No, not Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But the “Shot heard ’round the world,” the game that regularly brings up “The Giants win the pennant” call. The game that forever link the names Thomson and Branca a generation before Wilson and Buckner. I was reminded of the platinum anniversary by a piece in […]
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Bobby Thomson,
New York Giants,
Ralph Branca
For whatever reason, M*A*S*H has long been one of my “comfort” TV programs. May seen kind of weird, latching on to an incongruous comedy about war. Oh, well. One of last night’s episodes on ME-TV — the cable station for aging baby boomers with shows like Perry Mason, Adam-12, The Flintstones, etc. — was “War […]
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Bobby Thomson,
Ken Levine,
M*A*S*H
One of my favorite shows of all times was M*A*S*H. Some of the earlier episodes don’t hold up so well, but one which sticks out is “A War for All Seasons.” Why, you may ask? Because baseball. Stiers — who passed away last Saturday at the age of 75 — played the imperious Major Charles […]
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Bobby Thomson,
Brooklyn Dodgers
Looking over the overlooked in baseball books stuff. In honor of Mothers’ Day, this piece by David Seideman in Forbes urges you to “Forgive Your Mom For Throwing Out Your Baseball Cards.” Is it my imagination or are Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner turning into Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson? MLB.com described Mookie’s new memoir […]
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Baseball Cards,
baseball fiction,
Baseball Hall of Fame,
Bill Buckner,
Bill Madden,
Bobby Thomson,
Mariano Rivera,
Mookie Wilson,
New York Mets,
New York Yankees,
Nolan Ryan,
Ralph Branca,
Willie Mays
Speaking of the Dodgers, the legend (wait for it) ary broadcaster was himself the subject of this interview on All Things Considered. Scully began working for the Dodgers in 1950, but he wasn’t calling that historic 1951 playoff game with the NY Giants where Pafko was left hanging. From “Vin Scully Remembers His Greatest Calls,” […]
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All Things Considered,
Andy Pafko,
Bobby Thomson,
Brooklyn Dodgers,
Vin Scully
Ain’t it funny how time slips away? Baseball artist Graig Kreindler reminded his Facebook friends that today is the 62nd anniversary of Bobby Thomson’s ‘Shot heard ’round the world.” There have been several books — both fiction and non- — marking this historic event, including, in no particular order: The Echoing Green: The Untold Story […]
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Bobby Thomson
Literary birthday greetings: 1952 – Bob Costas, announcer Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case for Baseball, by Costas. Broadway, 2000. Also on this date: 1962: A former member of the New York Giants requesting anonymity reveals that Bobby Thomson’s home run in the 1951 playoffs against the Brooklyn Dodgers was helped by a sign-stealing clubhouse spy. […]
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Barry Bonds,
Bob Costas,
Bobby Thomson,
Roger Maris,
Rogers Hornsby
Pedro Martinez turns 39 today. Hard to believe he couldn’t find somebody to take a chance on him in 2010. He was the subject for numerous children’s books in both English and Spanish, as well as Pedro, Carlos, and Omar: The Story of a Season in the Big Apple and the Pursuit of Baseball’s Top […]
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Bobby Thomson,
Pedro Martinez
Joshua Prager “broke” the story that the Giants used an elaborate system of electronic buzzers to pass along stolen signals from the outfield, which he incorporated into his book, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World in The Wall Street Journal, so I thought […]
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Bobby Thomson
The man who hit “the shot heard ’round the world” died yesterday at the age of 86. Here’s the Richard Goldstein obituary in The New York Times. There have been several books about Thomson’s heroics. His home run is a staple of baseball lore in both fact and fictional versions. The Giants Win the Pennant! […]
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Bobby Thomson
By Bob Mitchell. Kensington, 2008. As a lover of the TV show Lost and sci-fi in general, I always welcome the chance to mix the genre with baseball (see, Baseball Fantastic, edited by W.P. Kinsella). So it was with a sense of joy when Bob Mitchell’s Once Upon a Fastball swerved from a regular work […]
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baseball fiction,
Bob Mitchell,
Bobby Thomson,
New York Giants,
New York Mets
by Brian Biegel. Crown, 2009. Miracle Ball is at once a sweet and haunting book. The premise has the author, whose day job is that of an independent filmmaker, on an obsessive quest to find the whereabouts of an/or ownership of the ball hit by Bobby Thomson in the 1951 playoff game against the Brooklyn […]
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"The shot heard 'round the world",
Bobby Thomson,
Brian Biegel,
Memorabilia
Bloomberg.com includes two baseball titles in this piece on sports books: S.L. Price’s Heart of the Game about Mike Coolbaugh’s on-field death, and Miracle Ball by Brian Biegel, which looks at the search for “the shot heard ’round the world.”
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Bobby Thomson,
Mike Coolbaugh,
Ralph Branca
Would it seem silly to you to devote an entire book that showed a particular baseball was not the one hit by Bobby Thomson in the 1951 playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. That how I felt when I read this piece in The New Daily News on Miracle Ball: My Search for the Shot […]
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1951 Plaoyoffs,
Bobby Thomson,
Brooklyn Dodgers,
NY Giants,
Ralph Branca
Sal Yvars, the catcher for the New York Giants who spilled the beans about sign stealing during the famous playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951, died Dec. 10 at the age of 84. Richard Goldstein does his usual excellent job in the NY Times‘ obituary. Yvars, the Giants’ back-up receiver from 1957-53 (with […]
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"The shot heard 'round the world",
Bobby Thomson,
New York Giants,
Sal Yvars