This was a Giants homer against the Cubs. But when?
Getty Images says about this photo:
Felicitations are in order for Hank Thompson and he gets the glad hand from Dave Williams, left, and Willie Mays after crossing the plate on his two-run homer. Action in the third inning of first game between N.Y. Giants and Chicago Cubs at the Polo Grounds today. Back to camera, the batboy comes it to add his congratulations.
Comes “in,” I think, but you get the idea.
As it turns out, the one Cub in this photo, the catcher wearing No. 25, is the key clue in sleuthing the date of this photo. Here’s the photo again:
Bettman Archive
Hank Thompson and Monte Irvin, who debuted for the Giants on the same day in 1949, were the Giants’ first Black players. Thompson hit 129 home runs in eight years with the Giants, and checking his home run log, he hit a two-run homer against the Cubs at the Polo Grounds four times.
This is where the catcher comes into play. In those four games, the catcher for the Cubs wore No. 25 just once.
That was Walker Cooper, who caught the first game of a doubleheader there on Thursday, September 9, 1954. That’s when this Thompson home run happened.
The game was tied 1-1 when Williams singled with one out in the third. Cubs pitcher Paul Minner retired Al Dark for the second out, but that was followed by Thompson’s homer. Mays was in the picture because he was the on-deck hitter.
The Cubs tied the game 3-3 in the sixth on a two-run homer by… Cooper. Then they scored three more in the seventh off Hoyt Wilhelm, then in just his third MLB season.
The Cubs were a bad team in 1954 and the Giants would go on to win the NL pennant and World Series, and it showed in this game after that. Dark (solo) and Irvin (two-run) would homer off Minner in the eighth to tie the game 6-6, and then the Giants loaded the bases against Jim Davis in the bottom of the ninth.
Thompson came to bat and executed a perfect squeeze bunt and the Giants defeated the Cubs 7-6. Incidentally, that squeeze was with two out, something almost no manager would call for today.
And no, I’m not sure who the guy in the white shirt at the left of the photo is.