The Team That Time Won't Forget: The 1951 New York Giants: SABR Digital Library, #32

By Society for American Baseball Research

Because of Bobby Thomson's dramatic "Shot Heard 'Round the World" in the bottom of the ninth of the decisive playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers, the team will forever be in baseball public's consciousness.  

But of course there is much more to the story of that famous team than a dramatic home run (albeit the most famous and probably the most dramatic home run in baseball history) and sign stealing. After all, the team started the year 2-12 and found itself 13 games out of first place with a little more than six weeks left in the season. They soon peeled off 16 wins in a row and went 37-7 down the stretch to force the famous playoff. The '51 Giants did win 97 games other than the game everyone remembers.  

The team is also of historic significance because of its role in the integration of baseball. It was the year Willie Mays first showed his brilliance to major-league audiences, in late May joining black teammates Monte Irvin, Hank Thompson, and Ray Noble. At the time, the Dodgers and Giants had most of the smattering of African-American players in the big leagues, and it is no surprise that those two teams battled down to the wire for the National League pennant.  

Fueled by Giants manager Leo Durocher, who had previously managed the Dodgers, the two teams simply did not like each other and they showed it. Beanballs, flashing spikes, and brawls and near brawls were the order of the day. It is, of course, a rivalry that endures today, with both clubs having moved to the West Coast in 1958.  

For any number of reasons, the '51 Giants truly are the team that time won't forget. It is the aim of this book to assure that to be true by providing an in depth look at and future resource about that historic team.  

Includes a foreword by Giants outfielder Monte Irvin, as well as biographies of all players, coaches, executives, and broadcasters. Also included are chapters on the Polo Grounds, recaps of notable games, the integration of the Giants, sign-stealing, the 1951 All Star Game, World Series, and more.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Society for American Baseball Research
• Release date: Dec 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781933599984

Book preview

Foreword

by Monte Irvin

In 1951 I was 32 years old, but because of segregation I was only entering my second full major-league season. We’d finished third in 1951, just five games behind Philadelphia’s Whiz Kids, and now most of us had been together for a year and had developed into a cohesive team. Going into the season, we knew we were a good club and believed we’d contend for the pennant. We had pretty high expectations, fueled, of course, by our fiery manager, Leo Durocher.

Along with the Brooklyn Dodgers, we were one of the first truly integrated teams in baseball.

We started the season with three black players, Hank Thompson, Ray Noble, a black Cuban, and me, and by late May we had four when Willie Mays joined us from the Minneapolis Millers. Negro Leagues legend Artie Wilson was also with us briefly early in the season. But we got along like a big happy family. When I first joined the Giants in July 1949, Bobby Thomson and Whitey Lockman were particularly welcoming and friendly. But all of the white players were high-class guys and we had lot of respect for each other. We’d kid each other and generally had a lot of fun together. After Mays settled in, he really added to the looseness of our clubhouse with his infectious humor and pranks.

People tend to forget that in spite of our lofty goals, the ’51 Giants got off to a miserable start. After winning two of our first three games, we managed to lose 10 games in a row. Thus, on April 29 we had a 2-12 record and were in last place, already 7 1/2 games out of the lead. This is where having a manager like Durocher really made a difference. He could always make a bad situation better and was upbeat when we lost, saying we’d get them tomorrow. If we won, he’d say, okay, let’s get them again tomorrow. He had a wonderful way with words and would always say something to pick us up.

By the way, I always got along well with Durocher. He was the manager and I was a player, so I just did what he told me to do on the ball field and he expected no less.

Leo asked me to room with Willie Mays when he was called up in late May, and of course I was happy to do so. I was supposed to show Willie the ropes and we spent a lot of time together off the field. We got along very well and have never said an unkind word to each other then or in all the years since.

Although Willie had a little trouble adjusting to major-league pitching at first, he caught everything in sight and could throw runners out from about anywhere in the outfield. In fact, when Willie joined us Durocher took the other outfielders, Don Mueller and me, aside and told us to let Willie have any ball he could get to since he had tremendous range and such a rifle arm. It got to the point that it was a treat to come to the ballpark each day to see what great catch or throw Willie would make.

To tell the truth, when we were 13 games behind in the middle of August, I was not thinking about winning the pennant. I was just hoping we could start winning more games and draw some more fans. After we ran off a 16-game winning streak, Durocher was careful not to put too much pressure on us. He was always upbeat and positive. But he knew we played better when we were relaxed, so he would say, Let’s see how close we can come to the Dodgers, not Let’s catch them.

Durocher was also great at making changes on the field and using his pitching staff well. For example, about the time Mays joined us he had Whitey Lockman and I switch positions, with Whitey going to play first base and me going to left field from first base. I was much more comfortable in the outfield and had my best season in the majors while Lockman turned out to be a natural at first. Leo also moved Bobby Thomson to third base later in the season and we all know how that turned out.

Of course, we did catch the Dodgers on the last day of the regular season and then split the first two games of the best two-out-of-three playoff that led to Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard Round the World. I was the third hitter in the bottom of the ninth in the third game and came to bat with Alvin Dark perched on third and Don Mueller on first with no outs. We were down 4-1 and maybe I was trying too hard to tie score, but I hit a foul pop up to Gil Hodges for the first out. I was very disappointed in myself, but today I’m just glad that I didn’t hit into a double play to kill the rally. By the time Thomson came to the plate the score was 4-2 thanks to a double by Lockman that drove in Dark and sent Mueller to third, where he broke his ankle sliding into the base.

Willie Mays would have been the next hitter and I remember looking over to the on-deck circle and wondering how the 20-year-old phenom would respond to this kind of pressure. We never did find out. After Thomson took the first pitch for a strike, Durocher, who was coaching third, came halfway down the line and shouted, If you ever hit one, hit one now. And two pitches later, that is exactly what Thomson did.

After our incredible stretch run and dramatic playoff victory, the World Series against the Yankees was a little anticlimactic. Still, I was disappointed when we lost in six games. I’ve often thought that losing Don Mueller to a broken ankle in the last playoff game really hurt our chances because Don had been our hottest hitter the last month or so of the season. I managed to have an outstanding Series, batting .458 in 24 at-bats. And even though we lost, I had my biggest individual thrill in baseball in the first inning of the first game when I stole home against Allie Reynolds to put us into the lead of a game we won 5-1. But it was still very disappointing when we lost the Series.

