The Historic NL Pennant Race and Playoff

 

First in a four-part series

 

 

Part 1, today: The Historic National League Pennant Race and Playoff

Part 2, next: The Dramatic American League Pennant Race and Rookie Review

Part 3: The Times and Troubles Facing Baseball in 1951

Part 4: Cloudy Crystal Balls, Humor and Oddities from a Season Like No Other

 

 

By Glenn Guzzo

 

            The 1951 National League pennant race forever has been remembered for its dramatic final Giants-Dodgers playoff game, Bobby Thomson’s home run off Ralph Branca and the amazing baseball the Giants had to play just to force the playoff against a Brooklyn team that seemed to have the pennant in the bag all along.

 

            Gamers replaying the newest of Strat-O-Matic’s reconstructed historic seasons may find their experience enriched to know of other defining moments in this legendary pennant race. There were many, involving not just Thomson and Branca, but Jackie Robinson’s competitiveness, Roy Campanella’s temper, Larry Jansen’s confidence and Leo Durocher’s determination.

 

            Looking back, several pre-season statements appear uncommonly perceptive, even if also ironic.

 

            In January, Dodgers beat writer Joe King penned an article for The Sporting News that asked about Branca, “What about the gopher ball he throws so well?” King had pointed out that Branca was better in relief in 1950 – allowing only 3 home runs in 48 IP vs. 21 homers in 94 IP as a starter.

 

            “In our park,” Branca explained in his defense, “flies are always homer threats with today’s baseball and they hit my stuff in the air most of the time because I have a hop on the ball.”

 

            A March 28 article from Giants camp forecast that if Thomson hits in 1951, the Giants would thrive.

 

            Eeriest of all was a May 16 TSN article by Mike Gaven of the New York Journal-American:

 

            “In Charlie Dressen’s book, every manager and professional ballplayer is a potential cheat and you have no one to blame but yourself if you let them get away with it.”

            Dressen, of course, was the Brooklyn manager. And as we learned 50 years later, the Giants did set up an elaborate sign-stealing scheme at the Polo Grounds that involved a coach viewing the visiting catcher’s signs from a hiding spot in the center-field scoreboard. The coach, future manager Herman Franks, then relayed information through the Giants’ bullpen, which signaled the Giant batter at the plate.

 

            The scheme began on July 20, so if you’re announcing games at home, wait till then before saying, “It’s as if he knew what pitch was coming!”

 

DODGER DOMINANCE

 

            Perhaps Dressen was merely rationalizing, for the Dodgers were not pure. Lefty Preacher Roe, who fashioned a remarkable 22-3 record in 1951, admitted much later that he had been relying on illegal spitballs.

 

            At any rate, no one was invoking those spring quotes when the Giants were winning 16 straight and 39 of 47 down the stretch. And certainly not before then, when the Dodgers were making a mockery of the NL thanks to Roe’s mastery, Gil Hodges’ power and seasons that were among the best ever for Campanella (.325-33-108) and Robinson (.338-19-88 with 25 SB).

 

            While the defending-NL-champ Phillies and the supposed-contender Giants played poorly in April and May, the Dodgers sped ahead. Hodges’ early power invited forecasts about the vulnerability of Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homers.

 

            The Dodgers were winning with ease when they went for the juggler in June, trading for elite Cubs’ slugger/defender Andy Pafko in exchange for expendable spare parts. The Flatbushers, as the sporting press often referred to the Dodgers, looked like consummate pros at the peak of their games while surging to an eight-game lead at the All-Star break, then to a 69-35 record with a dominant 30-9 mark against their supposed toughest competition – the Giants, Cardinals and Phillies.

 

            At this point, only the Giants and their fiery manager, Leo Durocher, weren’t conceding the pennant.

 

            “They haven’t won anything yet,” Durocher declared. But the Giants weren’t challenging, either, dropping all three games in Brooklyn Aug. 8-9. Two days later, the Dodgers led the second-place Giants by 13 games and writer Dan Daniel led a short item in The Sporting News this way: “Prospects certainly are bright for the softest pennant in Brooklyn history.”

 

            This pennant race is the ultimate don’t-count-your-chickens lesson about over-confidence, even when confidence seems most deserved. The Dodgers’ big lead included a 12-3 record against the Giants after the sweep in Brooklyn. And yet, once their comeback was complete, the Giants players insisted that it was this supposed low point in Brooklyn that had turned the season around.

 

            A team full of such fierce competitors as Durocher, Eddie Stanky, Alvin Dark, Sal Maglie and others said they bristled that day, not only at their losses, but at the celebration they could hear through the Ebbetts Field walls in the locker room next door. The Giants said they could identify the voices of Robinson, Don Newcombe, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo and others.

