The Shot Heard Round the World
Bobby Thomson's 1951 Pennant-Winning Home Run off Ralph Branca
Bobby Thomson hits the most famous home run in baseball history.
This home run was an exclamation point on a dramatic season for the Giants.
Although some had considered the New York Giants a pre-season favorite to win the pennant, they faltered badly in the early going. By mid-August, the team was 13 1/2 games behind the league-leading Dodgers. But the Giants went on a late-season tear, winning 37 of their final 44 games to tie Brooklyn on the final day of the season and force a three-game playoff between the New York City rivals.
The teams split the first two games, forcing the decisive contest on October 3rd at the Polo Grounds, which was the Giants home field until 1957. The Dodgers took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Giants appeared doomed.
Newcombe, however, was showing the effects of overuse from the season's final days. Pitching on only two days' rest and tiring badly, he attempted to take himself out of the game, only to have Robinson talk him into trying to finish the inning.
Giants shortstop Alvin Dark singled to start the rally. Then Don Mueller singled to right, which sent Dark from first to third base. Monte Irvin followed, with a chance to drive in a run, but he chased the first pitch and popped out. Whitey Lockman followed with a double down the left-field line, scoring Dark and advancing Mueller to third. Mueller slid awkwardly into the bag and broke his ankle, forcing the Giants to send in Clint Hartung to pinch-run for him.
Charlie Dressen, the Brooklyn manager, finally pulled the spent Newcombe and sent Ralph Branca into the game. The move has bewildered baseball historians to this day. Branca had pitched and lost Game 1 of the tiebreaker and had given up several home runs that year to Thomson, who had hit 31 during the season. However, in Dressen's defense, he had no well-rested pitchers available; in the last regular-season game alone the Dodgers had sent seven men to the mound.
Branca's first pitch was a fastball down the middle for a strike. His second pitch was a fastball up and in to Thomson, intended as a setup for his planned next pitch, a breaking ball down and away. But Thomson yanked the fastball down the left-field line and toward the invitingly close outfield fence, with a foul line a mere 279 feet from home plate (unmarked), and a roll-up door in the 17-foot wall with a 315 marker posted, some 30 or 40 feet out from the foul line.
The moment was immortalized by the famous call of Giants play-by-play announcer Russ Hodges who cried, "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!"
Joshua Prager detailed the revelations in a book titled The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and The Shot Heard Round the World. Giant catcher Sal Yvars told Prager that he relayed to Thomson the stolen sign for Branca's fastball. But Thomson denied that he had foreknowledge of the pitch he hit off Branca for the pennant-winning home run.
This event was even more dramatic than it may seem to the modern sports observer, as league pennants were not routinely decided by playoff until 1969 and only occurred in years in which teams finished the regular season in a tie, as had happened in 1951.
