8-15-51: Mays amazes early with catch, throw

New York Giants rookie Willie Mays, three years before "The Catch" in the 1954 World Series, made a defensive play perhaps as spectacular on Aug. 15, 1951. He made a running catch and threw out a runner at the plate to help the Giants to a 3-1 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers near the start of their historic rally to win the National League pennant. 

By Phil Ellenbecker
  The 1951 New York Giants were 18-18 without Willie Mays, 80-41 with him as they rose from fifth place in the National League to pennant winners after beating the Brooklyn Dodgers 2-1 in a momentous tiebreaker playoff.
  So it can be fairly said that "The Say Hey Kid" made a difference after he was brought up from Minneapolis, where he was hitting a sizzling .477. And it can also be fairly said that Mays, with his effervescent personality and love of the game, inspired the Giants just by his presence. Perhaps it was karma that Mays was in the on-deck circle when Bobby Thomson hit his "Shot Heard 'Round the World" to beat the Dodgers in the decisive playoff game.
  But Mays, launching a 22-year career that resulted in many calling him the greatest player of all time, also had a tangible effect on the Giants in 1951, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors after hitting .274 with 20 homers and 68 RBIs.
  He was at his inspiring best, perhaps -- tangibly, intangibly, cosmically and karmically -- on Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 15, against the Dodgers.
  Mays made a spectacular catch and throw from center field to erase a Brooklyn threat in the eighth, with the game tied 1-1. He then singled and scored on Wes Westrum's homer in the bottom half of the inning off Ralph Branca, the forever ill-fated pitcher who gave up Thomson's playoff homer. That gave the Giants a 3-1 victory before 21,007 at the Polo Grounds.
  Mays is most noted for "The Catch," and his ensuing throw, in the opening game of the 1954 World Series, a play that may have taken the wind out of the sails of the 111-game winning Cleveland Indians in the Giants' upset sweep that year. But his robbery of Carl Furillo on this day may have been just as jaw-dropping and impactful -- maybe more.
   "The finest defensive play of his career might have been on August 15, 1951, when Mays was a 20-year-old rookie who had played fewer than 80 games in the major leagues," Dan Fields wrote in an article for the Society for American Baseball Research's Games Project.
  With the score tied 1-1, runners on first and third and one out, Mays flagged down at full speed a drive to right-center field by Furillo and threw out Billy Cox at the plate trying to score after tagging up. Cox had reached base on an infield single, went to second on Jim Hearns' balk and moved to third on Branca's single.
  Mays had shaded Furillo to left-center, so he had to range far to gather in Furillo's fly. And he was facing away from the position he needed to be in to make the throw. Then he let fly.
  “It looked plenty deep enough to bring in Cox, especially since Mays had to run a long way to get the ball,” wrote Joseph M. Sheehan in the New York Times the following day. “But Willie, making a complete whirling pivot on the dead run, cut loose with a tremendous peg that boomed into (Wes) Westrum’s mitt in perfect position for the catcher to tag the sliding Cox."  In a 2009 Bleacher Report article, Harold Friend stated, "It was one of the greatest plays of all time. It wasn't one of the greatest CATCHES of all times. It was one of the greatest PLAYS of all time. Hundreds of outfielders could have caught the ball, but only Willie Mays could catch the ball and throw out the runner."

New York Giants catcher Wes Westrum snapped 1-1 tie by homering with Willie Mays aboard in the eighth inning, giving the Giants a 3-1 win over the Brooklyn Dodgers on Aug. 15, 1951. Westrum was also on the receiving end of a miraculous throw from Mays, a half-inning earlier, that put out Billy Cox at home and completed an inning-ending double play. 