 

            After that, the record shows, the Dodgers did not collapse. They merely played mediocre ball, unable to sustain their torrid pace of the first two-thirds of the season. But a 27-23 record down the stretch was fatal in the face of a Giants team seemingly determined to win them all.

 

            In the glorious descriptions of the Giants’ 16-game winning streak that began Aug. 12, it’s sometimes overlooked that at the end of it on Aug. 27, the Dodgers still owned a five-game lead and the Giants could get no closer for the next three weeks.

 

            After the Dodgers and Giants split games Sept. 8-9 at the Polo Grounds, the Dodgers led by 5 ½ with a seven-game lead in the loss column with 19 to play. The Dodgers beat writer in the Sept. 19 TSN wrote about Dressen’s wisdom in giving his starting pitchers extra rest for the last Western trip, not wanting to have his staff too tired for World Series. The Giants writer penned New York’s obit – “they started too late to catch the Dodgers.”

 

            The Brooklyn lead was still six games thru Sept. 13. The Giants, now winners in six of their last seven vs. the Dodgers, trimmed the lead to three games on Sept. 17, but it looked immeasurably bleaker for the Giants at the end of the day Sept. 20. Brooklyn had beaten St. Louis for the 18th time this season, but the Giants could not win in Cincinnati after beating the Reds 10 times in a row. That left Brooklyn up 4 1/2 games with the schedule showing 10 games left for the Dodgers and seven left the Giants, all against the Phillies and Braves.

 

            At this point, thoughts of a Giants pennant existed only in the minds of mathematicians and those who never learned math. If the Dodgers, who had not lost more than two in a row all season, could manage a 5-5 record down the stretch against the non-contenders, the Giants could go 7-0 and it wouldn’t matter.

 

            The “race” was no longer worth the front page of The Sporting News. Following Roe’s shutout of St. Louis, raising his record to 21-2, the Sept. 26 issue devoted a Page 11 story leading with the assertion that the Dodgers now felt their lead was safe.

 

Noting the Giants had clinched second place on Sept. 15, the same issue offered this headline over a eulogy from the Giants beat writer:

 

Big Contrast Between Giant

            ’37 Champs, ’51 Runners-up

            First Polo Grounds Team to Come Home Second in 14 years

All Set for Flag Drive Next Season

 

           

Heroes and Villains: Campanella and Robinson

 

            Considering the math, it’s understandable that everyone overlooked a significant development from that very week. On Sept. 17, Campanella was beaned, and then sat out the next four games. The catcher who was hitting .325 and who liked to play them all, had now missed all of five games and parts of two more to injury in September alone.

 

            Just like that, Brooklyn lost back-to-back games to the Phillies at Ebbetts Field Sept. 21-22. Roe came through in the clutch again in the series finale, running his record to 22-2 and keeping the Dodgers lead at three games, but it slipped to 2 ½ games when the Giants completed a three-game sweep of the Braves at the Polo Grounds, Sept. 22-24.

 

             The Dodgers’ trolley derailed in Boston the next day. Branca failed to retire a man in a six-run first inning and the Braves won the opening game of the doubleheader, 6-3. In the nightcap, the elite-fielding Dodgers made three errors in the first inning, 16-game winner Carl Erskine lasted only two innings, the Braves scored six in the second inning and coasted to a 14-2 victory.

 

            Meanwhile in Philadelphia, Maglie pitched 2 1/3 innings of relief on one day of rest after a complete game to save this game for Jim Hearn and the Giants. The Giants, had pulled within one game of the Dodgers and began taking orders for World Series tickets.

 

            Although both contenders won big the next day, an incident in Brooklyn’s 15-5 victory at Boston started a chain-reaction as important as anything else in this unlikely pennant race. Robinson stole home (for the first time this year) in the seventh inning with the Dodgers ahead 13-3. Humiliated, incensed and vengeful, the Braves determined to beat Dodgers after that. They did on Sept. 27, and then lost their final two games to the Giants.

 

            The Dodgers-Braves game on Sept. 27 featured yet another subplot. Campanella was ejected in a controversial play at the plate in the eighth inning. Earlier in the game, Campanella’s enormous strength was on unique display. He broke his bat on a swing. Half of the bat went to third base – the ball was caught at the left field wall. Now down by a run in the ninth inning, the Dodgers had a man at third with one out when Campanella’s spot in the batting order was due up against the Braves’ impressive rookie left-hander, Chet Nichols.

