The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World (32 page)

Ralph Theodore Branca, tall, heavy-limbed, and black-haired, said good-bye to his mother at ten in suburban Mount Vernon, New York, and drove off in his new Oldsmobile. He felt a little stiff from all his recent pitching. It would take him a long time to warm up, should Dressen need him in relief.

It was a gray day, darkened with the threat of rain. The temperature was warm enough — in the high 60s — but the crowd, waiting for the gates of the Polo Grounds bleachers to open, was smaller than the one that had waited in bright sunshine the day before.

Most of the players arrived by car. Andy Pafko came by subway, an hour’s ride from downtown Brooklyn. “I’ll beat the crowd,” he decided, “so there’s no sense wasting money on a cab.” The crowd, it was to develop, was scarcely worth beating: 34,320, some 15,000 under standing room capacity.

Back of center field stood the squat green building, the outsized pillbox that contained the clubhouses. Since both Durocher and Dressen believed in intensive managing, each team was gathered for a meeting in the green building shortly before noon. The announced purpose was to review hitters, although the two teams had played each other twenty-four times previously that season and there was nothing fresh or new to say about anyone.

“Jam Mueller on the fists,” Dressen told Don Newcombe. “Keep the ball low and away to Thomson. Don’t let him pull it.” Dressen concluded, with more warmth than he customarily displayed: “Look, I know it’s tough to have to play this game, but remember we did our best all year. So today, let’s just go out and do the best we can.”

“Don’t give Hodges anything inside,” Durocher told Maglie. Then, later: “We haven’t quit all year. We won’t quit now. Let’s go get ‘em.”

During batting practice Branca was standing near the cage with Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson. “You guys got butterflies?” a reporter asked.

“No matter how long you been playing, you still get butterflies before the big ones,” Reese said. Robinson grinned, and Branca nodded solemnly. Ralph’s long face, in repose, was sad, or perhaps deadpan. One never knew whether he felt troubled by what was around him or whether he was about to laugh.

The game began badly for the Giants. Sal Maglie, who had won twenty-three games and beaten the Dodgers five times that season, walked Reese and Duke Snider in the first inning. Jackie Robinson came up and lined Maglie’s first pitch safely into left field for a single. Reese scored, and the Dodgers were ahead, 1 to 0.

Newcombe was fast but not untouchable, and in the second inning Lockman reached him for a single. Thomson followed with a sharp drive to left, his first hit, and briefly the Giants seemed to be rallying. But very briefly. Running with his head down, Thomson charged past first base and had almost reached second before he noticed that Lockman had stopped there. Thomson was tagged out in a rundown, an embarrassing end to the threat.

When the day grew darker and the lights were turned on as the third inning began, the ballpark buzzed with countless versions of a joke: “Well, now maybe Thomson will be able to see what he’s doing.”

During the fifth Thomson doubled, his second hit, and Branca began to throw. Newcombe pitched out of the inning easily, but Branca threw a little longer. He wasn’t snapping curves or firing fastballs. He was just working to loosen his arm, shoulder, and back.

Branca threw again during the sixth inning, and when Monte Irvin doubled to left in the seventh, Branca began to throw hard. He felt loose by then. His fastball was alive. Carl Erskine, warming up next to him, was bouncing his curve, but Branca had good control and good stuff.

With Irvin at second, Lockman dropped a bunt in front of the plate, and Rube Walker, the Dodger catcher, grabbed the ball and threw to Billy Cox at third. Irvin beat the throw, and now Thomson came to bat with the tying run at third base late in a 1 to 0 ballgame.

Bearing down, Newcombe threw only strikes. After two, Thomson fouled off a fastball. Then he hit another fastball deep into center field, and Irvin scored easily after the catch. As the eighth inning began, the score was 1 to 1.

“I got nothing left, nothing,” Newcombe announced as he walked into the Dodger dugout. Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, who was not playing that day because he had pulled a thigh muscle, took Newcombe aside.

“My arm’s tight,” Newcombe said.

“Bullshit,” Robinson said. “You go out there and pitch until your goddamn arm falls off.”

“Roomie,” Campanella said, “you ain’t gonna quit on us now. You gonna hum that pea for us, roomie.”

While the two built a fire under Newcombe, other Dodgers were making the inning miserable for Maglie and Thomson. Reese and Snider punched one-out singles to right, and when Maglie threw a curve in the dirt and past Wes “Nappy” Westrum, Reese scored and Snider sped to third. Then Maglie walked Robinson, and the Dodgers, ahead 2 to 1, once again had runners at first and third.

