Lost in the furor and excitement of another World Series title for the Yankees came news from a fellow in New York City named Bill Trent.

Bill happens to be the leader of the old New York Giants Nostalgia Society.

Along with his letter came the sad news in the form of an obituary on an 89-year-old pitcher named Larry Jansen, who once toiled for our beloved Polo Grounders.

Lawrence Joseph Jansen was once a favorite of mine, and few recall that he was the winning pitcher in the greatest baseball game ever played — now and forever labeled “The Shot Heard ’Round The World.”

When one by one our boyhood heroes die, the world seems to get a bit colder and lonelier, because their likes will never come again and it reminds me of the fact that we, too, are growing older.

Larry and his wife Eileen, out of Verboot, Ore., had a big family to feed (five girls and five boys), so Larry earned his family’s daily bread the best way he knew how — pitching in the Pacific Coast League for Lefty O’Doul’s San Francisco Seals.

He was the last old PCL pitcher to win 30 games in one season in 1946.

The 1947 New York Giants bought Larry’s contract, and he won 21 games as a rookie with Mel Ott’s “All hit, no pitch, no speed” club — helping the cellar-dwelling Giants rise to fourth place in the old eight-team National League.   

But, by midseason in 1948, Ott was out as the Jints skipper, and Leo “The Lip” Durocher — the once-hated Brooklyn Dodgers manager — took the helm.

He backed up the moving van, unloading old and slow sluggers for kids, led by 18-game winner Larry Jansen.

By 1950, teaming up with Sal “The Barber” Maglie — noted for the close shaves he gave opposing batters — the Giants once more became a National League power.

They battled the Brooklyn Dodgers and eventual pennant-winning Philadelphia Phillies down to the wire in the 1950 National League race, but the best was yet to come.

On Aug. 12, 1951, the Giants were 131⁄2 games behind the old Brooklyn Dodgers, who fielded a team that included four future Hall of Famers in Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider and Roy Campanella.

But the Giants, behind Jansen, Maglie and a 20-year-old rookie named Willie Mays, never gave up.

By Aug. 27, the Giants had run up a 16-game winning streak.

Larry Jansen won his 17th game on a memorable day when the Dodgers’ lead had shrunk to just five games.

On Sept. 30, the last day of the 1951 season, the Giants assured themselves of at least a tie as Larry pitched his team to a tough 3-2 win in Boston over the Braves.

Contrary to any Brooklyn propaganda you might have read of the Giants catching up to “Dem Bums,” it was the Dodgers — in a 14-inning game in Philadelphia — who had to do the catching up and earn a three-game National League playoff against the Giants.

The series began at Ebbetts Field, with the Giants winning 3-1 behind the home runs of Monte Irvin and Bobby Thomson, “The Flying Scot.”

Then the series moved to the Polo Grounds for Game 2, and if necessary, Game 3.

This scribe — a definite jinx — sat in on a 10-0 whipping applied by the Dodgers’ Clem Labine to my beloved Jints.

Then and there I vowed that I would not go near the Polo Grounds for Game 3.

My Giants would win it — or lose it — without me.

The game for all the marbles was played out on Oct. 3, 1951, and the outlook looked bleak.

With the Giants down 4-1 in that final game, Larry Jansen entered the fray in the top of the ninth inning and relieved Sal Maglie, who had given his all.

Leo Durocher did not want the Dodgers’ three-run lead to grow larger, so Larry set the Dodgers down, striking out two of “Dem Bums.”

The Giants’ last half-inning, then and forever more, are the dreams this beautiful game is made of.

Hits by Al Dark, Whitey Lockman and Don Mueller led to the moment when Bobby Thomson hit “The Shot Heard ’Round the World.”

And it was the New York Giants, who on the next day would cross the narrow Harlem River to face the almighty Yankees of Joe DiMaggio in “The House That Ruth Built.”

Oh, and a little-known fact came out of the bedlam that swept the city and the baseball world — Larry Jansen was the winning pitcher in that game, his 23rd victory.

Almost a half century later, I was attending a Society For American Baseball Research convention at the Marriott Hotel in San Francisco.

Lyle Spatz, once a Brooklyn boy and Dodger fan and chairman of SABR’s Records Committee, was discussing our salad days in New York — and suddenly, Lyle stopped in mid-sentence.

With a smile on his face he asked me if I knew the well-dressed, silver-haired gentleman standing about 20 feet away reading a SABR convention program.

Maybe Brooklyn Lyle was testing me, throwing this old Giants fan a curve ball, but I hit Lyle’s pitch right on the nose with a “Sure I do, that’s Larry Jansen!”

Lyle led me over to Larry and introductions were made, just an old Giants pitcher and a born Giants fan reminiscing about our days at the Polo Grounds on 155th Street and 8th Avenue in old New York.

And of course the subject of “The Shot Heard ’Round The World” came up.

I asked Larry Jansen what he felt when Bobby Thomson’s home run slammed into the Polo Grounds’ lower left field seats.

His answer surprised me when he said, “For only a second or two — cold fear!”

When I asked him why, Larry Jansen said, “I thought for just those few seconds that we’d tied, not won the game, and I had nothing left in the tank.”

Lawrence Joseph Jansen was one of a kind — a talented and gentle Giant — and the world is poorer without him.

Ev Parker can be reached at evjenpar@mailbug.com.