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week including 14 2/3 in the final two games before the playoff, Newcombe got the start and went 8 1/3 more. And when he needed relief after allowing three hits and a run in the ninth, it wasn’t a member of the Dodgers bullpen that got the call. It was, once more into the breach, Branca.
    Branca would face Bobby Thomson. Thomson was the hero of Game 1, hitting a two-run homer off Branca in the fourth inning to give New York the lead. Thomson was also, potentially, a goat of Game 3. He inadvertently ran into an out on the base paths in the second inning. With the Giants trailing 2–1 in the eighth inning, the third baseman couldn’t handle shots by Andy Pafko and Billy Cox that doubled the Dodger run total.
    In recent years, a predominant question has been whether Thomson got a stolen sign for Branca’s pitch. Thomson has denied it. For that matter, research by baseball historian Dave Smith has questioned the value of the entire sign-stealing enterprise because the team’s overall offensive performance at the Polo Grounds declined after the scheme reportedly began. Branca did come to believe that Thomson had a hint of what was coming.
    In the end, did Branca throw a fastball that caught too much of the strike zone, a fastball that Thomson surrounded with his bat like a boy bear-hugging his old man? It was the pitch that gave the Giants a 5–4 victory and the NL pennant, and the Dodgers the most infamous defeat in baseball history. Yes. But in a season that probably saw the Dodgers throw about 20,000 pitches, should the fella whose principal crime was simply throwing the last one be forgiven? No doubt about it.
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9. Ebbets Field: The Center Cannot Hold
    â€œEbbets Field was simultaneously the best ballpark in the world and the worst ballfield for the long-term future of baseball in Brooklyn.” Glenn Stout’s Dickensian declaration in The Dodgers sums up how the replacement of Washington Park with a brand new ballfield on April 9, 1913, helped foster the diehard Brooklyn fan base while setting the stage for its abandonment.
    Like Dodger Stadium, Ebbets Field was more than some seats and a baseball diamond; it had character born of its construction that its fabled residents would later enhance. Ceaselessly visionary, team owner Charles Ebbets wanted a work of art for his team to play in and, in several ways, he succeeded. A rotunda, resplendent with Italian marble, glazed brick, and a grand chandelier (constructed with 12 arms in the shape of baseball bats supporting 12 globes resembling baseballs) greeted visitors. Roman columns and arches provided the support for the grandstand. Ebbets Field felt special from the outset.
    But it was such an accomplishment for Ebbets to buy the parcels that would form the ballpark’s 4 1/2 acre base (an area that until that point had been a veritable slum popularly known as Pigtown) that he was in denial about how quickly his park would fight against itself, like a baseball bursting from the inside out. The ballpark could not contain the energy it attracted and redoubled. “From the moment ground was first broken, Ebbets Field was an anachronism, one that in each ensuing season would prove to be less and less adequate,” Stout wrote. “That is not to say it was not a wonderful place to watch a baseball game—it was that and more, a glorious Globe Theater of a place where the mob felt like part of the game, for its cozy dimensions, and double-decked grandstand put fans almost on the field.”
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    The entry into Ebbets Field, the vision of Charles Ebbets in 1912, was a large rotunda featuring a marble floor that reads “Ebbets Field” around a large baseball and signature chandelier, made of baseball bats and globes painted with stitching to resemble baseballs. Ebbets Field opened April 9, 1913. Photo courtesy of www.walteromalley.com. All rights reserved.
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    In fact, Ebbets Field became a character in its own