Fifty years ago this month, an American baseball shrine breathed it’s last breath. On April 10, 1964, a two-ton steel wrecking ball crashed into the side of the Polo Grounds located beneath Coogan’s Bluff in upper Manhattan. The walls came crashing down under the same wrecking ball (painted to look like a baseball) that had been used four years earlier to knock down Ebbets Field. Ironic when you consider the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers, arch rivals for generations, were now united in their Gotham City demise by the same instrument.
The Wrecking Corporation of America (yes, that was their real name) got paid $149,000 for the job. The wrecking crew wore jerseys with the name “GIANTS” across the chest, the corporate name on the back, and numerals on each sleeve. The 11-man team of workers tipped their shiny steel hard hats to the historic stadium as they began dismantlement. Although there were many teary eyed observers on site that day, the workers were not among them. They were all Dodgers fans and were happy to get started “whacking” away at the old stadium. It took more than four months to level the structure.
One of the perks of the job was that company received the rights to sell off every part of the stadium during the demolition. The New York Times reported that, “The 54,000 seats will be sold to schools, to minor league stadiums and even to Giants fans.” Those seats bring upwards of $4,000 each on eBay today. But the Wrecking Corporation of America was a generation too early to capitalize on the booming sports memorabilia business. The New York Times, in typical unsympathetic Times fashion, reported on April 11, 1964, “After demolition is completed, the site will be used for a $30 Million low rent, public housing project. 1,614 families will live in four 30 story buildings, will attend school and will use the project’s children center, play ground, community center and child welfare center.”
What? You’ve never heard of the Polo Grounds? The Polo Grounds was home to many professional baseball and football teams from 1880 until 1963. In baseball, the stadium was home to the New York Metropolitans from 1880 until 1885, the New York Giants from 1883 until 1957, the New York Yankees from 1913 until 1922, and the New York Mets in their first two seasons of 1962 and 1963. In football, the Polo Grounds was home to two National Football League franchises: the short-lived New York Brickley Giants, for one game in 1921, and the New York football Giants, from 1925 to 1955. Later, it was home to the New York Jets (Titans the first year) of the American Football League. It also hosted the 1934 and 1942 Major League Baseball All-Star Games. Perhaps most importantly, the Polo Grounds was home to the greatest player on the planet, Willie Mays, from his rookie season in 1951 until the team moved to San Francisco following the 1957 season.
Its iconic horseshoe-shaped grandstand and elongated playing area provided for ridiculously short distances down the foul lines and nearly unfathomable long distances to the power alleys and center field. So short were its foul-line distances that inches were included in the measurements: 279 feet, 8 inches to left and 257 feet, 8 inches to right. As for the distance to center, 483 feet, only the mighty Babe Ruth hit homers out to the dead center field seats, and he did so on several occasions. His longest blast over the right-center upper deck in 1921 was estimated at over 550 feet. After the 1923 remodeling, only four players ever hit a home run into the center field stands: Luke Easter in 1948; Joe Adcock in 1953; Hank Aaron and Lou Brock on consecutive days (June 17 and 18) in 1962. Left field was equally difficult at 449 feet while right field was a laughable 258 feet.
From the beginning, the Polo Grounds (an odd name for an odd stadium) had character. The name was based on the planned usage and indeed, that first site was a polo field in the midst of what was then a fashionable neighborhood dominated by aristocratic apartment houses and brownstones, just north of the northeast corner of Central Park.
The first baseball game was scheduled for Wednesday, September 29, 1880 against the Washington Nationals. More than 2,000 fans turned out for that first professional baseball game ever played in New York City. The Nationals showed up more than a half-hour after the game’s scheduled start of 3:30. At 4 o’clock, the Nationals walked through the Sixth Avenue gate straight onto the field without warming up. The Metropolitans defeated the Nationals, 8-3, in a six inning game cut short by darkness and the Nats late arrival. Irish born Hugh “One Arm” Daily won the game, establishing his place as the Polo Grounds first true eccentric. As a youngster, Daily had shot off his left hand in a gun mishap; to compensate for this injury, he fashioned a special pad over the stump and caught the baseball by trapping it between the pad and his right hand. Daily was known for his bad disposition, and once, after an extra innings victory, ran up to his catcher and cold cocked him with his good hand. Seems the catcher was throwing the ball back to Daily too hard, inflaming his stump. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
The Polo Grounds was famous for never being idle. For an entire decade, the Polo Grounds was home to teams from both the National and American Leagues, playing nearly every day. When the Giants and Yankees weren’t using it, the Polo Grounds was being used by teams from the old Negro Leagues. On the rare days that no pro team was using the grounds, colleges, high schools, and a number of other amateur teams were allowed use of the stadium. In September 1947, the New York Times listed an upcoming charity baseball game with the “Arm Amputees vs. Leg Amputees” composed of returning World War II vets!
Babe Ruth’s Yankees won the American League pennant for the first time in 1921 and won it again the next two years. Their opponents in each of the World Series were the New York Giants. In 1921 and 1922, all the games in the World Series were played at the Polo Grounds. But the Polo Grounds is perhaps best remembered as the site of two of the most historic events in the history of baseball that took place there in the 1950s.
In 1951, the Giants completed a great comeback in the race for the National League pennant with a three-game playoff series against the Brooklyn Dodgers when Bobby Thomson hit the “shot heard round the world” home run that beat the Bums to take the pennant. But the game that best demonstrates the vagaries of the Polo Grounds — and how the stadium could taketh away as well as giveth — was the opener of the 1954 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and New York Giants. With the game tied in the eighth inning, Cleveland had runners on first and second with no out when Vic Wertz drilled a tremendous drive to center field. Giants centerfielder Willie Mays turned and ran back toward the fence to the right of the alcove. Mays stuck out his glove and, three steps in front of the warning track, caught the fly over his right shoulder. The catch was remarkable, but it was Mays’ twirling throw back into the infield preventing the runners from scoring that kept the game deadlocked. Dusty Rhodes later won the game for the Giants with a 280-foot homer to right field. Vic Wertz’s long fly out to Willie Mays had traveled in excess of 400 feet — the Polo Grounds dichotomy fully illustrated 2 innings apart. The Giants went on to sweep the Indians, who had set an A.L. record with 111 wins during the regular season to win the last World Series at the Polo Grounds.
By then, the handwriting was on the wall and the uncertain future of the Polo Grounds was casting shadows on the future of the Giants in New York. Parking had always been a problem, the stadium was becoming run down, and the neighborhood was getting sketchy. As recently as 1950, an hour before the start of a 4th of July doubleheader, a fan in the upper grandstand was killed by a stray bullet fired from outside the stadium. Bernard Doyle, a 56 year old New Yorker originally from Dublin, had brought with him a friend’s 13 year old son to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play the Giants. A 14 year old boy later confessed that he had been shooting a gun into the air from his rooftop at 515 Edgecombe Avenue.
By the mid-1950s, the team wanted a new stadium and New York City planner Robert Moses, the mastermind behind New York City’s 1939 and 1964 World’s Fair AND the United Nations building, wanted the Polo Grounds torn down to make way for public housing. So, in 1957, both the Giants and Dodgers announced they were moving to California.
Next week: Part 2, The Polo Grounds’ Indianapolis Connection
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