   And then as karmically seems to happen following great defensive plays, Mays was first up when the Giants batted. He singled to center, his first hit in three trips to the plate. Branca struck out Thomson, but Westrum then struck the decisive blow with his 16th of 20 homers he had on the season, over the left-field scoreboard.
  Hearn retired the Dodgers' No. 2, 3 and 4 hitters in order to close out the win. He got Pee Wee Reese to ground out, Duke Snider to strike out, and then appropriately enough, got Andy Pafko on a fly to Mays.
  The Giants still trailed the Dodgers by 10 1/2 games in second place in the NL following their fifth straight victory, but they were also on their way to a streak that would reach 16 straight wins, pulling them within five games of the Dodgers. They hardly let up the rest of the way, going 21-7 to forge the tie and force the playoff.
  After the Giants took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on Alvin Dark's double and Monte Irvin's single, neither team made much headway against Hearn or Branca until the later innings.
  Hearn had shut out the Dodgers on two hits through the sixth, singles by Furillo and Cox, who at 2-for-3 was the only player on either team with multiple hits. Branca limited the Giants to an Eddie Stanky single through the seventh after their run-scoring hits in the first.
  In fact, Hearn was nearly perfect until the seventh after Furillo had led off the game with a single. From there through the sixth he faced the minimum 18 batters, with Westrum throwing out Cox trying to steal to end the second.
  He'd retired 12 straight when Reese led off the seventh with a single, extending his hitting streak to 22 games. A wild pitch by Hearn, who hadn't walked a batter, allowed Reese to second. Hearn got the next two batters, Snider and Pafko, before Roy Campanella tied the game by grounding a single to center that plated Reese.
  Hearn finished with a six-hitter and no walks, with five strikeouts, as he improved to 11-7. 
  Branca dropped to 10-4 with a five-hitter, walking one and fanning five.
  Lost in the late-game heroics may have been an alert play by Dark leading off the Giants' half of the first. When he lined a hit to Furillo in right, he took a wide turn at first and Furillo threw behind him. Dark kept on going to second for the double, moved to third on Don Mueller's ground out and scored on Irvin's single for the 1-0 margin that held up until the seventh.
  Dark came over to the Giants along with Eddie Stanky from Boston in 1950, and those two along with the addition of Mays and others brought a more aggressive style of play more to manager Leo Durocher's liking.
  Furillo can't be faulted for being overly aggressive with his bid to nab Dark at first. The strong-armed "Reading Rifle" was attempting to add to what would be major league-leading assist total of 24 for outfielders that year, the highest in five seasons.

Billy Cox went 2-for-3 in the Brooklyn Dodgers' 3-1 loss to the New York Giants on Aug. 15, 1951. He was the only player in the game with multiple hits, but he'll be remembered as the victim of Willie Mays' historic catch and ensuing throw that retired Cox at home to end the top of the eighth inning, with the game tied 1-1.

  Nor can Cox, known in the day as perhaps the best defensive third baseman in the game, by any means be faulted for getting caught in the crosshairs of Mays' throw in the eighth. Who would have really thought Westrum would be waiting for him after an on-the-money hurl from Mays? "Westrum, not imagining a play at home, hadn’t bothered to remove his mask," Fields wrote. According to James S. Hirsch's definitive biography of Mays, Westrum “estimated that when the ball reached him, it was traveling 85 mph, and if the umpire had called it, it would have been a strike.”
  Said Giants first baseman Whitey Lockman, who was lined up as relay man and watched the peg sail by, "It wasn't a throw, it was a pitch."
   "The crowd's initial reaction was silence," Friend wrote. "No one believed what he saw. Then reality set in, and there was a tremendous roar."
  Cox's reaction? "Oh, shit," Friend wrote.
  Furillo, he of the prodigious arm himself,  wasn't ready at the time to give too much credit to the rookie.
  “Luck. That was the luckiest throw I ever saw in my life," Furillo said, as quoted in Jason Aronoff's "Going, Going … Caught! Baseball’s Great Outfield Catches as Described by Those Who Saw Them, 1887-1964." "He can try that 50 times and he won’t come close again.”
  Except he tried it again and succeeded on a similar throw on his "Catch" in the 1954 Series. Except he didn't throw anybody out that time, just kept Larry Doby from scoring from second on a ball that was long enough at the cavernous Polo Grounds for a runner to advance two bases normally on a fly out to deep center.
  In both cases, Willie couldn't afford to stop to set for the throw home, having to catch and fling in one motion.
  Eddie Brannick, the Giants’ traveling secretary, who had been with the team for more than 40 years, provided some perspective on Mays' 1951 throw.
  “I’ve seen (Tris) Speaker, (Joe) DiMaggio, (Terry) Moore, all of them,” Brannick said, referring to legendary defensive center fielders who'd preceded Mays. “But I’ve never seen anything like that throw. This kid made the greatest throw I ever looked at."

Sources:

Play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1951/B08150NY11951.htm  and https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-15-1951-willie--defensive-gem-caps-giants-victory
More on the catch:  https://bleacherreport.com/articles/201754-willie-mays-greatest-play-was-against-the-brooklyn-dodgers-in-1951
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

. 

 
   x