The Day Podres Came Back

What happened when one of the biggest heroes in Brooklyn Dodgers history came back to New York in 1962? A whole lot of emotional turmoil.

Welcome back! This is running jointly here and in the IBWAA newsletter, and it’s not exactly what I normally do — but it’s a great baseball story nonetheless. Enjoy!

How do you think New York baseball fans reacted when Johnny Podres came back to New York? Your answer is probably “it depends.” Of course it does. It depends on what happened when Johnny Podres came back to New York. On how the Mets were doing, how long the Dodgers had been gone, and how much fans had accepted it.

Here’s the thing about Johnny Podres: behind Jackie Robinson, he’s arguably the second-most important Brooklyn Dodger of all time. For all the Duke Sniders and Roy Campanellas and Pee Wee Reeses, Podres threw a complete-game shutout to win the Dodgers their first and only World Series in Brooklyn, after five losses in the series to the Yankees in the previous decade and a half. Without Johnny Podres, the history of the Brooklyn Dodgers looks radically different.

Two years after Podres threw his World Series gem, the Dodgers moved west. Podres didn’t pitch in New York again for five years, until May 30th, 1962, the day the Dodgers came back. That seven-year gap seems like a long time to be gone, but in fact, it’s almost shockingly short. Imagine if Madison Bumgarner put on his heroic pitching performance for the Giants during the 2014 World Series…then, in 2021, returned to San Francisco as a member of the New York Giants, playing against a new San Francisco team founded that year.

Can you imagine the emotions? Can you imagine how New York baseball fans felt on May 30th, 1962 — in the second game of a doubleheader, to be exact — when Johnny Podres (Brooklyn Dodger hero) took the mound at The Polo Grounds (former home of the New York Giants) to pitch against the New York Mets, featuring first baseman Gil Hodges (Brooklyn Dodger hero), on the day the Dodgers played in New York for the first time since they left Ebbets Field, the year before Duke Snider (Brooklyn Dodger hero) joined the Mets?

AP Photo

“The years rolled back and this was as hot as it used to be when the Dodgers came to the Polo Grounds,” wrote Red Smith in the New York Herald-Tribune. “The subway exits were clogged and people oozed out of them like wet cement. In the echoing caverns below the street a ceaseless, unintelligible babble ricocheted off the walls, every voice pitched at the same level, a high tone of excitement just short of shrillness.”

The fans, he wrote, were four deep behind the seats, filling the stadium with the largest crowd it had seen in 20 years.

“Were they Brooklyn fans drawn by some atavistic sentiment for the club Walter O’Malley took away from them?” Smith asked. “They were not. They were Mets fans.”

Before the first game of the doubleheader started, Ralph Kiner introduced the visiting Dodgers. Some, including Podres, Smith noted, drew applause. Duke Snider got a “howling ovation.”

The Mets got blown out 13-6 in game one. Game two, though, was where the money was. Seven years before, Podres’ complete-game shutout had sent Brooklyn into the biggest party it had ever seen. Second-biggest, actually, behind the end of World War II. Now he was taking the mound in New York again.

Podres’ first two innings were scoreless. In the third, leading 3-0, Felix Mantilla singled with one out. Up came Gil Hodges. Seven years before, Podres had induced a grounder. Pee Wee Reese had fielded it and thrown. Hodges had caught the throw. The Dodgers were World Champions.

Now Hodges was batting. And he hit the first pitch Podres threw over the fence.

Jim Hickman added a home run later in the inning to tie the game. The game was still tied 3-3 in the fifth. Hodges came up with two outs, with Podres still on the mound for the Dodgers. Podres threw two pitches. The first was a strike. Hodges hit the second over the left field fence.

Because this was the 1962 Mets, of course, they gave up their lead, and the game ended with a man on second and Hodges on deck. But the result…who cares? One day in 1962, one of the biggest heroes in Brooklyn Dodger history returned to New York to pitch where the New York Giants played for decades, against the team that replaced them both. One of the other biggest heroes in Brooklyn Dodger history, who caught the last out of the World Series complete game shutout that the other one pitched, came up to bat for the Mets, and out of the blue, mashed two home runs, as Duke Snider, one of the other biggest heroes in Brooklyn Dodger history, who would play for the Mets the next season, watched from the Dodger dugout. 59 years later, Gil Hodges was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

My God — isn’t baseball beautiful?