May 24, 1954: Willie Mays’ 2 homers, 3 hits, and 4 RBIs sink Phillies

Willie Mays topped the National League in slugging percentage five times. (Photo: National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

In 1954, few teams needed a player to return from military service during the Korean War as much as the Giants needed Willie Mays. In 1951, though he had played in only 121 games, Mays was the National League Rookie of the Year on a team that made it to the World Series, finishing the regular season with a 98-59 record and a .624 winning percentage. During the games Mays played, the Giants were 81-40 (.669). In games without him, the team lost more than they won, their record 17-19.

In 1952 Mays was able to play in 34 games from April 16 to May 28 before he had to report to the US Army induction center in New York City on May 29.1 The Giants finished in second place with a 92-62 record. In his games, the Giants were 26-8, their .765 winning percentage 170 points higher than their season’s winning percentage of .597.

Without Mays in 1953, the Giants fell to fifth place, winning only 70 of their 155 games, their fewest wins since 1946. (They lost 84 games and had one tie.) They were not the same team without the Say Hey Kid.2

During spring training in 1954,3 manager Leo Durocher told the team that Mays was “that rare kind of player who can single-handedly lead us to the pennant,” and added, “This is like getting us a twenty-game winner.”4 And shortstop Alvin Dark predicted, also while the team was in Phoenix, Arizona, “We’re going to be a much better team this year with Willie Mays back from the Army.”5

While in the Army, Mays stayed in shape. “Willie came out of the Army bigger and stronger than when he had reported for duty,”6 and though he was “stronger,” he was also leaner. “‘All his baby fat was gone,’ recalled outfielder Monte Irvin. ‘Not that there was a lot of it to begin with.’”7

“The Army’s daily regimen of calisthenics, running, and baseball had kept Willie in superb condition,” according to Allen Barra, author of Mickey and Willie.8

On Tuesday, April 13, the Giants began their season in the Polo Grounds against the Dodgers, Sal Maglie facing Carl Erskine. Dick Young wrote, “Giant fans have been saying that ‘Mays is the difference,’ and that’s exactly what Wondrous Willie was” in a 4-3 Giants win.9

In Mays’ second Opening Day game, he played center field and batted fifth. The teams went back and forth into the sixth. In the top half of that inning, Mays’ miscue on Gil Hodges’ sacrifice fly – Mays made a poor throw to the plate – allowed Duke Snider to score and tie the game. But as luck would have it, Mays led off the bottom of the sixth and, on Erskine’s first pitch, atoned for his failure to prevent Snider from scoring, smacking it out of the park, his 425-foot shot clinching the win for the Polo Grounders.10 Dick Young called the game a “stomach-bubbling scrap.”11

It was both Mays’ first hit of the season and his first homer since May 27, 1952. The future superstar had gotten off to a slow start and was batting just .247 through his first 20 games. He also started slowly in 1952 and hit just .211 through 20 games.

In 1954 over his next 20 games, Mays hit .420 with 9 homers and 24 runs batted in, more than doubling his production.

Mays more than met the high expectations of Giants fans in a game again the Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium on May 24. He put together his first game with two homers, three hits, and four RBIs. Mays was one of only three National League players to do that in 1954 and the only Giant.12

The game started with the Giants in fourth place, two games behind the league-leading Milwaukee Braves. The Phillies’ Murry Dickson got the game rolling by striking out Whitey Lockman. Al Dark flied out to center. Hank Thompson singled. Monte Irvin flied out.

In the bottom of the first, Maglie allowed one batter, Earl Torgeson, to reach first, on a walk. Dickson retired the side one-two-three in the second, striking out Mays, batting sixth.

In the Phillies’ half of the second inning, Smoky Burgess doubled with two outs but was left stranded after Ted Kazanski grounded out. Dickson continued to dominate the New York batters in the top of the third. He got three batters to ground out and walked Maglie.

