As both baseball stadiums prepare to close, The Post looks back at the 25 most memorable moments in the history of Yankee and Shea Stadiums. This week, No. 24.
YANKEE STADIUM
Dec. 14, 1958
The Giants and Browns met with the Eastern Conference title in the NFL in the balance. Cleveland held a one-game lead going into this game. The Giants needed to win to force a playoff game.
The game was played during a snowstorm that helped the Browns’ ground game. Cleveland running back Jim Brown scored a dynamic, 65-yard touchdown on the Browns’ first possession. Brown gained 148 yards in the game.
The Giants trailed 10-3 in the fourth quarter, but rallied to tie the game at 10 before a crowd of 63,192. Knowing a tie would give Cleveland the title, the Giants drove the ball to where they thought kicker Pat Summerall might be able to win it for them.
Summerall had missed from 46 and 32 yards earlier and made one from 46. This would be a 49-yard field goal with Charlie Conerly holding. Summerall took the field with 2:07 left to play. He booted the ball through the wind and snow and the uprights to force a playoff game the following week at Yankee Stadium. There is some debate as to whether the referees could even see the ball through the snowstorm. It is unlikely Summerall or any of the players at the line of scrimmage saw the ball go through.
With the field covered in snow, it is not known for sure if the field goal was 49 yards or longer. Summerall has said he thought it was more than 50 yards.
“Who could tell in all that snow? That’s OK. It gets a little longer every year, anyway,” he said in an interview years later.
The Giants prevailed the next week, 10-0, holding Brown to a career-low 8 yards, to make the NFL Championship Game against the Colts. That game, won by the Colts 23-17 on Alan Ameche’s touchdown plunge in overtime, still is hailed by many as the greatest NFL game played.
The kick made Summerall famous. He played four seasons for the Giants, then went on to have a long broadcasting career.
SHEA STADIUM
Sept. 20, 1973
The Mets had rallied from last place to within 11⁄2 games of Pittsburgh for the NL East lead in a month. Now they were looking to win their third straight from the Pirates.
The Mets tied the game 2-2 in the bottom of the eighth inning on Felix Millan’s single that scored pinch-runner Teddy Martinez. Pittsburgh answered with a run in the ninth inning to go up 3-2, but Duffy Dyer kept the Mets alive with a double in the bottom of the inning that scored Ken Boswell and forced extra innings.
The game remained tied 3-3 entering the 13th inning. The Pirates had two outs and Richie Zisk on first base when Dave Augustine, who had made his big-league debut 17 days earlier, came up.
Augustine hit a deep ball to left field that appeared to be going over the wall. Instead, it hit the very top of the wall and bounced straight into the air. Mets left fielder Cleon Jones grabbed the ball out of the air with his bare hand and fired it to cutoff man Wayne Garrett.
Zisk, thinking it was a home run, got a slow start from first, setting up a play at the plate. Garrett threw the ball to catcher Ron Hodges, who tagged Zisk out at home.
The Mets won 4-3 in the bottom of the inning on Hodges’ single that scored John Milner. The next day, the Mets moved into first place with another victory over Pittsburgh. They stayed in first place the rest of the year.
The Mets won the pennant on the last day of the season in Chicago and made it all the way to [Game 7] of the World Series before losing to Oakland.
Augustine would play only 29 games in the majors, but he sealed his place in Mets history with his shot off the wall.
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