Willie & Me (16 page)

I had remembered just about everything they had told me, and I realized that each of them had given me a little bit of wisdom. When I followed their advice, it made me a better player, and a better person.

“Well, I
know
you didn't learn nothin' from
me
,” Flip said, “'cause I don't know nothin'.”

“Oh, I learned a
lot
from you, Flip,” I told him. “You taught me everything I know about baseball. And something more important, too. You taught me that sometimes you can change history, and sometimes history can change
you
.”

We talked late into the night about baseball, life, and so many other things. At some point, I must have
dropped off to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, they were all gone.

It was over. But I would have their baseball cards to help me remember them forever. And the rest is history.

E
VERYTHING IN THIS BOOK IS TRUE, EXCEPT FOR THE STUFF
I made up. It's only fair to tell you which is which.

First, all the time travel stuff is a load of malarkey. No matter how many books you read or movies you watch, nobody has ever figured out how to travel through time, and we probably never will. Joe Stoshack, his mother, and Uncle Wilbur are fictional characters. And if you can't find Flip Valentini's name at the Baseball Hall of Fame, it's because he doesn't exist (although he is named after my good friend Fred Valentini).

Everything else in the book is pretty much true. The Brooklyn Dodgers were on track to cruise to the National League pennant in 1951, but the New York Giants came from thirteen and a half games back in August to tie them on the last day of the season. Then the Giants won the final playoff game in the ninth
inning on Bobby Thomson's “Shot Heard Round the World” off Ralph Branca.

If you ask historians what was the most famous home run in baseball history, they will probably name that one. In 1999, the U.S. Postal Service even issued a stamp commemorating the moment. You can watch the homer yourself on YouTube and hear Russ Hodges's famous call:
“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!
” Search for “Bobby Thomson.”

Over the years, there were rumors that the Giants had cheated by stealing signs with a telescope hidden in the center-field clubhouse. But it wasn't until the 1990s that
New York Times
sports columnist Dave Anderson started talking about it in print. Finally, Joshua Prager blew the lid off the story in a January 31, 2001, article in
The Wall Street Journal
. He turned that article into a 2006 book,
The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World
. Thanks to Prager's exhaustive research, we now know that the Giants never would have caught the Dodgers if they hadn't been stealing signs. There never would have been a playoff, and Thomson never would have even come to bat, much less hit the historic home run.

To be fair, Bobby Thomson always denied that he knew what pitch was coming. He claimed that he was concentrating so heavily that he never looked over to
the bullpen for the sign. He did tell the
New York Times
, “the Shot was the best thing that ever happened to me. I guess people remember me because of that moment. They wouldn't have paid much attention to me if that hadn't happened.”

Bobby was traded to the Milwaukee Braves in 1954, and he also played for the Cubs, Red Sox, Orioles, and Giants again before he retired in 1960 with a lifetime average of .270. After baseball, he became a paper products salesman. Bobby Thomson died in 2010 at the age of eighty-six.

Ralph Branca, I think, is the more interesting character. After giving up Thomson's home run, his career nosedived. He hurt his back and retired in 1956. Branca became an insurance salesman, but briefly became famous again in 1961 when he won seventeen straight games on the TV show
Concentration
. He was also the president of BAT (Baseball Assistance Team), an organization that helps needy ex-ballplayers.

In 2011, eighty-five-year-old Catholic Ralph Branca was back in the news when—much to his surprise—he found out that his mother, Kati (and he and his sixteen brothers and sisters), was Jewish, and that several of his relatives were killed in concentration camps during World War II.

After the home run, Bobby and Ralph generally avoided each other. But as they grew older, they took advantage of their moment in history and made a lot
of money together signing autographs of photos and memorabilia.

“I lost a game,” Branca said, “but I made a friend.”

Branca and Thomson

Willie Mays went on to become one of the greatest and most beloved players in baseball history, finishing his career with 660 home runs, two MVP awards, twelve Gold Gloves, and of course, membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But in 1951, when this story takes place, Mays was an insecure rookie. He started the season with just one hit in twenty-five at bats. At that point, he sat next to his locker and broke down in tears, telling Giants manager Leo Durocher that he didn't think he could hit big league pitching.

“I was a scared rookie,” Willie wrote in his autobiography,
Say Hey
, “so scared that when Bobby Thomson stepped into the batter's box and belted his historic, pennant-winning home run against the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds, I was crouched in the on-deck circle praying to God:
Please don't let it be me. Don't make me come to bat now, God.
”

“If Bobby made an out, it would be my turn at bat,” Willie wrote. “I would have been in a position to become the hero, sure, but the way I was swinging I was more likely to make the last out of the season.”

It's doubtful that Willie Mays would have quit baseball if he had hit into a season-ending double play. He was just
too
talented. Admittedly, I invented that possibility for the sake of the story. But Willie also wrote this in his autobiography: “
Who knows, if I had come to bat one more time that year, there might not have been as much history to write about after all.
”

Everybody knows how the regular season ended in 1951, but hardly anybody remembers what happened in the World Series. According to Joshua Prager, the Giants were afraid they would get caught using the telescope and they did
not
cheat in the World Series. Maybe that's why they lost. The Yankees beat them four games to two. The Giants
did
win the Series a few years later in 1954, and didn't win another one until 2010.

Six years after the Shot Heard Round the World,
the Dodgers and Giants both left New York and moved to California. The Polo Grounds, where this historic game was played, was demolished in April 1964. Today, you'd never know a ballpark was there. But if you look around the apartment complex that stands on the site, you'll find a plaque on the wall at the exact location where home plate used to be—the spot where Bobby Thomson hit what came to be called “The Shot Heard Round the World.”

Willie Mays—Lifetime Statistics

Two-time NL Most Valuable Player

NL Rookie of the Year

12-time Gold Glove winner

24-time All-Star

Led the NL in batting, slugging, runs, hits, triples, home runs, walks, and stolen bases

Hall of Fame 1979

Major League Baseball All-Century Team

*Willie missed the 1953 season because he was serving in the military.

†After the 1957 season, the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco.

Photo by Nina Wallace

DAN GUTMAN
has always been a baseball fanatic. He played in Little League as a kid, and one of the first magazine articles he ever sold explained the science behind the spitball, the scuffball, and corked bats. When he thought about the T206 Honus Wagner—the most valuable baseball card in the world—he began to write
HONUS
&
ME
, his first Baseball Card Adventure.

Dan is also the author of the
New York Times
bestselling Genius Files series, as well as the internationally bestselling My Weird School series. You can visit Dan online at
www.dangutman.com
.