A quote from Bobby Thomson is appropriate. "I hit a fast ball for that homer; caught it right too. Makes you feel good to hit 'em that way. Particularly in a spot like that. It was a great feeling when I saw it traveling into the stands."
Only a few Brooklyn Dodgers fans remember. Only a few Brooklyn Dodgers fans even mention it, but Dodgers' manager Chuck Dressen did not learn, could not learn, or would not learn from the past. The Dodgers' starter for Game 1 was Ralph Branca. Many fans don't know that and most individuals who did know it have probably forgotten.
Want some more interesting information? Guess who hit a home run off Ralph Branca in Game 1. Right. Robert Brown Thomson, the Staten Island Scot. Thomson and Monte Irvin hit home runs, Jim Hearn pitched a complete game, giving up only an Andy Pafko home run, and the Giants won, 3-1. The Dodgers were, as New York Knicks great Walt Frazier likes to say, in dire straits.
The scene shifted to Manhattan where Clement Walter Labine, a rookie called up July 23, shut out the Giants, 10-0 on six hits, none after the fifth inning. With the Giants trailing by two runs in the third inning, they had the bases loaded with two outs. Bobby Thomson was the batter. Bobby Thomson struck out. Interesting.
With the series tied at one win each, the Giants starter for the final game was twenty-three game winner Salvatore Anthony Maglie, who five years later would be the losing pitcher in Don Larsen's perfect World Series game. Don Newcombe, who won twenty games, would start for Brooklyn on two days rest, but there is more.
Newcombe had shut out the Phillies on Saturday, then came into Sunday's game in the eighth inning of an 8-8 tie, and pitched 5 2/3 more innings of shut out ball. The Dodgers won when Jackie Robinson hit a fourteenth inning home run. Can anyone imagine that being done today? In 1951, Newcombe pitched 272 innings and wasn't even among the top five starters for innings pitched. The way today's pitchers are used is ridiculous. They are trained, from the time they become professionals in the minors, to think they can only pitch six or seven innings, which is one reason why there seems to be a dearth of good pitching in 2004.
