History may be on Giants’ side
SF set for winner-take-all showdown against LA Dodgers
LOS ANGELES » The first modernera playoff matchup between the Giants and Dodgers seemed destined to come down to a winner-take-all game.
A 107-win Giants club won the National League West by the narrowest of margins over a 106-win Dodgers club in large part because it won the season series between the clubs 10to-9, so of course their NLDS showdown will come down to one game.
“This is what baseball wants,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday. “I think, as I understand, all the series are done and so we’re going to be the only show in town. So if you have a pulse or you’re a sports fan, you better be watching Dodgers-Giants.”
Thursday’s matchup at Oracle Park will be billed as the biggest in the history of the rivalry, but depending on your viewpoint, that’s not necessarily the case.
In 1951 and 1962, the Giants and Dodgers met in best-of-three tiebreaker series at the end of the regular season to determine which club would represent the National League in the World Series.
Those series were officially recorded as regular season games, but they came with the same type of pressure and intensity San Francisco and Los Angeles have brought to this year’s postseason matchup.
And if history repeats itself, Giants fans will leave Oracle Park late Thursday evening with the memory of a lifetime.
In 1951, the New York Giants took a 1-0 lead in the tiebreaker with a 3-1
victory over Ralph Branca and the Brooklyn Dodgers before Jackie Robinson’s club bounced back with a 10-0 blowout win in Game 2.
The winner-take-all Game 3 was played at the Polo Grounds and the way it ended lives on in baseball lore 70 years later. With the Giants trailing 4-1 entering the bottom of the ninth inning, Whitey Lockman hit an RBI double off Dodgers starter Don Newcombe before Brooklyn called on reliever Ralph Branca to finish the job against third baseman Bobby Thomson.
The rest is known as the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”
Thomson’s three-run walk-off home run sent the Polo Grounds into a frenzy as his blast carried the Giants to a 1951 World Series that ultimately ended with a loss to the New York Yankees. The homer remains one of the most iconic in major league history, but it’s not the only famous ninth-inning comeback in the rivalry’s winner-take-all games.
After the clubs moved west to California in 1958, a pair of 101-win teams again met at the end of the regular season in a best-of-three tiebreaker that unfolded in incredibly similar fashion. The Giants again won Game 1, but this time they were the team with a convincing blowout win while the Dodgers took Game 2 in a nail-biter.
The Dodgers entered the ninth inning of Game 3 in Los Angeles with a 4-2 lead, but reliever Ed Roebuck gave up an RBI single to Willie Mays before Orlando Cepeda hit a game-tying sacrifice fly against the Dodgers’ next reliever, Stan Williams.
With the game tied at 4-4, catcher Ed Bailey was intentionally walked to load the bases before Jim Davenport drew a bases loaded walk that gave San Francisco the lead.
An error led to another run and Giants reliever Billy Pierce ultimately closed out a dramatic, pennant-clinching 6-4 victory with a 1-2-3 ninth inning.
It’s been nearly 60 years since the Giants and Dodgers met in a matchup with comparable stakes, but the time has arrived and the stage is set for Oracle Park on Thursday evening.
If Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen enters the game in the bottom of the ninth inning with a lead, it won’t necessarily mean the Giants’ dream season will come to an end. As the franchise has proved twice in the past and twice this season against Jansen, a ninth-inning comeback is entirely possible.
Given how the 2021 season has unfolded, who’s to say it can’t happen again?