Although a lot has been written about the 1951 season and the so-called Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff, nothing has covered the ’51 Giants with the depth and breadth of this SABR project. It not only contains detailed biographies of every player that appeared in even a single game for us that year, but has articles on all the coaches as well as the sportswriters and broadcasters who covered us. It also captures the high and low points of the season and certainly will be the definitive work on that magical year.

As for me, I’ve always wished that I could have gotten to the big leagues earlier in my career, but I’ll be forever grateful that I made it in time to play for the New York Giants in that historic 1951 season.

51%20Giants.jpg

Monte Irvin, center, holding court with Giants teammates. from left, Ray Noble, Bobby Thomson, Whitey Lockman, and Bill Rigney.

Introduction

I’ve been fortunate to contribute to a number of SABR’s remarkable team history projects. Thus, when casting about with Bill Nowlin for a team history project to co-edit, the 1951 New York Giants seemed an obvious choice. Because of Bobby Thomson’s dramatic Shot Heard ‘Round the World in the bottom of the ninth of the decisive playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers, the team will forever be in baseball public’s consciousness. To add to that, the 2001 revelation by Joshua Prager in the Wall Street Journal that those same Giants had concocted an elaborate scheme to steal the opposing catcher’s signs in the Polo Grounds during the pennant race helped insure that the ’51 Giants won’t soon be forgotten.

But of course there is much more to the story of that famous team than a dramatic home run (albeit the most famous and probably the most dramatic home run in baseball history) and sign stealing. After all, the team started the year 2-12 and found itself 13 games out of first place with a little more than six weeks left in the season. They soon peeled off 16 wins in a row and went 37-7 down the stretch to force the famous playoff. And, as Bill Nowlin reminded me, the ’51 Giants did win 97 games other than the game everyone remembers.

The team is also of historic significance because of its role in the integration of baseball. It was the year Willie Mays first showed his brilliance to major-league audiences, in late May joining black teammates Monte Irvin, Hank Thompson, and Ray Noble. At the time, the Dodgers and Giants had most of the smattering of African-American players in the big leagues, and it is no surprise that those two teams battled down to the wire for the National League pennant. Those Giants started a string of 63 seasons and counting of integrated teams winning pennants in the Senior Circuit. It is safe to say that it is a streak that will continue unbroken as long as baseball is played.

Part of the story involves the storied Dodgers-Giants rivalry of that era. If familiarity breeds contempt, there was ample opportunity then for two teams competing in the same city in the same league. With eight teams in the league playing a 154-game schedule, the two New York teams played each other 22 times a year. In fact, in 1951 the clubs played 25 times. Fueled by Giants manager Leo Durocher, who had previously managed the Dodgers, and players like Eddie Stanky, who had also played for both, and Sal Maglie, the two teams simply did not like each other and they showed it. Beanballs, flashing spikes, and brawls and near brawls were the order of the day. It is, of course, a rivalry that endures today, with both clubs having moved to the left coast in 1958.

Durocher remains one of baseball’s most controversial figures whose will to win literally knew no bounds. But he was a great motivator and it is certain that he was on the top of his managerial game that year. Although brash, combative, and often profane, he had an innate sense of how to get the most out of his players, recognizing their different personalities and needs. Durocher’s encouragement and mentoring of the insecure 20-year-old Mays is certainly the most famous example of his skill, but as Monte Irvin describes in his Foreword, Leo knew just what to say to everybody.

So for any number of reasons, the ’51 Giants truly are the team that time won’t forget. It is the aim of this book to assure that to be true by providing an in-depth look at and future resource about that historic team. Its fruition is due to the dedicated, uncompensated, work of 59 members of the Society for American Baseball Research. These are folks who share a love of baseball and its rich history. Some are retired, but many have day jobs, and all are volunteers, dedicated to researching, writing about, and preserving the history of our National Pastime.

—Paul Rogers

George Bamberger

By Tom Hawthorn

Although George Bamberger played a very minor role with the 1951 Giants, he later rose to prominence as one of the finest pitching coaches of his day, especially with the Baltimore Orioles of the 1970s. An example of his prowess as a coach came in Game Five of the 1970 Wor ld Series.

Baltimore left-hander Mike Cuellar pitched a shaky first inning in Game Five. The Cincinnati Reds touched him for three runs on four hits — a single and three doubles. The Orioles bullpen was active as the inning ended. Cuellar came into the dugout, grabbed a towel, wiped his face. His catcher, Andy Etchebarren, took that simple act as a promising sign. By that time, he said, he was warmed up.¹ Despite winning 24 games in the regular season, the Cuban-born pitcher had lasted only 4 ⅓ innings in the opening game of the American League Championship Series. He was knocked off the mound after just 2 ⅓ innings of the second game of the World Series. Now another short outing seemed in the works. The battery huddled in the runway behind the home dugout at Memorial Stadium, where they were joined by pitching coach George Bamberger. Two of the hits, by Johnny Bench and Hal McRae, had come off screwballs high in the strike zone. A decision was made — no more scroogies, a lot more curves. Cuellar retired the next 10 Reds, issued a walk, then stymied six more batters in a row. He gave up a pair of singles in the seventh, but got out of the inning to complete the game, sewing up the World Series in dominating fashion.

Bamberger, a quiet man with some unorthodox ideas about handling hurlers, flourished as pitching coach of the Orioles from 1968 to 1977. A 20-win season is a standard of excellence for a starting pitcher. Bamberger had 18 pitchers reach that mark, four of them — Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Pat Dobson, and Dave McNally — doing so in 1971, the third consecutive year in which the O’s won the pennant.

He’s one of the game’s greatest teachers, longtime Orioles manager Earl Weaver once said. ‘Throw strikes,’ he would say. There is nothing complicated about baseball. Maybe that’s what makes George so good — there’s nothing complicated about George.² Shortly before Bamberger’s death in 2004, Weaver said, If there was a Hall of Fame for pitching coaches, he should be there without a doubt.³ Frank Cashen, the Orioles president during Bamberger’s years in Baltimore, said simply, He was the best pitching coach I ever saw.⁴

Where Weaver was flamboyant and volatile, Bamberger was calm, unflappable, a pitcher’s friend. He was also nearly deaf in his right ear, so he made a point of sitting on Weaver’s left in the dugout.

Bamberger’s own major-league career was brief and undistinguished. In 18 seasons in the minors, he transformed himself from a wild thrower into a control pitcher who set a mark for consecutive innings pitched without issuing a walk. After his time coaching for the Orioles, he had two stints managing the Milwaukee Brewers, who were known as Bambi’s Bombers, with an unsuccessful spell as skipper of the New York Mets sandwiched in between the Milwaukee stints.

