Don Mueller, right, with Willie Mays and Duke Snider in 1954.  His death was announced by his family.  Mueller was one of the finest singles hitters of his era, and he seldom struck out. His wizardry at the plate was never more in demand than on the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1951.  The Giants had come from far back to tie the Dodgers for first place in the National League. But in the finale of a three-game playoff, they were losing, 4-1, at the Polo Grounds going into the bottom of the ninth inning.  Alvin Dark led off by singling against Don Newcombe. When the left-handed-batting Mueller came to the plate, Gil Hodges, the Dodgers’ first baseman, stood close to the bag. Mueller took notice.  “I saw that hole sittin’ there like a deer in huntin’ season,” he was quoted by Thomas Kiernan in the book “Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff.”  “And I went for it. I was a hole hitter, always tried to hit the ball where the biggest hole was. If Hodges was playin’ off the bag, instead of tight behind Dark, I would’ve tried to go up the middle with the ball.”  Mueller drove a fastball to Hodges’s right, just beyond his reach. In keeping with his nickname, taken from the comic-strip magician created by Lee Falk in the 1930s, his single into the hole sent Dark to third base.  After Monte Irvin fouled out and Whitey Lockman doubled to left, Mueller made an awkward slide into third base, injuring ligaments and tendons in his left ankle. He was carried off on a stretcher. Clint Hartung, a reserve outfielder, ran for him.  Ralph Branca replaced Newcombe, and moments later Thomson connected on a three-run homer into the lower left-field stands, giving the Giants a 5-4 victory and the National League pennant. It came to be known as the “shot heard round the world.”  Mueller was lying on a clubhouse table when he heard the crowd erupt. “I couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t something good for the Dodgers because there were plenty of Brooklyn fans in that park,” he told Ray Robinson in “The Home Run Heard ’Round the World.” “There was no radio in the clubhouse. But I knew pretty quickly what had happened once the players got back to the clubhouse and started to pour Champagne over my injured ankle.”  Donald Frederick Mueller was born on April 14, 1927, in St. Louis, the son of Walter Mueller, an outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1920s. He made his debut with the Giants in 1948.  Though never a power hitter, he hit three home runs in a Polo Grounds game against the Dodgers on Sept. 1, 1951, and two more against them the next day. His fifth homer of the two-day span, tying a major league record, came seconds after he received word that his wife, Genevieve, had given birth to a boy.  Mueller’s ankle injury kept him out of the 1951 World Series, in which the Giants were beaten by the Yankees. He batted .342 with a league-leading 212 hits in 1954 and hit .389 when the Giants swept the Cleveland Indians that year in the World Series.  He was sold to the Chicago White Sox in March 1958 and retired early in the 1959 season with a career batting average of .296 for 12 seasons. He was an All-Star in 1954 and ’55.  Mueller, who lived in Maryland Heights, Mo., before entering a nursing home in Chesterfield, is survived by his sons, Mark, Kurt and Doug; a brother, Leroy; and four grandchildren. His wife died in July. Mark Mueller, born the day of his father’s record-tying home run, played minor league baseball.  Forty years after his dramatic homer, Thomson remembered the impact of Mueller’s single and his injury as well.  As Thomson was moving toward the batter’s box, he noticed that Mueller wasn’t getting up at third base. That eased the pressure on him.  “Instead of thinking about being the next hitter, I see Don lying on the ground,” Thomson told Dave Anderson of The New York Times. “It took my mind completely off the game.”
Mr. Mueller, a singles hitter, helped set up Bobby Thomsonâs 1951 pennant-winning home run and led the National League with 212 hits in 1954.