![]() As word of the sign-stealing scam leaked for years, Thomson said he hoped Branca would take some heart from it. The home run turned Thomson – known as “The Flying Scotsman” – into an American icon but made a goat-for-the-ages of Branca. The rest is history: Thomson lined that pitch into the lower deck of the Polo Grounds’ short porch down the left-field line at 3:58 p.m., sending Giants play-by-play man Russ Hodges into his legendary “The Giants win the pennant!” frenzy on WMCA. Thomson, 78, has always said, though, he never got any advance word that Brooklyn reliever Ralph Branca was about to pipe him a high fastball on that historic day. “It’s out in the open,” Thomson said yesterday, coming clean on the grand sign-stealing scheme. It was Franks, armed with a military field scope, who allegedly ran the Giants’ sign-stealing operation from the team clubhouse in center field of the old Polo Grounds.įranks relayed the stolen signs using a buzzer system between the clubhouse and nearby bullpen to backup catcher Sal Yvars who then tipped off Giant hitters. I don’t know anything about our club (doing that),” smiled and winked 88-year-old Herman Franks, a coach on that famous team and the eagle eye who engineered one of the greatest scams in baseball history. Since the story broke, denials and evasiveness from the 1951 Giants have been replaced by cheerful pride. ![]() The mystique of the Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff had been taking a beating in the past year, thanks to a bombshell revelation in The Wall Street Journal that fleshed out decades of rumors that the Giants used an elaborate scheme to steal catchers’ signs. The San Francisco Giants had planned to honor their New York ancestors last year (to mark the 50-year anniversary) but called it off after the Sept. Tied after the regular season, the Giants and Dodgers split two playoff games before Thomson won it on Oct. Thomson’s blast capped a furious rally by the Giants, who had trailed the Dodgers by 13½ games in the NL race on Aug. The current day San Francisco Giants paid tribute to their Big Apple roots yesterday and Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard ‘Round the World – a three-run homer that gave the Giants a miraculous, pennant-clinching victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers. With little defensiveness or remorse, those National League pennant winners – two generations removed from the bitterness of that historic race – can laugh at their remarkable achievement of baseball heroism and thievery. ![]() SAN FRANCISCO -In a conspiracy that’s been unraveling for five decades, members of the 1951 New York Giants are past any confessions or apologies.
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