{"id":3046,"date":"2026-10-06T14:31:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T18:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/?p=3046"},"modified":"2026-10-06T14:31:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T18:31:26","slug":"75-years-on-fans-recall-watching-and-listening-to-the-shot-heard-round-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/?p=3046","title":{"rendered":"75 YEARS ON, FANS RECALL WATCHING AND LISTENING TO ‘THE SHOT HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

BY MICHAEL CLAIR<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Oct. 3, 1951 — 75 years ago tomorrow — Jerry Austin was in the second grade at P.S. 75 in the South Bronx, counting the minutes until he could run from the classroom. The night before, he had seen a headline about a big game that would air on TV. That \u201cbig game\u201d was the Brooklyn Dodgers taking on the New York Giants in the third and final game of a tiebreaker playoff for the National League pennant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was only one problem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a TV,\u201d Austin told MLB.com.<\/a> \u201cI didn\u2019t know anybody who had a TV. My mother or father then said, \u2018There\u2019s a TV at the five-and-dime on Westchester Avenue.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he had first been taken on a trip to the Polo Grounds by his father a few years before, Austin was young enough that he didn\u2019t quite understand what this contest was really all about. He just knew it was something important and he wanted to be a part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen school ends, I run to the five-and-dime, which is in the complete opposite direction from where I lived, because I heard they had a small TV to see this big event,\u201d Austin recalled. \u201cI really had no idea what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he arrived at the store, a swarm of adults had already amassed around the small television screen, packed shoulder to shoulder like links in a fence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I\u2019m a little guy,\u201d Austin said with a laugh. \u201cI pushed myself to the front as Bobby Thomson comes to the plate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Austin stood on his tiptoes, watching the tiny television. At the Polo Grounds, 34,000 fans were watching, too. Across New York, millions more were following along on the television and radio. By the seventh inning, 90% of the area’s televisions were tuned to the game, while the Armed Forces Radio brought the game to U.S. servicemembers around the globe. So, when Bobby Thomson swung against Ralph Branca\u2019s 0-1 pitch and launched a three-run home run to catapult the Giants into the World Series, the message went far beyond the Polo Grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!\u201d Russ Hodges shouted as Thomson rounded the bases. His legendary call was amplified by simultaneous television and radio broadcasts, cementing the contest as the \u201cthen-most widely covered event in each medium\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was the first thing I saw, and people were going crazy,\u201d Austin said. \u201cI didn’t even realize what it was. From that day forward, I became a Giants fan, and I have not missed a World Series game since 1951.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stands weren\u2019t even full at the Polo Grounds for baseball\u2019s most famous home run. Only 34,320 fans entered the 55,000-seat stadium — perhaps deterred by a headline in the Herald Tribune on Sept. 28 claiming, \u201cGiants have no tickets! Series oversubscribed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seventy-five years later, with the players gone and most of the fans in the ballpark no longer with us, the memories belong to the fans who were watching and listening from afar. With help from Gary Mintz at the New York Giants Preservation Society, we found people like Bruce Podwal, a then-12-year-old in the Bronx who was getting ready for bar mitzvah lessons when he turned on the radio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe radio was on as I\u2019m changing and getting ready,\u201d Podwal said. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t leave, so I heard him hit that home run. Obviously, I was excited.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately for Podwal, while the fans in the park were going wild together, he instead carried the joy alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody was home. My brother hadn’t gotten home from school. My father was at work, my mother might have been shopping,\u201d Podwal said. \u201cI was alone, so I now had to walk the three, four blocks to the rabbi’s house with nobody to share my feelings. And the rabbi didn’t care really.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herb Silkowitz was a rare Giants fan in Brooklyn, holding out against his best friend Richie Klayman\u2019s efforts to convert him to the Yankees. The 8-year-old had spent the summer poring over box scores and mirroring his heroes\u2019 batting stances in stickball games, watching as the Giants slowly rose up the standings day by day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come Oct. 3, he was ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI went to Cunningham Junior High School, which was right around the corner, so I was home in three minutes,\u201d Silkowitz said. \u201cWhen he hit the home run, like a lunatic, I ran out, up and down East 16th Street, screaming, \u2018The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant!\u2019 I basically emulated Russ Hodges’ call.