Giants outfielder Willie Mays collected his first major league hit on May 28, 1951. Mays had no hits in his first twelve at-bats in the major leagues, but he hit a home run off Warren Spahn over the left-field roof of the Polo Grounds in his thirteenth plate appearance. However, the Giants would lose to the Braves, 4-1.
On Opening Day, April 15, 1909, Giants starter Red Ames held the Brooklyn Superbas hitless for nine innings. However, as neither the Giants nor the Superbas had scored, extra innings were required. Ames allowed a hit in the 10th inning, when second baseman Whitey Alpermann doubled to left-center. Ames then went on to allow three runs in the 13th inning as the Giants lost, 3–0.
William Henry O’Kelleher Jr. (he would later Americanize the name to Keeler) was born in Brooklyn, New York on March 3, 1872. His father, William O’Kelleher Sr., worked as a trolley switch man. Willie Keeler began playing baseball at a young age, and was so good that he was named captain of his high school team as a freshman. His high school career was short-lived, however, as he quit school the following year and went on to play semiprofessional baseball in the New York City area.
After a couple of seasons with the Plainfield Crescent Cities of the Central New Jersey League, Keeler joined the minor league team in Binghamton, New York. He was called up to the New York Giants at the end of the season at the age of 20 years old. Standing only 5-foot-4 and weighing a mere 140 pounds, Keeler was one of the smallest players ever in major league baseball, earning him the nickname “Wee Willie.” Despite his stature, Keeler would establish himself as one of the greatest contact hitters of all time, being notoriously difficult to strike out. His motto at the plate was, “Keep your eye on the ball and hit ‘em where they ain’t.”
Keeler compiled a .341 career batting average, hitting over .300 sixteen times in nineteen seasons, and he hit over .400 once. His best season came in 1897 with the Orioles, when he hit .424 and led the National League with 239 hits in only 129 games. Keeler also started the season with a 44-game hitting streak, beating the previous record of 42. His new mark stood for 44 years before being broken by Joe DiMaggio in 1941.
Keeler twice led his league in batting average and three times in hits. He hit an astounding 206 singles during the 1898 season, a record that stood for more than 100 years. Additionally, Keeler had an on-base percentage of greater than .400 for seven straight seasons, and when Keeler retired in 1910, he was third all-time in hits with 2,932, behind only Cap Anson and Jake Beckley.
Keeler was also a force on the base paths, totaling 495 career stolen bases. Of his 33 career long balls, 30 of them were inside-the-park home runs.
Keeler passed away on January 1, 1923 at the age of 50. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1939.
On August 14, 1932, the Brooklyn Dodgers recorded a 10-inning, 2-1 victory over the Giants at the Polo Grounds. This game made reliever Jack Quinn, at 49, the oldest player to win a major league game up to that time. This record would be broken in 2012 by Rockies pitcher Jamie Moyer.
Willie Howard Mays Jr. was born on May 6, 1931 in Westfield, Alabama. His father, Cat Mays, was a talented baseball player with the black team at the local iron plant, and his mother, Annie Satterwhite, was a talented basketball and track star in high school. Willie’s father exposed him to baseball from an early age, playing catch with him at five and allowing him to sit on the bench with his Birmingham Industrial League team at the age of ten. Besides baseball, Mays played both football and basketball in high school, excelling in both sports.
Mays’s professional baseball career began in the Negro Leagues in 1948 with the Chattanooga Choo-Choos, a Negro minor league team. Later that year, he joined the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. He signed with the New York Giants in 1950, going on to win NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1951. Over the course of his major league career, Mays made 24 All-Star teams, was named the National League MVP twice, in 1954 and 1965, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979. He was the first NL player to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in the same season, the first player in history to reach both 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, and the second player and the first right-handed hitter to hit 600 career home runs. Mays also shined defensively, winning 12 consecutive Gold Glove Awards after their establishment in 1957.
Willie Mays died of heart failure in Palo Alto, California on June 18, 2024 at the age of 93. Rest in peace.
On January 27, 1956, the New York Football Giants determined they would be leaving the Polo Grounds, which they had shared with the baseball team of the same name, in order to play their home games at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The move by the NFL team fueled rumors that the baseball Giants might also be leaving the stadium soon, an event that did occur following the 1957 season.
On June 15, 1940, New York Giants catcher Harry Danning hit for the cycle in a game against Pittsburgh. His home run was an inside-the-park home run that landed 460 feet on the fly in front of the Giants’ clubhouse, wedged behind the Eddie Grant memorial at the Polo Grounds. Pittsburgh center fielder Vince DiMaggio was not able to free it in time to catch Danning rounding the bases.
Having shared the Polo Grounds with the Giants since 1913, the Yankees began construction on their ballpark in the Bronx on May 22, 1922. The stadium would become known as the ‘House that Ruth Built,’ due to Babe Ruth’s popularity and influence.
If I was traded to the Giants, I’d quit baseball.
~Rocky Colavito
William DeWolf Hopper was an American actor, singer, comedian, and theatrical producer during the late-19th and into the early-20th centuries. Born in New York Citty, DeWolf Hopper grew to become a star of vaudeville and musical theater, but he became best known for performing the popular baseball poem “Casey at the Bat.”
A lifelong baseball enthusiast and New York Giants fan, Hopper first performed Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s then-unknown poem “Casey at the Bat” to the Giants and Chicago Cubs on August 14, 1888. Co-performer Digby Bell called Hopper “the biggest baseball crank that ever lived. Physically, of course, he is a corker, but when I say big I mean big morally and intellectually. Why, he goes up to the baseball [Polo] grounds at One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street after the matinees on Saturday, and he travels this six miles simply to see, perhaps, the two final innings, and any one can imagine the rapidity with which he must scrape off the makeup and get into his street clothes in order to secure even this much. But he says the Garrison finishes are worth it, and he is perfectly right. Hopper always was a baseball crank, long before the public knew anything about it.”
Hopper helped make Thayer’s poem famous and was often called upon to give his colorful, melodramatic recitation, which he did about 10,000 times over the course of his career.