George Irvin Bamberger was born on August 1, 1923, in Staten Island, New York. He attended McKee High before entering the US Army in 1943. The 5-foot-11 ½, 180-pound right-hander signed with the New York Giants in 1946, about the time two years were shaved from his age. The official guides always listed his birth year as 1925. He debuted in 1946 with the Class-C Erie (Pennsylvania) Sailors of the Middle Atlantic League, going 13-3 with a league-leading earned-run average of 1.35. He was then promoted to the Class-B Manchester (New Hampshire) Giants and, in 1948, to the Triple-A Jersey City Giants. He led the International League in wild pitches in 1949 with 11, though he also tied for the league lead in shutouts with five. Pitching for the Oakland Oaks the following season, Bamberger led the Pacific Coast League in wild pitches with 13.

During the 1950 season Bamberger married Wilma Morrison of New Jersey at First Presbyterian Church in Oakland. The best man was Oaks second baseman Bobby Hofman. The entire ballclub, including president Brick Laws and manager Charlie Dressen, joined the couple afterward for a cocktail hour followed by a buffet dinner.

Bamberger made his major-league debut with the Giants on April 19, 1951, during the second game of a doubleheader at Boston against the Braves. In two innings in relief, he gave up two runs on a walk and three hits, including a home run by Sam Jethroe. In his only other appearance with the Giants that season, later that month, he failed to register an out while surrendering two more runs on a Jackie Robinson home run.

Bamberger was soon demoted to play for the Ottawa Giants in the International League. On Father’s Day he pitched a no-hitter in a 1-0 victory over the Maple Leafs at Toronto. Not only did Bamberger hold Toronto hitless, but he was responsible for the game’s only run, coaxing a bases-loaded walk on four pitches from mound rival Russ Bauers in the second inning. After the game Bamberger lit a fat cigar, in celebration not of his no-hitter but of the birth of daughter Judy in New York the night before.

In 1952 Bamberger started the season with the Giants again, appearing in five games and allowing four runs in four innings. In June he was traded back to the Triple-A Oakland Oaks in exchange for pitcher Hal Gregg and $35,000.

He spent four seasons as a starting pitcher for the Oaks, compiling a 52-44 record. The Oaks moved to Vancouver (and joined the Baltimore system) for the 1956 Pacific Coast League season, and Bamberger went along, spending seven seasons with the Mounties. He went 9-14 his first season in British Columbia, complaining of a sore arm that cost him his fastball. In 1957 new manager Charlie Metro convinced Bamberger the only way to recover was to throw, throw, and throw.⁵ It worked. Bamby’s exploits at Capilano (now Nat Bailey) Stadium made him a perennial fan favorite. Bamberger carried himself like someone who knew he belonged in The Show and had been left behind by an oversight that would surely soon be corrected.

Bamberger was a chesty guy with thinning hair, Denny Boyd of the Vancouver Sun once wrote, a nose the size of a wedge of pie and a dimple in which you could catch thrown balls. Boyd dubbed him the Staten Island Stopper. The pitcher’s limited repertoire — a so-so fastball, a deceptive changeup, a wicked curve that dipped like the new roller-coaster at the city’s exhibition grounds — was enhanced by the occasional use of a spitball, an illegal pitch and a scofflaw’s best hope. We all knew he used it, Boyd wrote, but we could never get him to admit to throwing the wet one.⁶ Bamby acknowledged that he had a special pitch that he called the Staten Island Sinker. It certainly was wet like a sink.

In 1958 Bamberger established a PCL record by pitching 68 ⅔ consecutive innings — the equivalent of more than seven complete games — without allowing a base on balls. The old mark of 64 innings had been set by Julio Bonetti in 1939. Bamberger’s record stood for more than four decades. The streak began on July 10, after he walked a batter in San Diego in the fourth inning. He recorded his 100th PCL victory in his next start, for which the Mounties held a George Bamberger Day on August 1. The club gave him 100 Canadian silver dollars. In return, Bamby beat Seattle 6-3, again without walking any batters.

When you come right down to it, there is no excuse for walking a batter, Bamberger told Boyd in 1958. It’s accepted as normal, but it isn’t normal; it’s a mistake. If you throw four bad pitches, you have made four mistakes. There is no other sport where you can survive making that many mistakes.⁷

The streak ended on August 14, when a Phoenix pinch-hitter walked on four pitches. The record remained unchallenged until bettered by Nashville’s Brian Meadows in 2003.

Bamberger’s final cup of coffee in the bigs came courtesy of the Orioles, who used him three times in April 1959. He started one game, against the Yankees, shutting them out for five innings but then giving up four runs. His entire major-league career involved pitching just 14 ⅓ innings for two teams over three seasons separated by eight years. He had no wins or losses and one save in relief, and carries into eternity an inflated ERA of 9.42. He returned to Vancouver and kept pitching.

In a 1962 game in Vancouver, Bamberger took part in a wacky episode. He was outfitted with a radio receiver sewn into an inside pocket of his uniform. It looked as though he had a cardboard pack of cigarettes in his undershirt. Unseen in the Vancouver dugout, manager Jack McKeon barked commands into a transmitter. The skulduggery failed to catch out any opposing baserunners, although it did bamboozle fans and the first baseman, who took one unexpected pickoff throw in the chest. Before long, baseball banned the use of radios on the field.

Bamberger added coaching duties to his responsibilities in 1960 while still pitching for the Mounties. After retiring as a player at the end of the 1963 season, which he spent at Dallas-Fort Worth, Bamberger worked for the Orioles as a minor-league pitching instructor. He was hired as the parent club’s pitching coach in 1968, replacing Harry Brecheen, who had held the post for 14 seasons. Manager Hank Bauer announced in spring training that he was tired of having pitchers with sore arms on his roster. Bauer would not last the season, but the Orioles found a solution to the problem in their new pitching coach.

Bamberger’s theory was that sore arms and elbows resulted from underwork, not overwork. He insisted that his pitchers run every day, even if tired, even on the road, so he ordered 35 minutes of sprints from foul pole to foul pole. When you pitch, and your legs get tired from lifting them up on every windup, you can lose coordination, he said. A shift in the mechanics could lead to loss of control, which could lead to wildness and sore arms.⁸

He also had his pitchers play catch for 15 minutes between starts, with 20 minutes of hard throwing the prescription two days after every start. He believed in pitchers throwing many innings and completing as many starts as they could. In 1970, Palmer threw 305 innings, Cuellar 297 ⅔, and McNally 296.

