Clint Hartung dies at 87; New York Giants pitcher, outfielder

Clint Hartung, a pitcher and outfielder with the New York Giants who became a bit player in one of the most dramatic moments in baseball history, has died. He was 87.

Hartung was on third base when the Giants’ Bobby Thomson hit a home run off the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ralph Branca in the third game of a 1951 playoff to win the National League pennant.

Hartung died July 8 in Sinton, Tex., a spokeswoman for the Ritchea-Gonzales Funeral Home confirmed. No cause was given.

Stardom had been predicted for Hartung when the Hondo, Tex., native came to the Giants in 1947. Sportswriters called the 6-foot-5 right-hander “the Hondo Hurricane” and compared him to Babe Ruth and Paul Bunyan. The Giants purchased his contract from a minor league team for $25,000 and four players.

He played for the Giants from 1947-52 and hit .238 with 14 home runs and was 29-29 as a pitcher.

Clinton Clarence Hartung was born Aug. 10, 1922. He signed out of high school with a minor league team in Minneapolis and continued to play baseball during four years in the Army.

Hartung’s legend grew in the service. In one year in Hawaii, he reportedly was 25-0 as a pitcher and hit 30 home runs. Before his first season with the Giants, his exploits had been featured in Life and Time magazines.

His best season was 1947, with nine wins as a pitcher. He also hit .309 with four home runs. But he never came close to matching the lofty expectations that were placed on him. He stopped pitching after the 1950 season and also played one game at first base.

“We all rooted for him,” the late Buddy Blattner, a Giants teammate who later became famous as a baseball broadcaster, told the San Antonio Express-News in 2007. “I loved to watch him take batting practice. He made the rest of us look like we were in a lifelong slump.”

By 1951, Hartung was labeled “the Faded Phenom” in an article in the New York Times. He played sparingly that season but was part of the Giants’ legendary rally against their archrivals, the Dodgers.

The teams had finished the regular season tied for first and each team had won one playoff game.

Hartung entered the game in the ninth inning as a pinch-runner for Don Mueller, who injured an ankle sliding into third base after a double by Whitey Lockman cut the Dodgers’ lead to 4-2. Thomson’s home run off Branca, which became known as “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” gave the Giants a 5-4 victory.

Hartung quit baseball in 1955 and returned to Texas, where he worked for an oil company. A complete list of survivors was not available.

keith.thursby@latimes.com