“BIRTH OF A BLOOD FEUD” and “FULLY-COCKED ADCOCK”

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860. NEW YORK GIANTS VS BROOKLYN BRIDEGROOMS

WORLD SERIES

GAME NINE

NEW POLO GROUNDS (AKA POLO GROUNDS II)

OCTOBER 29, 1889

QUALITY OF PLAY—6.34

DRAMA—7.62

STAR POWER—6.88

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—6.95

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.95

LOCAL IMPACT—7.41

TOTAL: 43.15

“BIRTH OF A BLOOD FEUD”

One of, if not the, most important rivalries in NYC sports history was the hardball hatred between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. As it happens, the feuding began even before the Brooklynites were called the “Dodgers.” Back in the 19th Century, the Giants of Manhattan and the National League tangled with the Bridegrooms of Brooklyn and the American Association (the forerunner to the American League) for the 1889 World Series title.

The Giants (nee the “Gothams”) called the original Polo Grounds, at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue, just north of the top end of Central Park, their home. Polo had indeed been occasionally played at the site, but baseball became its main focus after pro ball came to Manhattan in 1880. In 1888, the City decided to extend 111th Street, right through the heart of the grandstand where paying customers watched the Giants win the 1888 World Series. That left Giants owner John B. Day seeking a new home for the 1889 season.

The 1889 Giants started in Jersey City, future home of their AAA affiliate, and after just two games moved to Staten Island. At last, on June 21, a new ballpark on 155th Street and Eighth Avenue in Harlem, just beneath the viaduct and strip of land known as Coogan’s Bluff, was ready for ball. Day knew that fans associated the name “Polo Grounds” with Giants baseball, so he kept that moniker for the new park, even though it was considerably north of the original. It was known as “New Polo Grounds” or Polo Grounds II (Polo Grounds III was a refurbished version of this same park that opened a couple of years later, and the fourth installment, the famous version that hosted the Giants until 1957, came after a devastating fire burned PG3 to the ground in 1911). Despite all the nomadic movement, the Giants won a second straight N.L. flag, besting the Boston Beaneaters on the season’s final day. 

Meanwhile, baseball had been played in Brooklyn for some time. The Bridegrooms superseded the Grays and the Atlantics, and preceded the Grooms, the Superbas, the Robins, and of course, the Dodgers. In 1889 the Bridegrooms, so named because several of their players had gotten engaged or married before the 1888 season, played in Park Slope, the now-boojie portion of the borough, at a field called Washington Park, at Third Street and Fourth Avenue (then, as now, the Park Slope area is a confusing grid of street numbers). 

In mid-1889, a fire burned large portions of the grandstand, and forced a mid-season rebuild, though games continued apace. Fortunately, the team’s equipment and uniforms were stored in a nearby facility called the Gowanus House (known today as the Old Stone House), a spot once used as a temporary headquarters by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War, hence the name of the park. The stone building preserved the gear, and the Bridegrooms went on to capture the American Association flag by three games over the St. Louis Browns. 

That September a new entity called the “Players League” was formed, and top hurlers and batsmen on both the Giants and Bridegrooms, along with all other teams, jumped or threatened to jump for more money to the new league. This cast a shadow over the end of the campaign, and while the teams celebrated their respective pennants, there was no guarantee a World Series between the N.L. and AA would be played. At last, a best-of-11 series was agreed upon, and for the first time, Brooklyn and New York tangled on the ballfields for New York baseball supremacy. The subway system was still some 15 years in the future, so consider this the first “Ferry Series.”

On Friday, October 18, 1889, Brooklyn took the opener, a 12-10 slugfest in Manhattan. After the top of the seventh inning, a fan stood up, yelled “everyone take a stretch for luck!” and thus was born the seventh-inning stretch. A Brooklyn boy named Bob Ferguson was the home plate umpire, and the Giants felt aggrieved by several bad calls in the game. They got revenge before an enormous (for the time) throng of 16,100 in Brooklyn, winning Game Two to even the series. 

Brooklyn took the next two games, both tight affairs called for darkness after the Bridegrooms stalled to preserve their leads. The baseball gods frowned upon this, however, and the Giants took control of the series from there. They reeled off four straight, all but one by blowout, to take a commanding 5-3 lead. The first to six victories would claim the crown, and New York was one win from unprecedented consecutive championships. 