My whole idea is to throw the ball over the plate, Bamberger told Dave Anderson of the New York Times in 1979. The most important pitch is a strike. But the trick is to change speeds. Trying to pinpoint a pitch is crazy. Throw the ball down the middle, but don’t throw the same pitch twice. Change the speed.⁹

Though regarded by many as solely a pitching specialist, in 1978 Bamberger was hired to manage the Milwaukee Brewers, who had yet to post a winning season in their eight-year history. Remarkably, he turned the perennial also-rans into a contender as Bambi’s Bombers posted 93 wins in 1978 and 95 in 1979. An amiable, happy man, the manager was known to join fans in the parking lot of County Stadium for postgame tailgate parties. After suffering a heart attack during spring training in 1980, he underwent a quintuple bypass. He returned in June, but did not last the season, resigning after a 7-2 loss at home to the Texas Rangers on September 7. The Brewers were 73-66 and in fifth place in the American League’s Eastern Division.

Two years later, in 1982, Bamberger became the skipper of the New York Mets. The 58-year-old florid and balding manager was greeted by a memorable description in New York magazine. Bamberger resembles George Kennedy, wrote Vic Ziegel, but the voice is Art Carney’s Ed Norton.¹⁰ The Mets were woeful, and could finish only 65-97 during Bamberger’s one complete season. I don’t want to suffer anymore, he said after resigning with a 16-30 record early in the 1983 season.¹¹

Bamberger returned to manage the Brewers in 1985, but the team was not what it had been. After one poor season and most of a second, he was fired in September 1987 and retired for good.

After baseball Bamberger settled into a life of painting and golf in North Redington Beach, Florida. He died at his home there, after battling colon cancer, on April 4, 2004. He was 80 years old and left Wilma, his wife of 53 years, three adult daughters, five grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and a brother.

Sports Illustrated asked Jim Palmer, who won 20 games in seven seasons under Bamberger’s tutelage, for his memories: George had flawless mechanics. If I ever got out of sync, I used to visualize him throwing batting practice. But with us — his ‘boys’ — he didn’t preach mechanics. He had a sixth sense of what a pitcher needed to be better, and he knew it could be different for each guy. There were a few hard rules, but everybody was unique, and he understood that. George’s great strength was he didn’t overcoach. There’s no place for panic on the mound.¹²

Sources

In addition to the sources included in the endnotes, the author also consulted:

Chick, Bob, Bamberger’s Pitching Theory Was Simple But Quite Effective, Tampa Tribune, March 4, 2000.

Hawthorn, Tom, Recalling the Mounties’ Major Minor Legend, The Tyee, April 26, 2004.

Loranger, Clancy, Mountie Bamberger Steps Out as ERA Leader — 2.36, The Sporting News, September 3, 1958.

Notes

1 Lowell Reidenbaugh, Shaky at Start, Cuellar Finishes Like a Champ, The Sporting News, October 31, 1970, 39-40.

2 Ron Fimrite, Prosit! He’s the Toast of the Town, Sports Illustrated, April 30, 1979.

3 Roch Kubatko, Shepherd With a Staff, Bamberger Was O’s Ace, Baltimore Sun, April 7, 2004.

4 Richard Goldstein, George Bamberger, 80, Pitching Coach, Dies, New York Times, April 7, 2004.

5 Ross Newhan, He Was a Workhouse Warhorse, Very Few Are Left, Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1993.

6 Denny Boyd, Let’s Talk About Baseball’s Bamberger, Vancouver Sun, April 21, 1980.

7 Ibid.

8 Doug Brown, Oriole Hurlers Please Note: Bauer Is Sick of Sore Arms, The Sporting News, March 2, 1968.

9 Dave Anderson, George Bamberger, the Brewers Ph.D. in pitching, New York Times, March 8, 1979.

10 Vic Ziegel, Bambi Meets the Mets, New York, March 8, 1982, 55-56.

11 Inside Pitch, Sports Illustrated, June 13, 1983.

12 Arms and the Man, Sports Illustrated, April 19, 2004.

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George Bamberger

Roger Bowman

By Tom Hawthorn

Roger Bowman was a 16-year-old high-school junior when a wire-service report presented him to the nation in 1944 as a left-handed Bob Feller. ¹ The schoolboy pitcher had thrown two no-hitters in his first six games of the 1944 season, surrendering a lone run to go with 91 s trikeouts.

The previous summer he had visited the Polo Grounds, where he got pointers from New York Giants players as well as from Dolf Luque, the Cuban-born pitcher. The Associated Press report suggested that the boy’s father rejected signing immediately with the club, preferring that his son continue with his studies, which included a promising musical career.

In the end, young Bowman signed with the Giants organization at age 18 in 1946. He made his major-league debut three years later, by which time no one was comparing him to Feller.

The left-hander appeared in 50 games over five seasons (13 with the Giants and 37 with the Pittsburgh Pirates). His record in the majors was 2-11, both victories coming with the Giants in 1951. He was known for a slow curve, as well as for a hesitation windup that was described as elaborate² and weird.³ Giants manager Leo Durocher tried to tinker with the windup in spring training only to be defied by the pitcher. I’ve been winning with this delivery, Bowman said.⁴

Most of Bowman’s 15-season professional career was spent in the minors with stops as far afield as Hawaii and Ottawa, Canada. In 1952 he threw a no-hitter for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. The next season the Pirates used him in 30 games, mostly as a reliever. That October, he accidentally riddled his pitching arm and hand with shotgun pellets in a hunting accident. After recovering, he returned to the PCL to enjoy the best season of his career, winning 22 games as a starter with the Hollywood Stars, tops in the league that season.

Roger Clinton Bowman was born on August 18, 1927, an only child for Rebecca (Hinkle) Bowman and Burdette F. Bowman. His father, a one-time semipro baseball player, worked as a bookkeeper in Amsterdam, New York, a thriving industrial center known as Rug City, located in the Mohawk Valley about 30 miles west of the state capital, Albany.

Young Bowman attended Amsterdam High, where he played basketball under coach Ed Clonek and baseball under John D. Tracy. The baseball team had been unbeaten in three years by the time Bowman was profiled by the Associated Press. The lefty pitched for his high-school team as well as for local amateur squads, such as one sponsored by Jim’s Tavern on Jay Street. His most outstanding performance in his senior year came off campus, as he pitched the Amsterdam Rugmakers to a 10-0 championship victory over Schenectady in an All-American Amateur Baseball Association tournament in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The young lefty issued one walk and two singles while striking out 24 batters, only three outs coming from batted balls.

