Stealing Home at the Polo Grounds

[G-Fafif]

Someone who reached out to me via my activity in New York Giants torchbearing sent me a great story he wrote about the (then) kid who stole home after the last game the Giants played at the Polo Grounds (before it was known that someday there'd be Mets there). You can read the whole thing here, as part of a broader theme, but this part in particular is gold. It's the 15-year-old (now 70 or 71) recounting how he made off with home -- they could take his team, but he wasn't going to let them to take the plate with them.

�I ran to home plate. �There was a bunch of people standing around doing nothing. �I took out my Boy Scout knife � that�s the truth � and started digging. �Someone stepped on my hand closing the knife and giving me a big cut. �I dug and dug and finally home plate was loose. �The plate had five coarse-threaded metal inserts. �While I was digging and tugging everyone stood around watching � no one helped. �Then when I got it out they tried to grab it from me and all hell broke loose. �One older kid grabbed it from me and I jumped on his back and when he tried to punch me I took it back. �I then took off running as fast as I could. �A photographer spotted me and asked me to pose for a picture with home plate as others tried to take it from me. That picture appeared on the front page of the now-defunct New York Mirror on September 30, 1957, entitled the �Last Steal�. �After the picture was taken, I was home free and left by the centerfield exit with my prized possession. �I�d had the crap beat out of me. My glasses were broken and long gone, my finger was bleeding, my shirt was ripped and I realized I had been in quite a fight to keep home plate. �The next challenge was getting it back to Linden. �I must have looked a little strange, a disheveled fifteen-year-old hanging onto what looked like a home plate. �I couldn�t see without my glasses so I had to ask strangers to tell me when the subway stop arrived for the bus terminal. �But I made it home with my treasured possession.�

And by the way, the kid still has it.

[Guest themetfairy]

Great story!

[Guest Swan Swan H]

Nice story, and a very worthy cause. I only managed a hunk of turf from the infield after the 1973 playoffs, which I tried to keep alive in a flowerpot to no avail.

[seawolf17]

I have a bit of dirt from Frontier Field somewhere in an empty film canister from their 1997 International League championship.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I plucked some Metrodome "blades" in 1988 during a youth traveling soccer thing, but they got lost in our lawn a few weeks after I got home.

[Zvon]

Wow. That is a kool story. I also got a clump of '73 soil. I was very close to third base for the last out and it was covered by vultures in what felt like a split second, piling on. I don't remember anyone going for home.

[Edgy MD]

I want to see a '73 field shot and see if Swanny and Z briefly met each other forty years ago.

[Guest Swan Swan H]

Edgy MD wrote: I want to see a '73 field shot and see if Swanny and Z briefly met each other forty years ago.

I also went on between home and third, Zvon. There was a small gate just at the home plate side of the dugout, and I guess they decided that rather than have people get hurt jumping the fence they opened the gate and onto the field we vandals went.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

That picture appeared on the front page of the now-defunct New York Mirror on September 30, 1957, entitled the �Last Steal�.

Can we produce this front page?

[batmagadanleadoff]

�I ran to home plate. �There was a bunch of people standing around doing nothing. �I took out my Boy Scout knife � that�s the truth � and started digging. �Someone stepped on my hand closing the knife and giving me a big cut....

Is this an old account? I vaguely remember reading this many years ago.

[batmagadanleadoff]

This article is from either 1935 or 1937:

[Edgy MD]

Dumb questions I should know the answer to:

1) Where did those memorials end up?

2) How does Eddie Grant warrant a memorial decades before he wrote "Police On My Back"?

[G-Fafif]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Is this an old account? I vaguely remember reading this many years ago.

I wouldn't swear it hadn't run somewhere else before, though I did a quick search and didn't find anything (otherwise I'd just link it to that place). He apparently wrote it a couple of years ago because there's a second half to the story, which I held for a rainy day, that focuses on what happened to the Pirate who scored the final run and it somehow leads to somebody having a recent conversation with Virgil Trucks, who was 92 in the telling, which would make it 2009 or 2010. "Many years ago," on the other hand...it's quite possible Ray Smith has found others to whom to tell his story but from what I know of Mr. Barr (from NYG circles), he sought this out on his own.

The author was friends with Bobby Thomson, as many old NYG fans were (Bobby opened his home and his heart without much of a nudge required) and offered to share other stories. Send at will, I told him.

[G-Fafif]

Ed Burns: Not a fan of "freak" dimensions.

The Mets display a replica of the Eddie Grant memorial in their museum, which is the most incredibly out of character item in the joint (but most appreciated here). There are many theories to what happened to the original, but nobody's ever come up with a definitive resting places. As for the rest of the memorials from Electric Avenue, I honestly have no idea.

[Zvon]

Swan Swan H wrote: Edgy MD wrote: I want to see a '73 field shot and see if Swanny and Z briefly met each other forty years ago. I also went on between home and third, Zvon. There was a small gate just at the home plate side of the dugout, and I guess they decided that rather than have people get hurt jumping the fence they opened the gate and onto the field we vandals went.

Wow. We were in close proximity. That was a crazy game (they all were pretty crazy- see Bud/Rose fight). The crowd in the stands, made up of many like me who came down from other upper sections of the stadium (MezzBX-left field-slept over at Shea for a block of all three tickets for around 22 bucks. TOTAL. $7.50 @), became a sea of unruliness with bodies swaying in motion. We were so crammed together that if one person moved, we all had to. Do you remember late in the game when the wall to the makeshift box seats along the first baseline collapsed (I think the 1st base side went first) and they had to delay the game while the fans who poured out (it literally looked like they poured out) were stuffed back in and the lil wooden wall was propped back up. It was so surreal.

[Guest Swan Swan H]

I came down from the mezzanine as well. Section 16 or 18, I believe, but the third base side for sure. I took the Q37 and two trains to the ballpark in the morning, went to one of those ticket booths that was in the plaza by gate D, bought one ticket for the game and headed back home. They must have announced on the radio that a few tickets were available, otherwise I doubt I would have gone there.

When I went downstairs someone who was leaving handed me a ticket stub for a box seat, so I was able to get pretty close to the field. I remember finding my cousin (who drove me to the game but was sitting elsewhere) out behind the outfield fence, then listening to Howard Cosell call us a bunch of thugs and hoodlums on the radio while driving home.

It was fun, but I totally understand why they put an end to that sort of behavior. Last day of a stadium (to bring this back to G-F's original topic) is one thing, but these days a field could get torn up four or five times by the end of the World Series.

[batmagadanleadoff]

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Not the Polo Grounds, but SABR has an interesting article on the life of Ebbets Field in the three years between the Dodgers' departure and the wrecking ball (including visits by Real Madrid and Manchester City). Saw this retweeted by Edgy's nemesis Howard Megdal.

[G-Fafif]

NYG acquaintance of mine notes this final home plate from the Polo Grounds is on display (or near a trash can) in Cooperstown. Nevertheless, I like the Barr/Smith version better.

WTF's with the pennies?

[G-Fafif]

Different picture of same plate, sans pennies and trash can.



Since the plaque doesn't mention the Mets, well, the hell with the Doubleday Batting Range (which isn't affiliated with the HOF, so I'm sticking with my correspondent's story).