Sal Yvars, the catcher for the New York Giants who spilled the beans about sign stealing during the famous playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951, died Dec. 10 at the age of 84. Richard Goldstein does his usual excellent job in the NY Times‘ obituary.
Yvars, the Giants’ back-up receiver from 1957-53 (with a year and half on the Cardinals), was a pivotal character in Josh Prager’s seminal book on the Thomson home run in that game.
Publishers Weekly might seem like an unsual outlet to mention his passing, but here’s what they said today:
Mr. Yvars was a career-long backup catcher, most prominently for the New York Giants. His claim to fame was that in 1951 he allegedly signaled Bobby Thomson that a fastball was on the way from Dodgers’ pitcher Ralph Branca and Thomson hit it out to win the Giants the National League pennant. It is still known as the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” Several books, mostly prominently Joshua Prager’s The Echoing Green (Pantheon, 2006), have retold the story almost as if it were an espionage tale. If Thomson knew what was coming or not, he still had to hit it. And he did.
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 1 trackback }