The Phillies stirred fans’ attention in the bottom of the third. After Maglie walked Willie Jones, Richie Ashburn singled. Torgeson, a left-handed batter, doubled, plating both Jones and Ashburn, in a play that brought fans to the edge of their seats “when Henry Thompson let Mays’ throw [to third] get away for an error,”13 and Torgeson hurried to third. (Thompson was given the error, not Mays.) Del Ennis hit a fly ball to “deep centerfield.”14 As soon as Mays caught it, Torgeson tagged up and ran for home, but Mays’ throw nailed him at the plate.

The Giants scored a run in the fourth. With two outs, Don Mueller hit a grounder to second. Granny Hamner threw wildly to first, and Mueller reached second base. Mays stepped into the batter’s box for the second time, the first with a runner on base. He singled to center, driving in Mueller, and advanced to second on Ashburn’s “poor throw to the plate.”15 But Davey Williams’s groundout ended the inning.

The Phillies increased their lead by two in the bottom of the fifth, although Kazanski’s single was the team’s only base hit, putting them ahead 4-1. Philadelphia benefited from two intentional walks, a Maglie error, and a passed ball.

“As the encounter moved into the seventh, Sal Maglie was trailing Murry Dickson, 4 to 1, and the crowd of 7,899 regarded this one as in the bag for [Phillies manager] Steve O’Neill,” wrote the New York Times’s John Drebinger.16 But it wasn’t. In the Giants’ seventh, Mays hit his ninth homer of the season and got his second RBI of the game. Ray Katt’s double and a single by Dusty Rhodes narrowed the Phillies’ lead to one run.

Two extra-base hits changed the game in the eighth. With two outs, Mueller doubled. Then, Mays hit the game-winning homer on a 2-1 count, the ball landing on the left-field roof. The four-bagger resulted in two more RBIs, giving Mays four RBIs in a game for the fourth time in his career.

Knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm sealed the Giants’ 5-4 win in the bottom of the ninth. All three batters he faced grounded out to shortstop.

It was the first game in Mays’ career in which he slammed two homers, got three hits, and had four RBIs.

The Giants finished the season 97-57, five games ahead of the Dodgers and 27 wins more than their 1953 total. The preseason predictions of both Durocher and Dark came true. In fact, New York won the pennant and swept the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. Mays, the 1954 National League Most Valuable Player, batted .286 against Cleveland pitching and made maybe the most famous catch in Series history.

Fans cheered on their hero during his great 1954 MVP season. (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)

SOURCES

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for player, team, and season data.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI195405240.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1954/B05240PHI1954.htm

NOTES

1  “Willie Mays Through the Years,” USA Today, May 6, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/sports/mlb/2020/05/06/hall-famer-willie-mays-through-years/5173358002/.

2  Larry Schwartz, “The Say Hey Kid,” ESPN.com, accessed July 11, 2022. https://www.espn.com/sportscentury/features/00215053.html.

3  Mays arrived in the Giants’ spring-training camp on March 2, 1954. Bill Madden, 1954 (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2014), 47.

4  Madden, 39.

5  Jim McCulley, “Giants Future Depends on Williams, Says Dark,” New York Daily News, May 25, 1954: C20.

6  Allen Barra, Mickey and Willie (New York, Crown, 2013), 200.

7  Barra, 201.

8  Barra, 201.

9  Dick Young, “Mays’ 425-Ft. HR Nips Flock, 4-3, New York Daily News, April 14, 1954: C20.

10 Jack Hand (Associated Press), “Giants Whip Brooklyn’s Erskine on Mays’ 435 Foot Circuit Clout, 4-3,” San Francisco Examiner, April 14, 1954: 37.

11 Young, “Mays’ 425-Ft. HR.”

12 https://stathead.com/tiny/KSh60.

13 John Drebinger, “Polo Grounders Rally to Win, 5-4,” New York Times, May 25, 1954: 30

14 Stan Baumgartner, “Willie’s 2d Clout with One on in 8th Wins Game,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 25, 1954: 28.

15 McCulley, “Giants Future.” As a center fielder, Ashburn had a great glove but not “a strong throwing arm.” – Walter Bingham, “A Long Career of Short Base Hits,” Sports Illustrated, March 23, 1959, https://vault.si.com/vault/1959/03/23/a-long-career-of-short-base-hits.

16 Drebinger.