Just as the history of the United States has been tied to the geography of North America, the history of New York Giants baseball was tied to the asymmetrical shape of the Giant’s ballpark bathtub, called the Polo Grounds. Polo was never played there, but baseball and football Giants played there, as did the Yankees before they moved to Yankee Stadium and the Mets before they moved to Shea. Jack Dempsey knocked out Firpo there, Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling and Billy Conn, Floyd Patterson regained his title by knocking out Ingemar Johansson, and Ray Robinson his middleweight title by knocking out Randy Turpin there.
It was located between 155 and 157 west of Eighth Avenue and east of the base of Coogan’s Bluff, which was behind home plate. The playing area was 550 feet long from the bleachers behind home plate to the deeper center field clubhouse wall, which ran down a slope from the infield. The players and managers sitting in the dugouts could only see the outfielders from the waist up. The left field bleachers were 380 feet from the right field bleachers and if you drew a line from home plate to second to the clubhouse wall, the left side of the field was a quarter acre larger than the right. That and the overhang on the upper deck of the left-field bleachers gave right-handed hitters an advantage.
The distance from home plate to the fifteen-foot-high concrete wall of the lower stands was 276 feet down the left-field foul line and 257 feet down the right, but the upper bleachers in left field stretched twenty-five feet. over the field. . Beyond the foul lines, the walls on both sides stretched two hundred feet toward the bullpens in deep left and right field. Thus, the bullpen walls were 450 feet from home plate and curved toward the stands, 425 feet from home plate.
For hitters like Mel Ott (RIP 1958), the short distance down the foul lines made the Polo Grounds a paradise. Ott hit 323 of his 511 home runs there and the upper deck just past the foul line became known as Ottville. On the other hand, I often watched left fielder Sid Gordon get under a pop-up on the left field line and just as he raised his glove, the ball scraped the protruding top deck for a home run.
I never saw anyone hit the ball in the stands, not even in batting practice, although the record books say Hank Aaron, Lou Brock and Joe Adcock managed to do it. The stands were separated into two sections with a sixty-foot-wide hallway between them leading to the Giant’s and visiting team’s dressing rooms. The clubhouse windows overlooked home plate from deep in center field, leading to rumors of stealing telescopes relaying catchers’ signals to hitters. They even claim the Giants did just that the day Bobby Thomson hit the game and pennant-winning home run off Ralph Branca. How can anyone believe that a team led by Leo Durocher, with Eddie Stanky playing second, would ever stoop to such a tactic?
Low line shots into the holes in center field could go down the slope to the wall of the stands for triples and home runs inside the park. However, Ernie Lombardi (RIP 1977) would hit four hundred foot high lines that were caught. With his wide-spaced stance and long, beautiful swing of his, he was one of baseball’s great long-ball hitters, but his slowest baserunner. He led the league in hitting into double plays and teams would regularly play four outfielders and move infielders back to the edge of the outfield grass with him at bat.
“He runs like he has a piano on his back,” said a man sitting in the row behind me one day.
“Besides the guys who run it,” said the man next to him.
After the games, twenty or thirty kids waited on Eighth Avenue outside the clubhouse to get autographs. We knew the Giants by sight, but not the guys from the visiting teams, so we’d look for the guys with shower-wet hair. In those days, the teams considered themselves ballplayers rather than businessmen and were friendlier. They would sign four or five or more as they walked to the parking lot or the subway entrance. One day a young man stopped and signed for everyone. He had wet hair but none of us recognized him.
I looked at my book. “Buddy Marshall. Who is he?” Nobody knew. It turned out that he wasn’t a gamer, just a guy with wet hair and a twisted sense of humor.
Mel Ott was my favorite player, but from 1942 through 1948, while I was player-manager, the Giants finished the season in last place twice, fifth three times, fourth once, and third his first year. All the same. I rooted for outfielders Johnny Rucker, Sid Gordon, Willard Marshall, Joe Medwick, Danny Gardella, Red Treadway, Steve Filopowicz (he also played for the Giants), and Garland Lawing, who could throw the ball farther than he could hit it. I endorsed infielders Johnny Mize, Buddy Kerr, Bill Rigney, George Hausmann, Nap Reyes, Phil Weintraub, Jack Lohrke, Connie Ryan, pitchers Bill Lohrman, Ace Adams, Harry Feldman, Bill Voiselle, Monte Kennedy, Ewald Pyle, Hooks Iott, and Clint Hartung, and for receivers Sal Yvars, Gus Mancuso, Walker Cooper, Wes Westrum and Lombardi.
In the first game of a doubleheader against the Dodgers in 1944 Weintraub hit two doubles, one triple, one home run and won eleven runs, Lombardi won seven, Ott walked five straight times and scored six runs as the Giants won 26-8 . They finished fifth that year, but that one win carried me through the season. In 1947 they finished fourth and hit 221 home runs, the single-season record at the time; Mize hit 51, Marshall 36, Cooper 35, Thomson 29. Bill Rigney, who became Giant’s manager, would claim that he and his roommate hit 68 of the 221. (His roommate was Johnny Mize ).
According to Rigney, Horace Stoneham, owner of the Giants, “didn’t like the bunt and he didn’t like to pitch, but he loved the home run. We could beat them 9-8,” Rigney said, “but not 2-1.” .”
Then in July 1948, good guy Mel Ott left and “good guys finish last” Leo Durocher, were fired by the Dodgers and became manager of the Giants. Immediately, the Giants became a faster and more aggressive team. On August 11 of the 1951 season, they were thirteen and a half games behind the Dodgers. Then with Stanky, Thomson, Irvin and the pitchers leading the way, and with Willie Mays, Don Mueller and Irvin in the outfield, Whitey Lockman at first, Stanky at second, Alvin Dark at short, Thomson at third, Wes Westrum at receiving and Sal Maglie, Larry Jansen, Jim Hearn and George Spencer pitching, they have won thirty-seven of their last forty-four games, including their first sixteen straight, and finished the season tied with the Dodgers for first place. Then, in the third of three playoff games, they beat the Dodgers on Thomson’s final ninth-inning home run with two outs and won the championship in the most exciting pennant race in baseball history, all at the Pole. grounds.