Shot Heard 'Round the World (baseball)
The Giants' late-season rally and 2-to-1-game playoff victory, capped by Thomson's moment of triumph, are collectively known in baseball lore as "The Miracle of Coogan's Bluff", a descriptor coined by the legendary sports columnist Red Smith.
[2] The phrase "shot heard round the world" is from the 1837 poem "Concord Hymn" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, about the first clash of the American Revolutionary War, and has been popularly applied to several dramatic historical moments.
[9] Nevertheless, in game one at Ebbets Field, the Giants, with Jim Hearn on the mound, defeated the Dodgers' Ralph Branca 3–1,[10] thanks to home runs by Bobby Thomson and Monte Irvin.
[11] In game two at the Polo Grounds, with the Yankees team in attendance as spectators[12] (another version has the Yankees at Game Three but leaving before the fateful home run to beat the traffic[13]), the Dodgers tied the series, winning 10–0 on home runs by Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Andy Pafko, and Rube Walker, who was catching in place of an injured Roy Campanella.
At that point, the Dodgers made a crucial defensive mistake: With no outs, a runner on first, and a three-run lead, the normal strategy would be to position the infield for a possible double play; but first baseman Gil Hodges played behind Dark — apparently guarding against a highly unlikely steal attempt — leaving a large gap on the right side of the infield.
[9] (Sportswriter Bud Greenspan and others have argued that, had the Dodger infield played Mueller at double-play depth, Irvin's pop-up would in all likelihood have been the season-ending third out.
In the bullpen, where Branca and Carl Erskine were warming up, coach Clyde Sukeforth noticed that Erskine — who had been troubled by arm problems all season — was bouncing his curve balls short of the plate(It also didn't help matters that Rube Walker was starting as catcher for this game after Roy Campanella was injured, and Walker was not a particularly fast runner), and advised Dressen to go with Branca.
The ball landed in the lower-deck stands near the left field foul line for a game-ending, three-run home run.
He erased both Dodger leads in the game, tying it at 1–1 with a sacrifice fly in the seventh, and, of course, winning it with his home run in the ninth.
[25] After Thomson tied the game with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the seventh inning, the Dodgers scored three runs in the top of the eighth to go ahead 4–1.
Two of the Dodger runs scored on balls hit towards Thomson, one deflecting off his glove into foul territory, and the other passing him into left field.
[28] The best known live description—"arguably the most famous call in sports"[29]—was delivered by Russ Hodges, who was broadcasting the game on WMCA-AM radio for Giants fans.
The WMCA call survives only because a Brooklyn-based fan named Lawrence Goldberg asked his mother to tape-record the last half-inning of the radio broadcast while he was at work.
[32] In later years, Hodges told interviewers that Goldberg was a Dodgers fan who made the tape "so he could hear the voice of the Giants weep when Brooklyn won".
"[35] Dodgers announcer Red Barber, calling the game for WMGM-AM radio, straightforwardly said, "Branca pumps, delivers – a curve, swung on and belted, deep shot to left field—it is—a home run!
Pittsburgh Pirates announcer Bob Prince was in the WMCA booth with Hodges and may have also participated in broadcasting the game.
[37][38] New York Herald Tribune sportswriter Red Smith titled his October 4 column "The Miracle of Coogan's Bluff", and began it with what has been called "the greatest lede ever written": Now it is done.
[46] Thomson's baseball legacy rests almost completely on the Shot, despite his other notable accomplishments, such as eight 20-home run seasons and three All Star selections.
[50] and a New York Times editorial that same day called Thomson's homer "the home run heard round the world.
The team overcame a seemingly insurmountable deficit of 13 games in the National League standings on August 11 to force the three-game playoff series against the Dodgers.
[55] In ensuing years, rumors began to circulate that during the second half of the 1951 season, the Giants engaged in systematic sign stealing—stealing the finger signals transmitted from catcher to pitcher that determine the pitch to be thrown.
[56] In 2001, many of the 21 Giants players still alive at the time, and one surviving coach, told the Wall Street Journal that beginning on July 20, the team used a telescope in the Giants clubhouse behind center field, manned by infielder Hank Schenz and later by coach Herman Franks, to steal the finger signals of opposing catchers.
Stolen signs were relayed via a buzzer wire connected from the clubhouse to telephones in the Giants dugout and bullpen—one buzz for a fastball, two for an off-speed pitch.
"[59] In another interview, Branca pointed out that luck and circumstance were involved as well; had the coin toss gone the other way, Thomson's Shot would not have been a home run at Ebbets Field—nor would the game-winner he hit in the first playoff game have been a homer at the Polo Grounds.
[60] Prager notes in his book that sign stealing was not specifically forbidden by MLB rules at the time and, moral issues aside, "...has been a part of baseball since its inception".
Thomson's game bat and shoes are the centerpieces of an exhibit dedicated to the Shot at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
[63] Thomson's game jersey is most likely in the collection of Dan Scheinman, a collector who owns a small minority stake in the Giants.
Documentary filmmaker and author Brian Biegel attempted unsuccessfully to authenticate a vintage baseball, autographed by several 1951 Giants, that his father had purchased at a thrift store for four dollars, and believed to be Thomson's home run ball.
[65] The event was recreated in Don DeLillo's story "Pafko at the Wall", subtitled "Shot Heard 'Round the World", originally published as a folio in the October 1992 issue of Harper's Magazine and re-released in 2001 as a novella.
Whenever I take visitors to see the monument, and stand before the marble shaft, reading that lovely inscription which commemorates 'the shot heard round the world,' I think privately of Bobby Thomson's home run.
