A die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fan cut school with his buddies to attend what turned out to be one of the most crushing defeats in all sports. Isn’t it time to let it go?
When we finally reached the grandstands, my three classmates and I scrambled excitedly to find our seats. Below us, our heroes — Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Willie Mays, Monte Irvin — were taking batting practice, slamming balls deep into the bleachers.
A few hours earlier, we had been sitting, bored and frustrated, in homeroom at New Rochelle High School. No one cared about our classes that day, Spanish or algebra or world history. We were all buzzing about the afternoon’s playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants for the National League pennant. It was 70 years ago, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 1951.
Moments later, as we were weaving through a crowded hallway to our first-period class, I had a brainstorm. “Hey, guys,” I said. I realized I had my car with me, a 1937 Plymouth with a rumble seat in back.
Almost in unison, we cried out, “Let’s go!” We dashed out to the parking lot and headed straight to the Polo Grounds, home field for the Giants.
At the ticket booth, we paid our $2 and joined the anointed few. The day’s receipts would later reveal an attendance of 34,320 — well below the Polo Grounds’ capacity of 55,000. While it has been noted that millions of baseball fans have claimed to have attended the game, the actual turnout was modest. There were no advance ticket sales, and most people thought it would be impossible to get a seat. It wasn’t. Not if you were industrious high schoolers with a ’37 Plymouth.
Back then baseball was the only sport that mattered. Football and basketball were afterthoughts. And New York was the center of the baseball universe with three pro teams: the lordly Yankees, the talented Dodgers and the never-say-die Giants. Passions ran deep, and if you didn’t have a team, it meant that you probably didn’t have a pulse.
Evenings I played pickup games with my sister C.J. and kids from the neighborhood. C.J. always got chosen ahead of me. Unhappily, my on-field skills were never matched by my ability to memorize batting averages.
I had spent the summer analyzing box scores, feeling ever more confident that my beloved Dodgers would reach the World Series. In mid-August, they led the Giants by 13½ games. To a wonky kid easily impressed by baseball stats, the Dodgers’ lead was insurmountable.
But in September, the Giants’ fast-talking manager, Leo Durocher, somehow coaxed his team into a 16-game winning streak. My August bravado turned to September panic, as I realized the Dodgers were in trouble.
An intense baseball follower from a young age, I hadn’t always been a Dodgers fan. My dad rooted for the Yankees, so naturally I followed along. But then in 1947, when I was 13, he took me to a game at Ebbets Field with tickets from a friend who worked for the Dodgers. Halfway through the game, an usher showed up at our row. “Anyone here named George Hirsch?” he asked.
I raised my hand, somewhat timidly. Was I in trouble? The usher smiled and handed me a baseball signed by all the Dodger greats, including, best of all, Jackie Robinson.
I don’t remember anything more about that game, but I spent countless hours at home admiring my prized possession. I would turn the ball over and over, mesmerized by its tight red seams and the sharply distinctive signatures. This 13-year-old became a Dodgers’ fan for life.
Incredibly, the Dodgers and the Giants ended the 1951 season in a dead tie. The two teams would have to fight it out in a best-of-three playoff to see who would face the Yankees in the World Series. The teams split the first two games. That left the third game as the absolute clincher — clearly an event worth skipping school for.
Up in the grandstands, my friends and I sat on the hard, wooden edge of our seats as 20-game winners Don “Newk” Newcombe, of the Dodgers, and the Giants’ Sal “the Barber” Maglie locked into a pitchers’ duel. The score stood at 1-1 through seven innings. Could nothing pry these teams apart?
I remember how Sal Maglie weakened in the eighth, allowing the Dodgers to score three runs and take a 4-1 lead. I’ll admit, I celebrated too early. It would be another 20-plus years before Yogi Berra uttered his famous life-and-baseball truism “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” I learned the bitter lesson that afternoon.
With only three outs left, Durocher’s men staged a comeback. They scored a run and had two men on base with Bobby Thomson coming to bat. With the Giants’ rookie star Willie Mays on deck (I would later name my second son “Willie” after Mays, but that’s another tale), the Dodgers summoned Ralph Branca from the bullpen to replace Newcombe.
Greg had a bad feeling immediately. “Branca was a good fastball pitcher,” he recalled recently, “but he gave up too many home runs.”
Amazingly, my classmates from the 1951 playoff game — Greg Dillon, Steve Goddard and Buster Grossman — are all thriving at 87 or 88. I’ve spoken with each in recent weeks. We have vivid recollections, varied but deeply enshrined in memory, of the day we cut school and headed over to Coogan’s Bluff, site of the Polo Grounds.
Before this conversation, I hadn’t spoken to Greg in almost 70 years. Since then, he’d had an illustrious career in the Army, retiring as a colonel who had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and four Silver Stars. In the movie “We Were Soldiers,” the actor Jon Hamm plays Greg. We still wanted to talk about the bottom of the ninth of a ballgame played 70 years ago.
Branca’s first pitch was a down-the-middle fastball. Thomson didn’t move. Strike one. It was 3:58 in the afternoon.
In his novel “Underworld,” Don DeLillo describes Branca’s next pitch this way: “Not a good pitch to hit, up and in, but Thomson swings and tomahawks the ball and everybody, everybody watches.”
Steve told me, “All I can remember was the pure shock of it.” He had been my friend since age 3, and was now retired in Sonoma, Calif., after an investment-banking career. “Just such a shock,” he continued. “And then I was crying.”
Buster, the only Giants fan in our group, remembers hearing the famous refrain of Russ Hodges on a nearby radio: “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” Buster is a retired lawyer-philanthropist living in Los Angeles. He can still picture Leo Durocher jumping up and down along the third base line as Thomson rounded the bases.
I recall trudging out of the Polo Grounds that afternoon as if struck by lightning. I couldn’t believe it was over and done with. One swing — that’s all it took. No pennant. A Dodgers’ World Series appearance a mere figment of my imagination.
Our story doesn’t end there. The next morning, the four of us received “pink slips” requiring a visit to Vice Principal Loretta Coons’s office. We knew this was serious. Everyone regarded her as a no-nonsense disciplinarian. A report in our files might threaten our college-admission chances.
True to form, Miss Coons launched into a long, stern lecture about how we had violated our responsibility as class leaders. I could feel a cold sweat on my back. Where was this headed?
But her tone changed. “Who among you are Dodgers fans?” she asked. Steve, Greg and I raised our hands.
“You three have already suffered enough,” she continued. “You know I’m a Giants fan, and I believe you witnessed the greatest game ever played. So here’s what we’re going to do. Come back to my office after school and tell me all about the game. Every single detail. And then we’ll drop the whole thing. We’ll just let it go.”
That evening, my father also offered support. “Someday,” he told me. “You’ll get over it.”
Someday, I hope I will.
George A. Hirsch, chairman of New York Road Runners, is the founding publisher of New York magazine and the longtime worldwide publisher of Runner’s World. He is a founder of the New York City Marathon.
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