P Russ Meyer hurls a 1 – 0 shutout over the Cubs, the fourth shutout in a row for the Phillies staff. Robin Roberts, Ken Johnson and Bubba Church pitched the earlier whitewashings.
The Giants go 7-0 at Crosley Field this year by defeating the Reds, 3 – 1. Willie Mays has his third homer in six days and Larry Jansen wins to go 15-2 against the Rhinelanders.
After two shutouts over the Cards, Bubba Church gives the Phils staff its third in a row, stopping Chicago, 2 – 0. It is Church’s eighth straight win over the Cubs and Chicago’s ninth straight loss at Wrigley Field.
The White Sox, just 3 1/2 games behind New York and Boston, open a four-game series in New York. Trailing 3 – 1 in the 9th, the Sox make it 3 – 2 before rain and the Yankees delay the game. Gil McDougald is thrown out for stalling, and Casey Stengel uses five pitchers in the inning. Finally, the Yanks win as the game is called after 30 minutes.
In a 9-1 victory over the Cubs at Wrigley Field, Jim Russell becomes the first player in major league history to hit a home run from both sides of the plate in a game in two different games. The Dodger outfielder’s accomplishment will be surpassed in 1956, when Yankee slugger Mickey Mantle goes deep both right and left-handed in the same game for a third time.
At Fenway Park, Clyde Vollmer knocks in six runs on three homers to lead the Red Sox to a 13 – 10 win over the White Sox.
1951 – Ouch!! Willie Mays’s oft-recalled bare-handed grab of left-handed Rocky Nelson’s screaming opposite field line drive takes place in Forbes Field in the 1st inning of a 5 – 4 Giant loss to Pittsburgh. Mays runs to the left-center corner of the bullpen (also known as Greenberg Gardens, or Kiner’s Corner), about 410 feet from the plate. At the last minute, the wind gets a hold of Nelson’s slicing shot and starts pushing it back towards right. Mays looks up and locates the ball but too late to adjust. As he will recall on June 3, 1957, after robbing Roberto Clemente on a shot to almost the same spot, “I couldn’t get my glove around. So I just stuck my bare hand up and the ball stuck.”
“That was the finest catch I have ever seen, and the finest I ever expect to see” – Pirates GM Branch Rickey, commenting on a catch made by Willie Mays at Forbes Field. At cavernous Forbes Field, Giants’ outfielder Willie Mays, unable to reach across his body to make a catch with his glove of Rocky Nelson’s sinking 457-foot blast to deep center, sticks out his bare right hand and grabs the ball on a full gallop to make the incredible final out of the inning. Venerable Branch Rickey, Pittsburgh’s general manager, sends a note to the New York dugout during the game to tell the 20 year-old rookie, “That was the finest catch I have ever seen, and the finest I ever expect to see.”
1951 – With the Cubs 10 games under .500 at 35-45, Phil Cavarretta replaces Frankie Frisch as manager. They will go 27-47 the rest of the way to finish in last place.
In a game against the Reds with All-Star hurler Ewell Blackwell on the mound, the Giants, for the first time, employ their infamous scheme for stealing catchers’ signs using a telescope positioned in the center-field clubhouse. The ‘Jints’ beat Cincinnati, 11-6, and New York will win 22 of the remaining 27 games at the Polo Grounds, overtaking the Dodgers to win the National League pennant.
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