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When Giants roamed the Polo Grounds
(by Ed Flynn - February 20, 2008)
Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants, stood on the platform following the team’s victory in what will always rank among the most exciting Super Bowl games in history and shouted, “This win is for all Giant fans who for the past 30 years supported the team at Giants Stadium, and before that at the Yankee Stadium, and for those who still remember being part of the Giants at the Polo Grounds.”
The Polo Grounds? A nice thought. However, I doubt if there are many Giant fans around who remember the Polo Grounds. After all, the last time the Giants – that is the football Giants, not the baseball variety – played there was in 1955 and in those days professional football was still a sport that was struggling for recognition and respectability.
When I was a young boy growing up in Bergen County during the pre-World War II era, baseball was the undisputed National Pastime, and in any word association test, the Polo Grounds would have been automatically linked to the baseball team just as Ebbets field belonged to the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Yankees, of course, owned the ballpark that bore their name in the Bronx.
A horseshoe shaped stadium with notoriously short left and right field foul lines and a cavernous center field, the Polo Grounds was located at 155th Street in Harlem where Coogan’s Bluff, a rocky cliff overlooked the site. It was the field where the Yankees came for the World Series in 1936 and 1937 and 1951; the field where Bobby Thompson broke every Brooklyn Dodger fan’s heart, mine included, with his ninth inning pennant winning home run in the 1951 playoff; the field where Willie Mays electrified sports fans in 1954 with “The Catch” against the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series; the field where once, when I was a teenager and fans were still allowed to run out on it at the end of the game, I caught up with Dick Bartell, the Giants shortstop, and said, “Nice game, Mr. Bartell” and he said, “Thanks, kid.” Those are the kind of moments that become imbedded in your memory.
And, on yes, it was the field where sometimes on a Sunday during the winter when the Boys of Summer weren’t using it, a bunch of guys calling themselves the New York Giants and wearing those funny looking leather helmets they wore back then played football.
The original Giants, a hodgepodge collection of jocks with fulltime “day jobs,” were bought by Tim Mara in 1925 for $500 and they played their first game at the Polo Grounds that year against the Frankfort Yellow Jackets, losing it 14-0. If you never heard of the Frankfort Yellow Jackets, that’s because most of those early pro-football teams came from smaller cities which, incidentally, is why football’s Hall of Fame is located in
Canton, Ohio .
During those years at the Polo Grounds, years before television and Monday Night Football propelled football into the forefront of sports, there were three Giant games that will always be remembered more for the circumstances surrounding the game than for the game itself.
One took place in 1930 during the height of the Great Depression. It was a time when many doubted the quality of professional football and Knute Rockne, the legendary coach of Notre Dame, assembled an amateur team of “Notre Dame All Stars,” including the famed Four Horsemen, and challenged the Giants to a game. Proceeds were to go to a fund for the homeless in
New York City . The Giants won 24-0. After the game Rockne was quoted as calling the Giants, “the greatest football machine I ever saw.”
Another memorable game was the “Sneaker Game” in 1934 against the Chicago Bears. The field had been coated with ice by a sudden storm, and while the Bears slipped around in their cleats, the Giants changed into basketball sneakers in the Fourth Quarter and won the game 30-13.
Then there was the game against the Brooklyn Dodgers – yes, there once was a Brooklyn Dodger football team, too – which was interrupted by an announcement telling any military personnel in the crowd to report back to their base immediately. The date was Dec. 7, 1941.
The football Giants switched to Yankee Stadium in 1956, the baseball club left for
San Francisco in 1957 and after the fledgling Mets played there in 1962 and ‘63 and the Titans, which became the Jets, in ‘62 and ‘63, the Polo Grounds was demolished in ‘64.
Remember the Polo Grounds? How can I not when I can still hear Russ Hodges on the radio shouting over and over, “The Giants win the pennant… the Giants win the pennant…” on that faithful day in 1951. Different team, different sport, but like the football Giants Super Bowl upset win, a day no real sports fan can ever forget.
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