Q--Were you surprised to see the fans swarm to the field after the final out?
“Yes. My dad was one of them. He loved his Dodgers. After the game, we drove home to New Jersey. He was very proud of me.”
Sportswriters were unrestrained in their description of the monumental struggle. Joe King wrote in The Sporting News, “There will be no more poignant chapter in the history of the game than their (Dodgers) desperate comeback against the Phils in the final game of the regular schedule.”8
 Bill Corum of the New York Journal American stated it this way, “That game the Dodgers won made Jules Verne look like a realist. It was utterly fantastic and when Dressen’s team had won, it had proved itself as game a ball club as ever wore spikes.
“No other team could have won that one. It also proved, if any proof were needed, that Jackie Robinson is the best all-around ball player and most dangerous competitor in the game today.”9
Milton Gross of the New York Post wrote about the game: “I watched Robinson perform in Philadelphia...in the most exciting game I have ever seen, and I came away from it with a lump in my throat......Emotionally I had to be for the Dodgers because of what Jackie had done.”10
On the return train to New York City, Robinson’s wife, Rachel, displayed her box score of the entire 14 inning game. “I’m framing this,” Rachel said to Jackie, “and putting it in your den.” “You couldn’t have watched it the whole way,” said Jackie. “I looked over at you several times...I thought you were crying.”11
Rachel responded, “Maybe I was. You would be crying too, if you looked out there at your man and he looked as though he were lying there dead.”12
Dodger President Walter O’Malley admitted, “I began to lose hope, and was going over the phrasing of a telegram of congratulations I would send to Horace (Stoneham, Giants President). But then I said to myself, ‘Walter, you’re being a traitor’. So I put the idea aside, and it turned out, I was glad I didn’t have to send it, for the Dodgers won 9-8 in the 14th inning.”13
The next afternoon, October 1, the Dodgers and Giants would meet in a three-game playoff. The Giants won the first game, 3-1 at Ebbets Field and the Dodgers won the second game at the Polo Grounds, 10-0. In the third game, only then would there be a reason for the baseball world to remember Bobby Thomson.
What did it all mean in the end to the Dodger team and to Don Newcombe?
For the Dodgers, the 1951 season was never considered a tragedy. They would win the National League Pennant four of the next five seasons. The Dodgers would win their first World Championship in 1955 and extended theYankees to a seven-game World Series in 1952 and 1956. Many thought the 1951 season was a rallying point for the team in future seasons as the club won six National League Pennants in their next seven close pennant races.
As for Don Newcombe, he starts for the Dodgers in game 3 of the 1951 playoffs on Wednesday, October 3, just three days after the weekend series with the Phillies, and holds the Giants off for 8 1/3 innings until being relieved in the ninth inning (with two runs in and two runners on base his responsibility).
In the final eight days of the season, Newcombe started three times and relieved once. He won two games and held another game close. Twice he started on two days’ rest. He pitched in relief on Sunday after pitching a complete game less than 24 hours before. In one stretch covering three games, he allowed one run in 22 2/3 innings. Don Newcombe left nothing on the mound in the final week of the 1951 season.
Q--Your pitching is one of the most heroic performances in Dodger history, if not major league history.
“I remember very well what Pee Wee Reese told Charlie Dressen in the 1951 game when Bobby Thomson hit the home run. When they were contemplating making a pitching change (to decide whether to take Newcombe out) the infielders and Dressen were at the mound. Pee Wee said, ‘Charlie, this man has given us his all during the last two weeks of the season.’”
More than 50 seasons have gone by since this game for the ages was played. Few persons remain to remember the events as they happened.
It is left to the sportswriters and the Captain of the Dodgers, Pee Wee Reese, to their words of the effort and performance of Don Newcombe, Jackie Robinson, and the Dodger team and how they played when everything was on the line one fall day and night.
Fantastic.
Poignant.
Magnificent.
Impossible.
Unconquerable.
All.
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