The ninth game was played on a cool and blustery fall afternoon, Tuesday, October 29, 1889 in Manhattan. Brooklyn took an early 2-1 lead, but “this didn’t disturb the Giants,” according to the Times. “They kept plodding along until an opportunity presented itself.” Said opportunity came in the last of the sixth inning. New York shortstop John Montgomery Ward, aka “Monte,” one of the signal figures in 19th century baseball and head of the players union that would turn the sport on its ear immediately upon conclusion of this game, led off the sixth inning with a single and stole second. He went to third on a grounder, and scored on a sacrifice fly. The manufactured run tied the game at two. 

In the seventh, with the home crowd screaming after stretching, the Giants had a runner, Mike Slattery, at second with two outs. Catcher Buck Ewing was at the plate, but it was the opposing catcher, Brooklyn’s Doc Bushong, who was the key element of the next moment. Bridegrooms pitcher Adonis Terry, one of the game’s first great hurlers, fanned Ewing with a wicked breaking pitch that was his specialty (and no doubt held some excess spit or dirt). Bushong muffed it, however, and the ball got away, allowing Ewing to reach and Slattery to dash around to score the go-ahead run. It was an early preview of Brooklyn’s “dropped third strike" heartbreak from 1941, when Mickey Owen couldn’t handle a Hugh Casey curve/spitter and the Dodgers lost the World Series as a result. 

Now armed with the lead, Giants pitcher Hank O’Day (who would go on to play an extremely important role in NYC baseball history as the umpire behind the plate in 1908 during the infamous Merkle’s Boner incident) shut down the Bridegrooms. He only allowed four hits in the game, just two after the first inning. In the ninth, the leadoff man, Germany Smith, reached on an error, but a line drive off Bushong’s bat turned into a double play. Darby O’Brien walked, but as would happen to Babe Ruth just across the Harlem River 38 years hence, O’Brien was caught stealing to end the World Series. 

The Giants were repeat champs, the first time that had happened in the relatively short history of the game. 

AFTERMATH:

The Players League came and went, but the rivalry between Brooklyn and New York lasted for more than a half century, encompassing many moments that will appear on this list. The Giants and Dodgers of course proceeded to take their animus west, where it continues to this day, although it never will truly reach the fever pitch it attained when the two teams were just a subway (or ferry) ride apart. 

WHAT THEY SAID:

“New Yorkers ought to feel proud of their baseball nine. The Giants have once more proved their supremacy in diamond field matters and again claim the distinction of being the world’s champion. It is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a baseball club, and was won yesterday when the New Yorks finished the series with the Brooklyns.”

—The New York Times (unbylined)

FURTHER READING:

Nineteenth Century Stars edited by Robert L. Tiemann and Mark Rucker

859. BROOKLYN DODGERS VS MILWAUKEE BRAVES

JULY 31, 1954

EBBETS FIELD

QUALITY OF PLAY—7.12

DRAMA—7.66

STAR POWER—6.58

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.04

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—9.11

LOCAL IMPACT—5.66

TOTAL: 43.16

“FULLY-COCKED ADCOCK”

Amid the pantheon of great sluggers, a select few are renowned for the sheer colossal heft of their home runs. The Babe, of course, and Mickey Mantle, Frank Howard, Reggie Jackson, right up to Aaron Judge. One long ball hitter whom time has mostly forgotten is Joe Adcock, former first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, Milwaukee Braves and, briefly, the L.A. Angels. Big Joe had long arms and a tight stance from the right-hand batter’s box, looking at all times to yank outside pitches down the line. He was the first batter to hit one over the 83-foot high fence onto the left-center roof at Ebbets Field; the first to clear the center field bleachers fence at the Polo Grounds, some 483 feet away from home; and the first righty to smash one over the 64-foot high scoreboard in right-center at Philadelphia’s Connie Mack Stadium. 

Adcock grew up in Coushetta, Louisiana, a town in the northwest corner where baseball held little prominence. “There was no town team, not even a diamond,” Adcock recalled. Basketball was king in Coushetta, which suited the 6-4, 210-pound Adcock just fine. He got a scholarship to LSU, where the baseball coach saw him and invited him to try out. “I was all hit and no field,” Joe said, as he had scarcely ever worn a glove and never worn a baseball uniform before. 

But he was a quick study at the plate, where he smashed balls all over the south until getting called up to the bigs in 1950 with the Reds. Bad knees, in part due to playing outfield at Crosley Field in Cincy, where a steep embankment in front of the left field fence played havoc with fielders, forced a move to first base, and then a 1953 trade to the Boston Braves, the N.L. franchise in Beantown.