Pafko pulled a bounding ball up the third base line and Thomson, breaking nicely, reached backhand for it. The play required a delicate touch; the ball glanced off the heel of Thomson’s glove and skidded away from him. Snider scored, making it 3 to 1, Brooklyn. Pafko was credited with a single. Then Billy Cox drove a fierce one-hopper, again to Thomson’s sector.

One thought — “Get in front of it” — crossed Thomson’s mind. He did, lunging recklessly. There were other times at third when Thomson had thought of hard smashes coming up and hitting him in the face. This time he didn’t. He thought only of blocking the ball with his glove, his arm, his chest. But the ball bounced high and carried over his shoulder into left field. The Dodgers had their third run of the inning and a 4 to 1 lead.

Newcombe blazed through the last half of the eighth inning, his arm no longer tight, and Larry Jansen retired the Dodgers in the ninth. “Come on,” Durocher shouted as the last of the ninth began. “We can still get ‘em. Come on.”

Newcombe threw two quick strikes to Alvin Dark. “Got to get my bat on the ball,” Dark thought. “Just get my bat on it.”

Newcombe threw again. Dark rapped a bounder into the hole in the right side of the infield. Both Hodges and Robinson broke for the ball and Newcombe ran to cover first base. Hodges, straining, touched the ball with the tip of his mitt and deflected it away from Robinson. Perhaps if Hodges had not touched it, Robinson could have made the play. As it was, Dark reached first. A single, ruled the scorer.

Then Dressen made a curious decision. He let Hodges hold the bag on Dark, as though Dark as a base runner were important. Actually, of course, Dark could have stolen second, third, and home without affecting the game. The Giants needed three runs to tie, not one, and the Dodgers needed only outs.

A fine point, except that Don Mueller, up next, bounced a single through the right side — close to Hodges’s normal fielding depth. Now the Giants had runners at first and third. All around the Polo Grounds people stood up in excitement.

With Monte Irvin coming to bat, Dressen walked to the mound. Branca and Erskine were throwing in the bullpen, and Clyde Sukeforth, the bullpen coach, told Dressen that Branca was fast and loose. But on the way to the mound the Dodger manager thought about catching, not pitching.

Campanella had a way with Newcombe. He knew how to needle the big pitcher to fury, and this fury added speed to Newcombe’s fastball. Walking to the mound, Dresen wondered about replacing Rube Walker with Campanella. There was only one drawback. Foul territory at the Polo Grounds was extensive. A rodeo, billed as colossal, was once staged entirely in the foul area there. Campanella could catch, but with his bad leg, he could not run after foul pops. Dressen thought of Hodges and Cox, both sure-handed, both agile. They could cover for Campanella to some extent. But there was all that area directly behind home plate where no one would be able to help Campy. Dressen thought of a foul pop landing safely on the sod directly below the press box. He thought of the newspapers the next day. Dick Young. Jimmy Powers. The second-guessing would be fierce. He didn’t want that. No, Dressen decided, making the move he wanted to make wouldn’t be worth the peril of second-guessing. He chatted with Newcombe for a moment and went back to the dugout. When Irvin fouled out to Hodges, Dressen decided that he had done the right thing.

Then Newcombe threw an outside fastball to Whitey Lockman, and Lockman doubled to left. Dark scored, making it 4 to 2, but Mueller slid into third badly and twisted his ankle. He could neither rise nor walk. Clint Hartung ran for him, and action suspended while Mueller was carried to the distant clubhouse.

“Branca’s ready,” Clyde Sukeforth told Charlie Dressen on the intercom that ran from bullpen to dugout.

“Okay,” Dressen said. “I want him.”

Branca felt strong and loose as he started his long walk from the bullpen. At that moment he had only one thought. Thomson was the next batter, and he wanted to get ahead of Thomson. Branca says he never pitched in rigid patterns. He adjusted himself to changing situations, and his thought now was simply to get his first pitch over the plate with something on it.

Coming into the infield, he remembered the pregame conversation with the newspaperman. “Any butterflies?” he said to Robinson and Reese. They grinned, but not widely.

At the mound, Dressen handed Branca the ball and said: “Get him out.” Without another word the manager turned and walked back to the dugout.

Watching Branca take his eight warm-up pitches, Thomson thought of his own goal. He had two hits. Another now would give him his three for four. It would also tie the score.

