Bobby Thomson, famed home run hitter, dead at 86 - ESPN

Bobby Thomson, the Flying Scot, dead at 86

There's no question that he makes the all-time Glaswegian all-star team. He's the only MLB player to be born in Glasgow in the 20th century. More important is the fact that he hit the most famous home run in history, a walk-off pennant winner, which capped a 1951 season in which his Giants erased a 13 1/2 game Dodger lead.

What few people realize is that manager Chuck Dressen was the one who blew that pennant for the Dodgers. In the three-game playoff against the Giants, Dressen did not give a single start to his 22-3 pitcher, Preacher Rowe, who also had the club's best ERA and had thrown 19 complete games. Instead he gave a start and a key relief appearance to Ralph Branca, who lost both of the team's playoff defeats! During the season, Branca had been a mediocre 13-12 for a team that won 97 games. Presumably Dressen did not want to start the left-handed Rowe against the Giants, whose best hitters (Thomson, Mays, Irvin, Dark and Stanky) were all right-handed. But that logic falls to pieces in light of the fact that Rowe had pitched in four games against the Giants that year, and the Dodgers had won three of the four, losing only in a game in which they were shut out by Sal Maglie, which was hardly Rowe's fault.

Another 1951 mystery was Dressen's decision not to warm up Roe to face Bobby Thomson in that key situation in game three.

* Thomson had been the hottest hitter in the NL in the second half of the year. From July 22nd on, he batted .356 with an OPS of 1.104. (During the same period, the great Stan Musial had batted .336 with an OPS of 1.048.) And Thomson saved his best days for the Dodgers. He had hit eight homers against the Dodgers that year in 89 at-bats.

* Meanwhile Branca was 1-7 in September-October, with an ERA of 5.71, including a loss in game one of the same playoffs, when he gave up a homer to ... Bobby Thomson.

Statistician Allan Roth knew that Roe was a better bet than Branca against Thomson, but "Dressen didn't want to see it," Roth told author Lee Heiman. "He made little or no use of the information I provided. The man didn't want help from anybody. He thought he could do it all by himself. It's always been that way with the big ego managers. They couldn't believe a statistician sitting in the stands could give them information they didn't know themselves. So Charlie ignored me."

Even after deciding on Branca, Dressen could have made one more good strategic move. He could have walked red-hot Thomson to pitch to callow 20-year-old Willie Mays, who had struggled against Branca that year (.105 with no RBI), and had stuggled against everyone in October (one for ten). But Dressen was not exactly Tony LaRussa in the analysis department, and made every possible miscalculation.

If not for Dressen's bungling, Bobby Thomson would be remembered, if at all, only to baseball geeks. As it stands, his name will be known to every serious fan for as long as men remember baseball itself.