October 14, 2009
Larry Jansen, Giants Pitcher, Dies at 89
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Larry Jansen, the right-handed pitcher whose 23 victories helped propel the New York Giants to their storied 1951 National League championship, died Saturday in Verboort, Ore. He was 89.
The cause was congestive heart failure and pneumonia, his daughter Darlene Greene said.
On the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1951, Jansen pitched the top of the ninth inning against the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds in the climactic Game 3 of their pennant playoff, relieving Sal Maglie. The Giants had come back from a 13-game deficit in mid-August, but all seemed lost. They trailed the Dodgers by 4-1.
“The Dodgers stood there at the edge of the dugout,” Jansen told Ray Robinson in “The Home Run Heard ’Round the World” (HarperCollins, 1991). “They were yelling at me, ‘Jansen, you can go home now.’ But strange things can happen in this game. It was my duty just to keep pitching and hoping.”
[call number: 796.3576 R]
Jansen quickly retired all three batters he faced. Minutes later, he became the winning pitcher when Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer off Ralph Branca to give the Giants a pennant-winning 5-4 victory in one of the most celebrated moments in baseball history.
Jansen’s 23-11 record in 1951 tied Maglie for the N.L. lead in victories, and he had beaten the Boston Braves, 3-2, on the final Sunday of that season despite an aching back. That summer capped five seasons during which Jansen had become one of the league’s leading pitchers. He was 21-5 for the Giants as a rookie in 1947, when he led the league in winning percentage at .808. He won 18 games the next year and 19 in 1950, and he was a two-time All-Star.
But Jansen was the losing pitcher twice in the 1951 World Series, when the Yankees defeated the Giants in six games. In Game 2, he yielded Mickey Mantle’s first World Series hit, a bunt single. In Game 6, he gave up a double to Joe DiMaggio in the last at-bat of DiMaggio’s career.
[What an interesting juxtaposition: Mantle's first Series hit, DiMaggio's last career hit.]
Jansen, a native of Verboort, in northwest Oregon, pitched for the Giants until midway through their World Series championship season of 1954, when he became a Giants coach, having been plagued by a sore arm. He pitched in the minors for a year, then concluded his major league career in 1956 with the Cincinnati Reds. Featuring superb control, he had a career record of 122-89.
Jansen returned to the Giants in 1961, their fourth year in San Francisco, when he was hired as the pitching coach by Manager Alvin Dark, a former teammate. Jansen oversaw the future Hall of Fame pitchers Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry during his 11 seasons in San Francisco. He was the Cubs’ pitching coach in 1972 and ’73 under Leo Durocher, his former manager, and Durocher’s successor in Chicago, Whitey Lockman, another former Giants player.
In addition to his daughter Darlene Greene, Jansen is survived by his wife, Eileen; his sons Dale, Jim, Greg, Bob and Keith; his daughters Sandie Jansen, Shirley Vanderzanden, Lynne Barber and Kathleen Ross; a brother, Wilbur; many grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandson.
Nearly a quarter-century after the Giants’ pennant run of 1951, the pressures of that summer remained vivid for Jansen.
“I’d finish a game and I’d be so exhausted, so drained, I couldn’t sleep at all that night,” he told Thomas Kiernan in “The Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff” (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975).
[call number: 796.3576 K]
“The next night, I’d get a few hours, but then the pressure’d begin to build to the next start two days away, and I wouldn’t sleep for two nights.
“By the time I got out on the mound, I’d be pitching from memory. But, by God, it must have worked, because that was one of my best years.”
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