“Boy,” Durocher said to Thomson, “if you ever hit one, hit one now.” Thomson nodded but said nothing. Then he stepped up to the plate.

Branca’s first pitch was a fastball, hip-high over the inside corner. “Should have swung at that,” Thomson told himself, backing out of the box.

“I got my strike,” thought Branca. Now, he decided, it was time to come up and in with a fastball. Now it was time for a bad pitch that might tempt Thomson to waste a swing. If he went for the ball, chances were he’d miss. If he took it, Branca would be ready to come back with a curve, low and away.

The pitch came in high and tight. Thomson swung hard and the ball sailed out toward left.

“Get down, get down,” screamed Billy Cox as the line drive sped high over his head.

“I got a chance at it,” thought Andy Pafko, bolting back toward the fence.

Then the ball was gone, under the overhanging scoreboard, over the high wall, gone deep into the seats in lower left, 320 feet from home plate. For seconds, which seemed like minutes, the crowd sat dumb. Then came the roar. It was a roar matched all across the country, wherever people sat at radio or television sets, a roar of delight, a roar of horror, but mostly a roar of utter shock. It was a moment when all the country roared and when an office worker in a tall building on Wall Street, hearing a cry rise all about her, wondered if World War III had been declared.

As the ball sailed into the stands, Thomson danced around the bases, skipping and leaping. The Giants crowded from their dugout to home plate. Ed Stanky, the second baseman, ran to Durocher, jumped on the manager’s back, wrestled him to the ground, and embraced him.

In left, Pafko stood stunned. Then he started to walk slowly toward the clubhouse, telling himself over and over: “It can’t be.” Most of the Dodgers were walking before Thomson reached second base. Jackie Robinson held his ground. He wanted to make sure that Thomson touched all bases before conceding that the pennant race was over.

Clyde Sukeforth gathered gear in the bullpen, and nearby Carl Erskine turned to Clem Labine. “That’s the first time I’ve seen a big fat wallet go flying into the seats,” Erskine said.

As Thomson touched home plate, the Giants lifted him to their shoulders. Then, inexplicably, they lowered him, and everyone ran for the clubhouse. Champagne was waiting. “Gee whiz,” Thomson said. “Gee whiz.”

Wes Westrum and Clint Hartung grabbed Ed Stanky, who liked to boast that he had never been drunk, and pinned him to a rubbing table. Westrum poured champagne into Stanky’s mouth. “You’re gonna get drunk now,” he shouted. Westrum turned to the rubbing table, where Mueller lay, ice packs at his ankle. “Hey, Don,” he shouted and emptied a magnum over the injured leg.

“Isn’t this the damnedest thing you ever saw?” Durocher said.

“Gee whiz,” Thomson said. “Gee whiz.”

“How the hell did you go into second with Lockman there?” coach Fred Fitzsimmons said to Thomson. “But the hell with that,” he added, and kissed Thomson damply.

“Congratulations,” Charlie Dressen said to Durocher. “I told you we’d finish one-two. Well, we did, and I’m number two.”

“Gee whiz,” Thomson said.

In the Dodger dressing room Branca wept, showered slowly, and, after submitting to some questioning, asked reporters to leave him alone. Then he went to the Oldsmobile, where his fiancee, blonde Ann Mulvey, was waiting with Father Frank Rowley of Fordham.

“Why me?” Branca said inside the car. “I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I don’t run around. Baseball is my whole life. Why me?”

“God chose you,” the priest said, “because He knew you had faith and strength enough to bear the cross.”

Branca nodded and felt a little better.

Thomson went from the ballpark to a CBS studio where he appeared on Perry Como’s regular Wednesday night television show. Everywhere he went he was cheered, and always three thoughts ran through his mind. The old Jints had won. He had pushed his runs batted in total up over one hundred. He had got his three for four.

When Thomson reached the house in New Dorp, his older brother, Jim, was waiting for him. “Do you know what you’ve done?” Jim said, all intensity and earnestness.

Only then, six hours after the event, did Bobby Thomson realize that his home run was something that other people would remember for all the rest of his days.

Several players have since been kind enough to offer further comment. “I don’t agree that if Hodges had played me deep rather than holding Dark at the bag the outcome would have been different,” Don Mueller says. “I always checked the fielders before I swung. [Mueller was such a deft place hitter that he was nicknamed Mandrake, after a popular comic strip magician.] I saw where Hodges was playing, that there was a hole on the right side, and I hit the ball through the hole on purpose. If Hodges had played deep, I would have swung differently and just as likely gotten a base hit.”