Bowman appears to have transferred schools; he graduated from Wilbur H. Lynch High in 1945 and enrolled as a part-time student at Colgate University, 88 miles west of Amsterdam in Hamilton, New York. Before he completed his first semester, Bowman was called up for World War II naval duty and was stationed at Camp Peary, Virginia. After the war, Bowman spent several years studying at the university, attending classes during the fall semester as he built up credits towards a degree. In 1952 an Associated Press article on Bowman’s academic ambitions appeared in the Schenectady Gazette under the headline: Bowman Seeks Diploma on Installment Basis.⁵

When Bowman signed with the Giants organization in July 1946, he received a reported $15,000 bonus. (Another report placed the bonus at $18,000.) He was assigned to the Jersey City Giants of the International League, where he showed wildness by walking eight in just three innings of work. He was sent down to the Trenton (New Jersey) Giants of the Class-B Interstate League, where he struck out 11 Harrisburg batters in his debut on August 15, three days before his 19th birthday. In a later start on the road in Wilmington, Delaware, Bowman was shelled by the Blue Rocks, failing to record an out in the fifth inning, by which time he had surrendered nine hits (and five costly bases on balls). Bowman went 2-4 in six games.

In 1947 Bowman went 17-8 for Trenton, including a string of nine consecutive victories despite continued wildness. A typical outing was a game against Lancaster Red Roses on May 16, when he walked 11 and struck out 11 in picking up the victory.

He spent most of the 1948 season with the Sioux City (Iowa) Soos in the Class-A Western League, going 11-8. (He also appeared in five games for Jersey City with a loss as his only decision.) In a game on July 9, Bowman struck out 17 Des Moines batters only to have his team lose, 2-1. Bowman rebounded six days later by striking out 10 Lincoln batters in getting a victory. His 182 strikeouts for the season were second best in the Western League behind only fellow lefty Bobby Shantz’s 212. (The following season Shantz made his debut with the Philadelphia Athletics, the first of his 16 major-league seasons.)

Back on the hill for Jersey City in 1949, Bowman went 15-9 and showed greater control than in the past, issuing 90 walks in 194 innings pitched. He got a late-season call-up to the parent Giants, making his major-league debut in the second game of a doubleheader at Crosley Field in Cincinnati on Sept. 22. Bowman started and pitched four innings, giving up three hits (a double and two singles), walking four, and striking out three. The lone run he surrendered came when Virgil Stallcup, who had walked and advanced to third on a single, stole home on a double steal. (It was Stallcup’s only steal in a season in which he had 589 plate appearances.) Bowman was removed for a pinch-hitter as part of a four-run rally in the top of the fifth. He had no decision in a game the Reds went on to win, 8-4.

Bowman got his second start three days later, making his Polo Grounds debut against the Boston Braves, who chased him in the third inning after Connie Ryan hit a two-run homer.

The prospect spent the entire 1950 season with Jersey City, leading the International League in innings pitched (233) and strikeouts (188), going 16-11 while completing 19 of 30 starts.

As spring training opened in 1951, The Sporting News offered writers’ advice to each player on the Giants roster. For Bowman, the suggestion read: Anybody who can pitch as well as you can’t miss, even if you aren’t a spring star.⁶ Now aged 23, the willowy lefty stood 6-feet and weighed 175 pounds. He started the Giants’ ninth game of the season, a night game at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Bowman was looking mighty impressive, John Drebinger reported for the New York Times.⁷ [T]hings took a bad turn in the second when a single went by (Don) Mueller for a triple. Del Wilber scored on a long foul out to left. In the fourth, Drebinger wrote, the luckless Mueller wrecked Bowman completely when, with two out and two on, he cut across for Richie Ashburn’s drive into right center. It would have been an easy catch for Bobby Thomson but Don, on the dead run, could not hold the ball and it went for a two-bagger to score two. Come another real double by Willie Jones to drive in a third tally and Bowman had to bow out. The Phillies hung on to win, 6-4, and Bowman had his first major-league decision, a loss.

The sportswriters took note, too, of Bowman’s unorthodox pitching style, described by the Times’s Roscoe McGowen as a pretzel wind-up.⁸

Bowman took a second loss on April 28 against the Brooklyn Dodgers, leaving after the first three batters in the sixth singled. The lefty was charged with five runs on six hits (including a home run by Carl Furillo) and three walks. It was the Giants’ 10th consecutive loss, leaving them at 2-11 in the National League basement, already trailing the league-leading Braves by seven games.

Bowman’s fortunes improved on May 5 when Leo Durocher tapped him in relief in the fifth inning of a home game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Giants trailed 3-2 when Bowman took to the mound. He gave up just three singles through five innings, as the Giants rallied for an 8-3 triumph and Bowman earned his first big-league win.

A second win was earned just five days later, as Bowman limited the St. Louis Cardinals to one run and three singles through six innings despite issuing seven walks. The Giants won, 3-2, their ninth victory in 11 games.

An ill-fated relief stint against the Cards in St. Louis on May 20 had Bowman come on in the seventh with two out and two on. He balked and then walked the only batter he faced, who later scored, enough to saddle Bowman (2-3) with the loss.

On June 3 Bowman got another start, in the second game of a Sunday doubleheader at the Polo Grounds, a grinding effort during which he gave up 11 hits (nine singles, two triples) in 4 ⅔ innings. He somehow gave up just two earned runs and did not factor in the decision as the Giants lost, 4-3.

By June 11 the Giants had fought back to a 27-26 record, six back of the league-leading Dodgers. No games were scheduled, but the Boston Red Sox were in New York for a midseason exhibition at the Polo Grounds as a fundraiser for the National Amputation Foundation. Many of the 5,586 fans who showed up were keen to see how Ted Williams fared with the short porch in right. Bowman got the start for the home side and Williams singled in the second, walked in the third, flied to left in the fifth, and grounded to second in the eighth. (He got another single in the ninth off reliever Al Gettel.) The Giants lefty struck out nine Red Sox in eight innings in the free-swinging affair (Dom DiMaggio twice and Vern Stephens thrice).

The nadir of Bowman’s season came on June 17 at Forbes Field, as he got the start in the first game of a doubleheader. He struck out the first two batters he faced but failed to get out of the inning, as a pair of singles and a walk loaded the bases before Danny Murtaugh’s double cleared them. Durocher yanked Bowman, who took the loss, and the manager didn’t survive much longer himself, getting tossed in the second inning.

