Posted on 11/23/2016 8:09:16 AM PST by ConservativeStatement
If not for one unforgettable fastball, hurled Oct. 3, 1951, pitcher Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers might have faded from baseball memory. In a dozen big-league seasons, he won 88 games and lost 68, a workmanlike record, a ticket to obscurity.
But for an autumn afternoon long ago.
Facing the New York Giants with a 4-2 lead and the National League championship at stake, he threw a high fastball in the ninth inning to the Giants’ Bobby Thomson, a dangerous hitter.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Poor Branca, he became famous after the Giants cheated to win.
Too young to remember, but as a youth baseball lover, Bobby Thompson’s HR was one for the ages.
RIP
Thus that immortal recording; “The Giants win the Pennant, the Giants win the Pennant!”
Watched the game on TV as a teenager
... my father was a Dodgers fan, he h8d the Yankees. He is one of only about two million people who recall going to Polo Grounds, and listening to game from the elevated train station.
How did they cheat?
Biggest cheaters in baseball history.
This could also be called the worst cheaters because the best cheaters are the ones we don’t know about who still haven’t been caught.
1. New York Giants (1951)
Bobby Thomson
Bobby Thomson is mobbed by his Giants’ teammates after hitting the “shot heard ‘round the world.”
Last year, the Giants admitted they had an elaborate sign-stealing system in place at the Polo Grounds in 1951. Did it help them erase the 13½-game lead the Dodgers had in August?
Did Bobby Thomson know what Ralph Branca was throwing when he hit his “Shot heard around the world?” Those questions are unanswerable, even by Thomson, who exhibited Clintonesque qualities when questioned by the Wall Street Journal. “I’d have to say more no than yes,” he said, then equivocated some more before finally saying that no, he didn’t steal the sign for that pitch.
But there’s no doubt that the Giants cheated. Coach Herman Franks would sit in the Giants clubhouse, conveniently located past center field, and use a telescope to read the catcher’s signs. He’d then set off a bell or buzzer in the Giants bullpen that would identify the next pitch, and a relay man would signal it in to the hitter.
See post 9
Bobby Valentine’s father in law.
In 2001, many of the 21 Giants players still alive at the time, and one surviving coach, told the Wall Street Journal that beginning on July 20, the team used a telescope in the Giants clubhouse behind center field, manned by infielder Hank Schenz and later by coach Herman Franks, to steal the finger signals of opposing catchers.
Stolen signs were relayed via a buzzer wire connected from the clubhouse to telephones in the Giants dugout and bullpen—one buzz for a fastball, two for an off-speed pitch. “Every hitter knew what was coming,” said pitcher Al Gettel.
“Made a big difference.”[41] Joshua Prager, the author of the Journal article, outlined the evidence in greater detail in a 2008 book.[42]
Although backup catcher Sal Yvars told Prager that he relayed Rube Walker’s fastball sign to Thomson from the bullpen, Thomson repeatedly insisted that he was concentrating on the situation, and did not take the sign.
[43] Branca made no public comment at the time. “I made a decision not to speak about it,” he said. “I didn’t want to look like I was crying over spilled milk.”[41] Later he told The New York Times, “I didn’t want to diminish a legendary moment in baseball. And even if Bobby knew what was coming, he had to hit it ...
Knowing the pitch doesn’t always help.”[44] In another interview, Branca pointed out that luck and circumstance were involved as well; had the coin toss gone the other way, Thomson’s Shot would not have been a home run at Ebbets Field—nor would the game-winner he hit in the first playoff game have been a homer at the Polo Grounds.[9]
“Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson discuss “sneaking a peek””
Reggie didn’t need a telescope and a buzzer, If Bob Gibson caught you taking a peek he would bounce one off your head
In my father’s account, he didn’t get in, he listened from the train station. We lived in Manhattan at the time, and I don’t think my mother would have approved of him playing hooky.
Where are you getting this “cut and paste” from?
THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!
THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!
THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!
Then the Yankees beat them in 6.
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