Spring 2020 Premium Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/20/2020
Presented is a Brooklyn Dodgers versus New York Giants game program from October 3, 1951, when the Giants won the National League pennant thanks in no small part to Bobby Thompson’s historic “Shot heard ‘round the world”. Thomson's dramatic three-run homer came in the ninth inning of the decisive third game of a three-game playoff for the pennant in which the Giants trailed, 4–1. The game, which was the first ever televised nationally, was seen by millions of viewers across America and heard on radio by millions more, including thousands of American servicemen stationed in Korea, listening on Armed Forces Radio. The classic drama of snatching victory from defeat to secure a pennant was intensified by the epic cross-town rivalry between the Giants and Dodgers, and by a remarkable string of victories in the last weeks of the regular season by the Giants, who won 37 of their last 44 games to catch the first-place Dodgers and force a playoff series to decide the NL champion. The 7 x 10-inch, 24-page white paper program book is printed in red and blue. The program from the Polo Grounds, the home of the 1951 New York Giants, features a completed scorecard in gray graphite pencil with the notation “October 3, 1951 Giants win Pennant in National League” in script. The centerspread scorecard is separated from the program book, but there are no other visible defects, tears or folds.