The Giants brought up Frank Hardy from Ottawa of the International League the next day, sending Bowman down in his place.

The southpaw responded by throwing a one-hitter (a second-inning single) in Baltimore against the Orioles, during which he walked two and struck out eight in a 4-0 shutout.

On July 9, the parent club was in Ottawa for an exhibition and Bowman got the start and defeated his former teammates. After the game, Giants general manager Charlie Stoneham transferred Bowman to Minneapolis of the American Association. He went 5-3 with the Millers through the rest of the 1951 season, following the daily progress of the dramatic pennant race through the newspapers instead of on the field.

The Giants had Bowman stay with the parent club after spring training in 1952, but he failed to get through the third inning of an April start against the Braves. (He was yanked with a 2-and-0 count on Sid Gordon after giving up a single and a walk in the inning after having allowed four singles and two runs in the second.) On May 6 he worked two-thirds of an inning in middle relief, giving up a single and two walks. He hit the Cardinals’ Solly Hemus with a pitch that would turn out to be the last he’d ever throw as a Giant.

On May 14 Durocher sent the hurler to Minneapolis. The skipper said Bowman, still just 24 years old, needed to do more work before he could be a regular.

Bowman pitched in six games with the Millers before being included in a three-for-one trade to Oakland of the Pacific Coast League. He arrived complaining of a sore left shoulder with X-rays showing a calcium deposit.

Nonetheless, Bowman barely had time to meet his new teammates before he threw a no-hitter against the Hollywood Stars. The lefty was perfect through five innings before issuing a walk to open the sixth. He also issued passes in the eighth and ninth innings, facing only 29 batters, only one of whom managed to hit a ball as far as the outfield. Overall Bowman went 7-5 in 17 starts for the Oaks.

Late in the season, Bowman was at the center of a rhubarb with the Hollywood Stars. After a second pitch came uncomfortably close to the head of Jim Mangan, the batter charged the mound. The pair mixed, clinching and pummeling each other, until they were pulled apart as tenants of both dugouts swarmed on the field, The Sporting News reported.⁹ Mangan got tossed, but Bowman continued throwing warmups as both managers (Fred Haney for Hollywood and Mel Ott for Bowman’s Oaks) argued for about 20 minutes. Finally, Bowman was ordered from the field. As he left, he threw the ball over the grandstand roof before charging at umpire Roman Bentz. He was intercepted by several teammates and pitching coach Augie Galan, who accidentally spiked the pitcher in the dustup. Mangan and Bowman were each fined $75.

In May 1953 the Pittsburgh Pirates claimed Bowman on waivers from the Giants. He pitched in 30 games for the Bucs, all but two in relief, including closing out 15. He went 0-4 with a 4.82 earned-run average in 65 ⅓ innings pitched. That fall he was traded to Hollywood for home run-hitting first baseman Dale Long. Five days later, while hunting near Otter Lake in the Adirondacks, Bowman accidentally shot himself in his pitching arm with a shotgun. He was treated at Albany Hospital.

Bowman went on to lead the PCL in victories in 1954 with 22 against 13 losses for Hollywood. He had 165 strikeouts while issuing 99 walks. The 22nd victory was also the most impressive — a seven-inning perfect game against Portland in which only one ball was hit to the outfield, a routine fly to left. It was only the third perfect game in PCL history with the other two also seven-inning affairs. The win in the nightcap of a doubleheader tied Bowman’s Stars with San Diego for the pennant, which the latter would win, by 7-2 in a one-game playoff.

Bowman opened the 1955 season with the parent Pirates, making two starts and five relief appearances. On May 22 the Giants, his old team, touched him for 10 hits over eight innings in a 5-2 win at Forbes Field, as Bowman dropped to 0-3. He never pitched again in the majors. He went 5-10 with Hollywood over the remainder of the campaign.

Bowman’s final six seasons of professional ball saw him throwing for the Millers, the Buffalo Bisons, the Sacramento Solons, the Louisville Colonels, and the Portland Beavers before he joined the expansion Hawaii Islanders as an assistant manager to Tommy Heath. (Heath had been his manager in Trenton in 1947.) Bowman appeared in seven games in fill-in duty, pitching five innings and emerging with a 1-0 record for his 131st career minor-league victory against 119 losses.

Later that season, Bowman turned up in his hometown pitching for the Amsterdam Textiles, a semipro team sponsored by the Textile Workers Union and whose other starting pitcher was Tom McMullen, a right-hander who had spent five seasons in the Brooklyn Dodgers system.

Over the years, items appeared in the sports pages declaring that Bowman could make a living as a professional musician, especially on the saxophone, as he performed with big bands at Caroga Lake, a summer resort town in the Adirondacks. It was said that Bowman had once even sat in with Tommy Dorsey.

While playing baseball, Bowman completed an arts degree at Colgate. He later completed an education degree at the University of California at Los Angeles. He operated an eponymous upholstery business in Santa Monica for 45 years. The business had two partners, Leo Ummard, a German whom he helped immigrate, and George Mockry, an old school friend. Bowman handled the books.

A pilot, Bowman served as president of the Air-Spacers Flying Club, based at Santa Monica Airport, and he also moonlighted as an aviation instructor for 20 years.

Bowman’s father died in Amsterdam on April 19, 1982, and his mother died on March 25, 1997. She was 99 and had been resident of a nursing home for three years. Four months later, Bowman himself died in Los Angeles on July 21, 1997. He was 69. He left his wife of 12 years, Nancy (Watson) Bowman. He was also survived by a son, two daughters, a stepson and a stepdaughter. He is buried in a family plot with his mother and father at Hagaman Mills Cemetery in Amsterdam, New York.

Notes

1 Jeff Moshier, Playing Square, Evening Independent

(St. Petersburg, Florida), June 13, 1944, 12.

2 Sam Chase, Clubhouse Interviews, Billboard, May 26, 1951, 8.

3 Sam Chase, Bowman, Giant Cast-Off, Hurls No-Hitter on Coast, New York Times, July 5, 1952.

4 Sam Chase, Rookie Halts Durocher’s Effort to Change Windup, The Sporting News, March 15, 1950.

5 Sam Chase, Bowman Seeks Diploma on Installment Basis, Schenectady (New York) Gazette, January 30, 1952.

6 Ken Smith, Giants Urged to Remember Their Comeback Late in ’50, The Sporting News, March 28, 1951, 23.

7 John Drebinger, Phils Win, 6 to 4, Facing 6 Hurlers, New York Times, April 25, 1951.

8 Roscoe McGowen, Tenth Loss in a Row, New York Times, April 29, 1951.

9 Sam Schnitzer, Stars and Oaks Tangle in Mass Ruckus When Batter and Hurler Swap Punches, The Sporting News, September 24, 1952.