Adcock had hardly unpacked his bags when the Braves up and moved to Milwaukee. In ’53 he moved to first base and slugged 18 dingers, the first coming at the Polo Grounds, a mammoth 475-foot blast that showed what Adcock was capable of. He hit 18 homers with 80 RBI and played a strong first base, his “orangutan arms” allowing him to reach all manner of wayward throws in addition to outside fastballs.

In 1954 Joe upped his overall hitting game, stroking for a .308 average with 23 homers and 87 RBI. His breakthrough game came on a trip to Brooklyn for a game with the Dodgers.

The Dodgers pitching staff held Adcock, whom they considered a hick galoot with a weirdo stance, in low regard, although he had hit well against Brooklyn, especially in Ebbets Field, often a paradise for batsmen. He’d already slugged four homers in six games at Ebbets when the Braves took the field on a steamy Saturday afternoon, July 31, 1954. “Just let ‘em keep getting on me, if that’s what it does,” Adcock said when asked about the insults from the Brooklyns. The Milwaukee-Brooklyn rivalry would spark hot during the late-50s, and this midsummer series would be an inciting point. 

During Friday’s game, won by the Braves 9-3, Adcock had homered but also broken his bat. In those days the resupply from Louisville wasn’t so speedy, so Adcock was forced to borrow some lumber from catcher Charley White. “It was the heaviest bat on the team,” Joe said. “I could hardly lift it.”

Don Newcombe faced Lew Burdette (who replaced injury-hit Jim Wilson after the first inning) in what should have been a heavyweight pitching matchup, but the balls were flying out of Flatbush that day. Adcock came up in the second inning of a 1-1 game and bashed a Newk fastball over the left field fence. The Braves led 5-1 by the time he came up again in the next inning, when he smoked a double to left and scored to make it 6-1. 

By the fifth Brooklyn was already on its fourth pitcher, Erv Palica, and he threw Adcock a slider that Joe maimed for a titanic three-run shot off the left-field girder to make it 9-1. In the seventh, a Pete Wojey curveball disappeared over the fence, courtesy of Adcock. He now had three homers, the Braves led 12-2, and the few remaining from the 17,263 who entered Ebbets Field were hoping to see a chance at history. 

Only six major leaguers, and just four in the modern era beginning in 1903, had hit four home runs in a single game. Gil Hodges, playing first base for Brooklyn that afternoon, had done it four years earlier at Ebbets Field. Now Adcock had a shot at joining that elite group. 

As if to prime the pump, Hodges homered in the bottom of the 8th, part of a modest rally that closed the score to 12-6. Adcock led off the top of the ninth, facing yet another hurler, Johnny Podres. Another fastball, and another moon shot, this one well over the left field fence. Four in one game!

The contest at last ended with a 15-7 Braves win that saw ten homers and 35 hits between the teams. Adcock had set a new major league mark with 18 total bases (four homers and a double) to go with five runs and seven RBI.

AFTERMATH:

The next day, Brooklyn wasn’t laughing any more. In the fourth inning, Dodgers pitcher Clem Labine beaned Adcock in the head. Fortunately, Adcock was one of the few players who wore a batting helmet, and the “distinct thud” of horsehide ricocheting off hard plastic was heard across Ebbets Field. Many writers noted the helmet may have saved Joe’s life. “When they throw at me high and tight, I can duck,” Adcock said. “But when they throw behind your head they mean business.” Milwaukee returned to Brooklyn in September, and Adcock hit yet another homer, giving him nine at Ebbets Field in 1954. Newcombe had had enough. In Joe’s first at bat the next day, he broke Adcock’s thumb with another beanball, ending his season. Adcock would struggle with injuries throughout his career, but still clubbed 336 home runs across 17 seasons. He managed the Indians for a single (horrid) season in 1967, then retired to Coushetta, where Adcock died in 1999. 

In 2002 Shawn Green broke Adcock’s total base record with 19 (four homers, a single and a double). Ironically enough, that was another Dodgers vs Milwaukee encounter, with Green playing for the (now) L.A. Dodgers against the Milwaukee (now) Brewers. 

WHAT THEY SAID:

“Strange thing, but they weren’t telling any new Joe Adcock jokes in the Brook dressing room yesterday, following their 15-7 schalumping by the smoldering Braves. Their favorite comic character, who has such a ridiculous batting style he can’t possibly be much of a hitter—so they say—hammered a homer in the second stanza, another in the fifth, another in the seventh, and a fourth in the final frame. Dig that punch line.”

—Dick Young, New York Daily News

FURTHER READING:

SABR BioProject—Joe Adcock by Gregory H. Wolf

VIDEO:

https://www.mlb.com/news/a-look-at-four-home-run-games-in-mlb-history-c234977182