 

            Nichols, who later would be voted baseball’s top rookie left-hander, had held the Dodgers to six hits, but a sacrifice fly would do the trick against him for now. Instead of mighty Campy at the plate, however, the Dodgers had his replacement, light-hitting lefty Rube Walker, who was acquired from the Cubs in the Pafko trade. Dressen pinch-hit with the punch-hitting, right-handed Wayne Terwilliger, a throw-in in the same trade, who grounded out weakly to third. Then Nichols’ fanned Pafko to end the game.  The Dodgers had lost, 4-3, with their ace Roe against the Braves’ rookie. The Brooklyn lead was now a thread-bare ½ game over idle New York.

 

            With the Giants off again Sept. 28, the Dodgers took a 3-1 lead into the eighth inning at Philadelphia, but Andy Seminick tied the game with a homer and the Phillies’ Willie Jones ended the game with a walk-off single in the ninth. For the third time in a week, the Dodgers had lost two in a row and after this 2-6 run (during which the Giants won five straight), the contenders were finally tied, with two more days of games.

 

            Just when the pennant race seemed to be following a predictable end to a historic Brooklyn fold, this logic-defying pennant race provided yet more exquisite agony.

 

            On Sept 29, the Giants kept applying the pressure: Maglie shut out the Braves and their ace, Warren Spahn, 3-0 in Boston that afternoon. But that night, Newcombe met that challenge by shutting out the Phillies and their ace, Robin Roberts, 5-0, in Philadelphia. Playing on what he said was a bum leg, Campanella had a triple.

 

            On the final day of the regular season, the Giants beat Boston, 3-2, as Jansen won his 22nd by yielding hits only in the first and ninth innings.

 

            Their backs to the wall again, the Dodgers finally seemed ready to fold. Trailing 6-1 to the Phillies, the Dodgers rallied to tie the game, 8-8, in the eighth inning. Then Brooklyn won, 9-8, on Robinson’s 14th-inning home run – a blast he called the greatest hit of his career. It might have been his greatest game. First, he saved the game in the 12th inning with a spectacular diving catch of a line drive with the bases loaded that knocked the wind out of him.

           

            The math had checked out: The Giants did go 7-0 down the stretch while the Dodgers went just 4-6. The Dodgers had failed themselves more than once, but after the last two victories, they, like the Giants, had earned a place in the National League playoffs.

 

            The stretch drive had taken a heavier toll on Brooklyn, however. The Dodgers had played 10 games in the final 10 days, the Giants seven. Campanella was hobbling badly. And in the final game, Roe, starting on unfamiliar short rest, had lasted only 1 2/3 innings. The 14-inning game had required relief from Branca, Erskine, Clem Labine, and most of all from Newcombe, who pitched 5 2/3 innings on no rest. The Dressen strategy of giving his starters rest on the last Western trip was exhausted.

 

           

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE PLAYOFF 

 

            The three-game playoff is a second-guesser’s dream.

 

            The better-rested Giants won the opener, 3-1, behind Hearn. Branca surrendered two home runs, including the two-run game-winner to Thomson.

 

            Although Campanella’s bad leg kept him out, the Dodgers rebounded to win the second game, 10-0 on Labine’s 6-hitter.

 

            The classic finale at the Polo Grounds locked Maglie and Newcombe in a 1-1 tie until the Dodgers struck for three runs in the top of the eighth. Campanella missed this game, too. Newcombe, who had pitched 22 2/3 innings in the past five days, had little left in the 9th, which started with singles by Mueller and Dark. Irvin, the NL leader with 121 RBIs, popped out, but Lockman doubled, making it 4-2 and finally chasing Newcombe.

 

            With two men on and Thomson at the plate, Dressen’s fatefully summoned Branca from the bullpen. The recently more-effective Labine and the better-rested Erskine also had been warming up, but Dressen said his bullpen coach told him Branca had been throwing best there and that was the test Dressen had been using all season.

 

            In choosing Branca, Dressen discounted his man’s long-ball propensity, including the game-winner to Thomson two days earlier. Thomson’s winning blow this time came on an 0-1 pitch that Dodgers beat writer Joe King described as “a ball that seemed to have nothing on it, right down the middle alley.”

           

            In one locker room afterwards, Branca was sprawled out, sobbing.

 

            In the other, Sal Maglie told a story from before the All-Star break. Jansen had just won his fourth game of the season in Philadelphia at a time when Maglie had nine wins.

            “I think I will catch you before this is over,” Jansen told Maglie.

 

            “If you catch me, we will win the pennant,” Maglie replied.

 

            In relief of Maglie on the day the Giants won the pennant, Jansen’s 23rd victory tied Maglie.

 

 

 

Next: The Dramatic American League Pennant Race and Rookie Review