Bowman%20Roger%204297-68HTb_FL_NBL.tif

Roger Bowman

Al Corwin

By James Forr

Few jobs can match the

excitement, adulation, and income that come with a spot on a major-league roster. Some old ballplayers inevitably seal themselves in amber, forever living vicariously through the men they used to be. The New York Giants’ Al Corwin was different. For him the game was more paycheck than passion, as one author put it.¹ When it was done, it was done. Although Corwin’s pitching rėsumė was admirable by any measure, he moved on without regret and forged a career in business that far exceeded any heights he had achieved on the diamond.

Elmer Nathan Al Corwin, Jr. was born on December 3, 1926, in Newburgh, New York, a prospering industrial town about 60 miles up the Hudson River from New York City. He came from a line of successful small-town entrepreneurs; his grandfather operated a grocery store, while his father, Elmer Sr., founded a bus line shortly after World War I in the nearby town of Modena. Later his father owned a silk mill and a small hotel and, like many leading citizens of his day, was involved in fraternal organizations like the Odd Fellows, the Masons, and the Elks.

Al’s mother, Sarah, attended a business college and worked as a stenographer for a time. According to his older sister, Harriet Conklin, their mother was exceptionally patient and easygoing. I don’t think we were ever really punished, she said.² Elmer and Sarah divorced when their son was 10. Although the trauma of a divorce can leave lasting scars on a child, Corwin apparently weathered it as well as could be expected. He had a large network of aunts and uncles nearby, and they provided critical emotional support.

Al was one of those special kids who seemed to excel at anything he did. His sister described him as the marbles champion of Newburgh.³ He also won a local speed-skating title and played four sports in high school. In his senior year at Wallkill High in Modena, Junior Corwin, as the local newspaper dubbed him, pitched his club to the North Orange Southern Ulster League championship.⁴

Upon graduation in 1944, Corwin, eager to join the war effort, signed up for the Naval Air Corps. Over the next 26 months, while stationed in San Diego and Panama, he flew reconnaissance missions on a seaplane, scouring the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico for enemy submarines lurking off the coast. After mustering out of the Navy in 1946 he remained out west and attended Pasadena City College (Jackie Robinson’s alma mater) on the GI Bill while toiling in a grocery store to pay the bills.

Although he was a good high-school pitcher, Corwin gave little thought to playing professionally. When the college’s baseball coach asked him to go out for the team in the spring, he showed up, twirled three no-hit innings in an exhibition game, and then walked away. I was working from 8 to 4, attending night school, and only had an hour and a half daily to myself, Corwin told a sportswriter. He even offered to find me some little job that’d pay my expenses, but I saw nothing in baseball for me and turned him down.⁵

Still, the game wouldn’t let him go that easily. In October Corwin’s roommate told him about a tryout camp the New York Giants were running just down the road in Monrovia, California. On a whim, he gave it a shot. Even though he had grown three inches in the service, he still wasn’t much to look at — a spindly 6-feet-1 and 160 pounds. But he threw hard and he threw strikes, and scout Mickey Schrader saw enough potential to sign him to a contract for the 1948 season.

Elmer Sr., ever the businessman, was appalled. My father said, ‘Don’t you read the papers? Do you mean to say you signed up without a bonus?’ It had all happened so fast I hadn’t thought about money.⁶

The 21-year-old side-arming right-hander began his professional career in the Class-C Sunset League at Reno (where he drove the team bus for an extra $25 a month). On the surface, he enjoyed a brilliant year, racking up a league-leading 26 wins against just nine losses with an ERA of 3.54, third-best in the circuit. Home plate was a moving target sometimes; he walked an average of five men per nine innings pitched. But his 251 strikeouts in 280 innings suggest that when he got the ball over, he was tough to beat.

Class-C baseball, though, was supposed to be a training ground; the Reno ballclub let Corwin get by on raw ability. No one really taught me much, he said. Tommy Lloyd, the manager … told me to concentrate on controlling my fastball.⁷ That wasn’t bad advice as far as it went; however, what Corwin also needed was a secondary pitch, something he could mix in with his heater. He didn’t pick that up at Reno. In fact, he really never developed a changeup or breaking ball that he could rely on.

Nevertheless, Corwin proceeded stepwise through the Giants’ chain, ascending to Class-B Trenton in 1949 (15-11 with a 3.03 ERA) and then to Class-A Jacksonville, where he got smacked around a bit in 1950 (9-18 with a 4.57 ERA). Despite those ugly numbers, the Giants promoted Corwin to Ottawa of the International League, where he opened 1951 in the bullpen. He continued to struggle until manager Hugh Poland moved him into the rotation in June.

It wasn’t long before the parent club, in second place but well behind Brooklyn, found itself desperate for a jump-start and in search of a fresh arm. After an exhibition game in Ottawa in July, manager Leo Durocher asked his pitching coach, Frank Shellenback, to stay behind for a few days and see if anyone caught his eye.

Shellenback observed Corwin during a start against the Brooklyn Dodgers’ International League club, the Montreal Royals. It was the first time he had seen Corwin throw, but the young man passed all the tests. The first thing I liked about him was his fastball. It was alive, Shellenback raved. Then I liked the way he fought back when he was hit. … You can learn more about a pitcher when he is in a jam than you can when everything is breaking right for him.⁸ When the two men spoke after the game, Corwin further impressed the old coach with his poise and intelligence. Shellenback reported back that he had found his man.

The recommendation raised some eyebrows among the Giants brass. Although he sported an outstanding 2.47 ERA, Corwin’s record was just 2-4; the safer choice would have been Alex Konikowski, who was pitching well and had already appeared in 22 games for New York in 1948. However, Shellenback was convinced that Corwin could get through the league a couple of times before opposing hitters adjusted to his side-arm delivery. On July 18 Poland pulled the 24-year-old Corwin aside and informed him that he had gotten the call.

Corwin hastily crammed his glove, jockstrap, shoes, and underwear into a duffel bag, left his ’47 Pontiac with a teammate, and hustled to the airport. A thunderstorm forced his plane to touch down in Albany at 1:00 A.M., so he didn’t arrive at LaGuardia Airport until late the next morning. When he did, he discovered that the airline had lost his bag.

