"Welcome Back Willie," 4-13-54: Mays wins it in return

Willia Mays follows through on an at-bat in the 1951 World Series in his first year in the major leagues. After missing most of the next two seasons because of military obligations, Mays returned on April 13, 1954, and his tie-breaking homer in the sixth inning lifted the New York Giants to a 4-3 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers. (AP file photo)

Roy Campanella swatted home runs in his first two at-bats of the 1954 season for Brooklyn. But he was later upstaged by Willie Mays as the New York Giants defeated the Dodgers 4-3.

By Phil Ellenbecker
  When the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants hooked up in a season opener at the Polo Grounds on April 13, 1954, besides pitting two long, bitter intercity rivals, the game matched the National League pennant winners from the past three years.
  But the big occasion was probably the return to the diamond of Willie Mays, the Giants' rookie sensation from 1951 who'd missed most of the past two seasons because of military service.
  And "The Say Hey Kid" didn't disappoint the 32,397 home faithful on hand. His homer leading off the bottom of the sixth inning proved to be the difference in the Giants' 4-3 victory.
  Mays was seeing his first regular-season action since May 28, 1952, at which time he was called away by Uncle Sam. His homer was his first since May 27 of that year.
  After grounding out his first two times up to the plate against Carl Erskine, Mays greeted the right-hander with a round tripper starting the sixth.
  The relievers took over the game from there. Marv Grissom, who'd come on for Giants starter Sal Maglie after "The Barber" had walked the first two batters in the sixth, held the Dodgers to one hit the rest of the way in picking up the save. Clem Labine held the Giants hitless after taking the hill to start the eighth.
  Mays' sixth-inning blast made the difference in a game where homers supplied most of the scoring. And Mays supplanted Roy Campanella, the 1953 National League MVP, as the homer hero.
  The Dodgers' catcher started his year by belting leadoff homers in both the second and fourth, the latter tying the score at 2-2. Campy's fourth-inning blast answered a two-run homer by the Giants' Alvin Dark with Davey Williams aboard in the bottom of the third.
  The Giants regained the lead at 3-2 when Hank Thompson homered with two out in the fifth.
  Duke Snider didn't reach the seats leading off the sixth for the Dodgers, but he did pull into second with a double and advanced to third on a single by Jackie Robinson. Gil Hodges' sacrifice fly to Mays in center tied the score, setting the stage for Mays' decisive blow in the bottom half of the inning.
  Maglie picked up the win, allowing seven hits and three runs, all earned, with four walks and five strikeouts over his 6 1/3 innings. He also helped himself with a leadoff single in the second. Williams forced him at second, but Dark followed with his homer.
  Maglie's single was the Giants' only non-homer as they made the most of four hits.
  Erskine took the loss after giving up four hits and four runs, all earned, with three walks and two strikeouts.
  Mays' "Welcome Back Willie" moment was the springboard to his emergence as a star. He'd earned National League Rookie of the Year honors by hitting .274 with 20 homers and 68 RBIs in 1951. He'd hit .236-4-23 in his abbreviated 34-game 1952 season.
  He busted out with a league-leading average of .345 in '54 to go with 41 homers and 110 RBIs. He also led the league in triples (13) and slugging average (667) and earned NL MVP honors.
  Mays' performance was infectious, as the Giants went on to reclaim the pennant with a 97-57 record, five games ahead of Brooklyn, after sinking to fifth place the year before at 70-84. They'd finished second at 92-62 in '52, upon winning the '51 pennant.
  Mays' teammate Don Mueller, who'd gone 0-for-4 on opening day, gave him a run for the batting title along with the Dodgers' Snider. Mueller finished second at .342, Snider at .341.

Sal Maglie, shown on his 1954 Redman baseball card, was the winning pitcher when the New York Giants defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers 4-3 in a 1954 season opener at the Polo Grounds on April 13.

