to the first clash of the American Revolutionary War and since used to apply to other dramatic moments, military and otherwise. In the case of Thomson's home run, it was particularly apt as U.S. servicemen fighting in the Korean War listened to the radio broadcast of the game.
Thomson's homer, and the Giants' victory, are also sometimes known as the Miracle of Coogan's Bluff.
^Prager, Joshua: The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and The Shot Heard Round the World. New York: Vintage Books, 2008. ISBN0375713077.
^Johnson, Lloyd, and Wolff, Miles, ed., The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, 2nd and 3rd editions. Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, 1997 and 2007
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