Exhausted, Corwin dragged himself into a cab for a short ride across the rain-slicked Triborough Bridge to the Polo Grounds, where clubhouse man Eddie Logan awaited. The next hassle was finding a uniform that fit; Corwin’s waist was 31 inches — even the smallest thing on Logan’s rack billowed like a tent. With that day’s scheduled doubleheader washed out, Logan took time to introduce the newest Giant to his teammates and manager. Corwin long remembered his first whiff of Durocher’s Fabergė cologne — the heady scent that, in his mind, forever symbolized New York and the big time.

As it happened, that also was the day when Durocher first revealed to the club that an electrician had rigged up a primitive device that would enable the Giants to steal the opposing catcher’s signs and then relay them to the hitters. Yet despite this frenzied, bizarre introduction to the major leagues, Corwin was unfazed. He just kind of rolled with it, said Joshua Prager, who interviewed Corwin nine times while researching his book, The Echoing Green. The fact that Durocher was this incredibly foul-mouthed guy, he got a kick out of it. Oh, well, here we are in Gotham and they steal signs here? That’s interesting. My jersey doesn’t quite fit me? Well, that’s OK.⁹

Durocher gave Corwin the ball on July 25 in Pittsburgh. He blanked the Pirates on three hits through six innings in his debut before hitting the wall in the seventh. I wasn’t nervous but I got tired. As fatigue set in, he elevated his pitches. After back-to-back singles to lead off the seventh, Joe Garagiola homered to tie the game, and one batter later Corwin was gone. Two starts later, on August 1, he was able to finish the job, scattering seven hits in a 2-0 shutout of the Cubs and leaving Chicago manager Phil Cavarretta impressed. He’s faster than [Sal] Maglie.¹⁰

Corwin made five starts and four relief appearances during that fateful August and was effective nearly every time out. He went 5-0 with one save and a 2.27 ERA that month, including a pair of complete-game victories over the Cubs and one over the Phillies. He played a huge role in New York’s 16-game winning streak, which slashed the Dodgers’ lead from 13 games down to five in the span of just two weeks.

Durocher called Corwin the coolest kid I’ve ever seen come up,¹¹ and predicted, This kid is going to be a great pitcher. Nothing bothers him.¹² An unnamed teammate suggested that the youngster’s self-assurance had rubbed off on the entire club, saying, He was the only one attending to his business without any extra worries. Everyone has become like Al Corwin and loosened up.¹³ In reality, Corwin was no less jittery and emotional than any other rookie in his spot would have been; he just concealed it better than most. [I am] so damn happy about winning up here, he exclaimed to a reporter in a moment of candor. Excited inside, you know what I mean?¹⁴

Corwin pitched poorly in a 6-3 loss to the Phillies on September 3, his only defeat of the season. From that point on, Durocher used him sparingly, instead leaning heavily on his core of three veteran starters — Maglie, Larry Jansen, and Jim Hearn — as New York finally caught Brooklyn on the next-to-last day of the regular season and then beat them in a best-of-three playoff on Bobby Thomson’s historic home run.

Corwin’s only appearance in the Giants’ six-game World Series loss to the New York Yankees came in mopup duty in Game Five. He inherited a bases-loaded, one-out mess in the seventh inning with his club down 10-1. After unleashing a wild pitch and surrendering a two-run double to Joe DiMaggio, he settled down to pitch a 1-2-3 eighth.

The offseason was an eventful and life-changing one for Corwin. His father had been hospitalized with stomach ulcers throughout the World Series and died on October 18 as a result of complications from surgery. A much happier day came shortly thereafter, when he met a woman named Patricia McMahon at the Hotel Newburgh. That was where she and her mother had lunch every Wednesday. She had no idea that Corwin was a ballplayer but her father, a die-hard Dodgers fan, knew the name all too well and was eager to meet the young man. Al and Pat soon were engaged, and were married January 25, 1953, in Newburgh.

Corwin arrived at spring training in Phoenix in 1952 determined to master a curveball, but opposing batters teed off on him. The Giants optioned him to Triple-A Minneapolis, where his struggles continued. The right-field fence at the Millers’ Nicollet Park loomed just 279 feet from home plate, and he let that get into his head. Corwin tried to get the batters to hit away from the wall and found himself changing his whole style of pitching, according to Giants scout Tom Sheehan. The kid got so fouled up that he lost his control, walked a lot of people, and was frequently in trouble.¹⁵

Corwin’s record was just 8-11 but he did lead the American Association in strikeouts into August. That was sufficient to earn a recall to New York to take some of the bullpen load off an overburdened Hoyt Wilhelm. Corwin again pitched extremely well in a tense pennant race — 6-1 with a pair of saves and a 2.66 ERA in 21 games, including seven starts — although this time the Giants couldn’t quite catch the Dodgers.

That good work was not good enough for Durocher, though, who, in the words of Joe King of the New York World-Telegram, treats Corwin as a precocious child who has not quite lived up to papa’s expectations.¹⁶ Durocher always had his favorites. Corwin was not one of them, which perhaps is not surprising. The men had as much in common as a sewing machine and a tomato — Corwin was composed and thoughtful; Durocher, a high-living, libidinous hustler. The skipper wasn’t shy with his criticism. [W]hen I farmed him down early this year, I told him to develop another pitch and he didn’t do that. He’d be twice as good with a surprise pitch to throw in with that curve and fastball.¹⁷ Moreover, he was constantly harping on the slender Corwin’s perceived lack of stamina. Even when he relieves he needs two days’ rest — an odd remark coming from the man who sent Corwin to the hill six times in seven days following his recall in 1952.¹⁸

Corwin conceded the point about his repertoire. I know my shortcomings as a pitcher, he offered to a reporter in the offseason. I’ve only begun to learn this trade. I’m chiefly a thrower now. Perhaps in the majors I have won because there’s been great fielding behind me and good catching back of the plate.¹⁹

Corwin was with the Giants throughout all of 1953, his only full season in the major leagues. He worked mostly out of the bullpen but, despite a 6-4 record, was not terribly effective. His 4.98 ERA was well above the league average and he walked more people than he struck out. The season did yield one moment that Corwin would crow about for years — a home run he hit against Brooklyn, the second of back-to-back-to-back round-trippers off the Dodgers’ Russ Meyer. (Corwin was a fine athlete. He handled the bat well, especially in the minors, and Durocher frequently employed him as a pinch-runner.)

It was around this time that Corwin’s shoulder began to go bad. No papers reported my arm troubles and in those days, no one complained, he said. We just kept pitching.²⁰ He again split the 1954 and ’55 seasons between Minneapolis, where he