  Maglie, who'd averaged 20 wins a year from 1950 to 1952, re-emerged with a 14-6 season with a 3.26 ERA after sinking to 8-9, 4.15 in a '53 season plagued by back problems. Johnny Antonelli, picked up from the Braves, led the Giants' staff with a 21-7, 2.30 campaign. And Grissom (10-7, 2.35 ERA, 17 saves) combined with Hoyt Wilhelm (12-4, 2.10 ERA, seven saves) for a rock-solid bullpen.
  The Dodgers, meanwhile, slid to 92-62 after back-to-back pennant years that ended with heartbreak and World Series losses to the New York Yankees. Brooklyn went 96-57 in 1952 and 105-49 in '53, which stood as the franchise record until the 2019 Los Angeles Dodgers won 106 in eight more games.
  Erskine, coming off a 20-6, 3.54 season and a World Series record 14 strikeouts in Game 3, wasn't quite as sharp at 18-15, 4.15 ERA. The Dodgers did regain the pitching services of  Don Newcombe, who averaged 19 wins a year from 1949 to '51 but missed all of '52 and '53 because of military service. But he showed some rust coming in at 9-8, 4.55.
  Perhaps most felt was an off year from Campanella. His strong opening-game showing belied what was already proving to be a tough season. He'd injured his left wrist and hand in spring training, required surgery in May, and eventually played only 111 games, batting .207 with 19 homers and 51 RBIs. The average and RBIs were career lows. He'd hit .312-41-142 the year before. But as an indication of how valuable he was, the Dodgers had a .623 winning percentage in 1954 in games he started at catcher compared with .542 when he didn't.
  Likewise, the Giants' success paralleled having Mays along, in 1954 and in 1951 -- they were 18-18 before he was called up in May '51, 80-41 with him through winning a tiebreaker playoff for the pennant over Brooklyn. And they seemed lost without him. At the time he left in 1952, the Giants were in first place, with a 2½-game lead over the Dodgers. They then lost eight of 10 and were never a factor in the pennant race. When he came back in spring of '54 ...
  "What a difference Mays makes," Giants manager Leo Durocher said. "Just look around. Everyone's hustling. Everyone's alive. You can thank Willie. He's great. Just great."
  Everybody was jumping on the bandwagon.
  "When Mays showed up at the Giants’ camp in Phoenix on March 1, the consensus among New York writers seemed to be, 'Here comes the pennant,' despite the Dodgers’ 105 wins in 1953," John Saccoman wrote for the Society of American Baseball Research's Biography Project. "Newsweek predicted in its April 5 issue that Mays could mean the difference between 'the second division and the pennant in 1954.'"
  That's exactly what happened, and the Mays karma continued into the 1954 postseason. Many think the tide of the World Series turned in the eighth inning of Game 1, when Mays made "The Catch," robbing Vic Wertz of extra bases and keeping the go-ahead runs from scoring in a game eventually won by the Giants 5-2 in 10 innings. New York went on to sweep the Cleveland Indians, who'd won 111 games that year.
  At that point in time, in the 155 regular-season games for which Mays had been on the major-league roster, the Giants’ record was 107-48, a .690 winning percentage. "Whether or not it was a coincidence, writers and teammates clearly associated Mays with winning," Saccoman wrote.
  It couldn't last. The teams Mays played on after 1954 couldn't quite attain the consistent level of success they'd had his first two full seasons, although he did appear back in the World Series in 1962 after the Giants had moved to San Francisco. And the Giants did place second in five straight years at the end of the 1960s. They did win an NL West Division title in 1971. And Mays made one last trip to the World Series, in 1973 after he'd returned to New York with the Mets. Mays Magic again?
  The fact of the matter was, when the Giants did win it was largely because of Mays -- he won two MVP awards and deserved more --  and when they didn't it was no through fault of his own. After missing most of 1952 and '53 when he was in the Army, he was consistently in the lineup, playing at least 148 games each season through 1968, and never less than 100 until 1972.
  (Regarding Mays and MVP awards: He won in 1954 and 1965, was runner-up in the voting two years, third in two others and fourth two others. But in an article by Cliff Corcoran for Sports on Earth, he said that Mays deserved to win the award seven other years besides '54 and '65, which would have given him two more than the record number won by his godson Barry Bonds.)
  Mays kept finding ways to top himself. Although the team faltered in 1955, Mays didn't. He amped up his power numbers to 51 homers and 127 RBIs, which were his career highs until he drove in 141 runs in 1962 and hit 52 homers in 1965. In 1956 he started a string of four straight seasons in which he led the league in stolen bases. As late as 1971 he led the NL in on-base percentage. He won 12 straight Gold Gloves.
  He kept going and going, and we could go on and on in citing his achievements.
  Bottom line: Mays had a magnetic effect on his team like perhaps no one else in baseball history, and his return in the 1954 opener was just one of many examples of that. Durocher, his biggest booster and first manager, perhaps summed it up best in his autobiography "Nice Guys Finish Last" when he wrote:
  "If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases, and performed a miracle in the field every day, I'd still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar: hit, hit with power, run, throw and field. And he had the other magic ingredient that turns a superstar into a super Superstar. Charisma. He lit up a room when he came in. He was a joy to be around."

Sources:

Play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1954/B04130NY11954.htmhttps://bleacherreport.com/articles/514176-willie-mays-returns-to-the-new-york-giants
Mays biography:  https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/64f5dfa2
Mays in MVP voting: http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/228838158/willie-mays-history-national-league-mlb-awards
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com.