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Charles Sachs was another Giants fan who experienced the same thrill across the river in Bayonne, N.J., surrounded by Dodgers fans who had fallen in love with the team’s stars like Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Jackie Robinson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Giants, meanwhile, \u201cwere a patchwork of not very good ballplayers,\u201d Sachs joked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he sat watching, seeing the innings click by and the Giants behind, he worried that the team’s late-season sprint would all be for naught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s terrible to have come so far, to come so close and to not win is a horror,\u201d Sachs said. \u201cI\u2019m sitting there in my folks\u2019 living room, looking at a black-and-white television set, saying \u2018I\u2019m going to go outside and these Dodgers fans are going to be all over me like you will never believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen the miracle happens,\u201d Sachs said. He grabbed a Turkish towel from the bathroom, ran outside and threw it at his neighbor, friend and ardent Dodgers supporter, Howard Adelman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere, it’s a crying towel,” Sachs told him. “Go cry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two remain close friends today — even though Sachs still brings up the moment every chance as he gets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe came running out and he was very demonstrative. He threw a towel at me,\u201d Adelman confirmed. \u201cAs sad as it was for us, there was a little levity because the Giants deserved to win. They beat [the Dodgers] fair and square. I don’t think I ever considered changing a friendship because of the results of a baseball game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New Haven, Conn., 13-year-old Barry Cutler — nicknamed \u201cYogi Barry\u201d for his baseball fanaticism as he was always seen carrying a ball and glove with him — became a neighborhood celebrity thanks to Thomson\u2019s blast. After calling his mother in tears, he walked to the local grocery store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of a sudden, they broke out in cheers as I walked in,\u201d Cutler said. \u201cIt was like I hit it, like I was rounding third base and they\u2019re cheering for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then walked down the neighborhood’s main street, receiving applause at the barber shop, the dry cleaners and from commuters on the bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople started waving to me,\u201d Cutler said. \u201cIt was like a personal event.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contest even helped hook future sportswriting giants, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lyle Spatz, now a Seymour Medal-winning author and longtime SABR chairman, was then a young Dodgers fan who had considered going to the game with a friend, making the long train trip up to the Polo Grounds for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m thankful I didn\u2019t,\u201d Spatz deadpanned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, he went to school, getting score updates as he passed friends in the hallways in between classes. Finally, when the bell rang after the last period, Spatz and his friends gathered around a red Emerson portable radio. “We headed to the stairwell to leave school and it happened,\u201d Spatz said. \u201cI was stunned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jerry Izenberg, who wrote for the Newark Star-Ledger for more than 50 years and has penned more than a dozen books, was early in his career on that day in 1951. He had been indoctrinated into Giants fandom thanks to his father, a dye factory worker, and saw just how a baseball team could help change a person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy father\u2019s five years younger all of a sudden,\u201d Izenberg remembered. \u201cI\u2019m rooting for my father.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even still, Izenberg couldn’t bear to watch with his father that night, the stress would be too much. Instead, he headed to a local college bar he frequented to watch the contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey’re losing, and I’m saying, ‘Well, that’s destiny,\u2019\u201d Izenberg said. \u201cI want to explain to my father that there are three kinds of fans in New York, which was the only three-team city in America. Yankees fans who are all stockbrokers; Dodger fans, who are all crazy; and Giant fans who were the rebirth of Job.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when Adam Pafko looked up at the wall and watched as Thomson\u2019s fly soared into the stands, \u201cDodger fans were crying, I was jumping around, and my father was ecstatic,\u201d Izenberg recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Thomson\u2019s home run is the most iconic moment from 1951, that wasn\u2019t the actual end of the baseball season. The victory meant that the Giants then had to face the Yankees in the World Series. In a sign of the baseball gods’ sick sense of humor, Thomson even came up in the ninth inning of the deciding Game 6, with two runners on and the Giants trailing 4-2 — just as they were when he sent Branca\u2019s pitch into the stands and his name into eternity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time, however, his fly ball didn’t create pandemonium, it was only a sacrifice fly. One batter later, and the series was over: The Yankees were champions, a fact that is almost forgotten today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe World Series almost felt anticlimactic,\u201d Cutler said. \u201cAfter Thomson\u2019s home run, I ran out of adrenaline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the years go on, fewer and fewer people are left who witnessed the most famous home run in baseball history. For them, though, the memory can catapult them directly to another time and place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember it like I was 14 years old,\u201d Sachs said. \u201cIt was a fantastic moment. In my opinion, the greatest baseball moment ever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, Silkowitz will do what he has for so many decades: He\u2019ll listen to the game once again. The stadium is gone, the players have passed, but as long as there are people left to remember it, the moment will never end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have the three calls on audio tape,\u201d Silkowitz said. \u201cLes Keiter, Red Barber and I have the entire game from Gordon McLendon. The whole day is dedicated just to Bobby Thomson.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/…\/remembering-bobby-thomson-s-shot…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MICHAEL CLAIR On Oct. 3, 1951 — 75 years ago tomorrow — Jerry Austin was in the second grade at P.S. 75 in the South Bronx, counting the minutes until he could run from the classroom. The night before, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3049,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions\/3049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkgiantspreservationsociety.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}