Blast From the Past: Bobby Thomson, RIP

Bobby Thomson died yesterday at the age of 86. Perhaps no one in the history of sports achieved instant fame and then had that moment frozen into immortality quite the way Bobby Thomson did just a bit short of 59 years ago at the Polo Grounds in New York City.

The Giants had already made an improbable comeback, overcoming a 13 1/2 game deficit by winning 37 of their last 44 games to finish in a tie with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the NL Pennant. There were generally no playoff games back in those days. Just the pennant race and then the World Series between the two league champions, so a 3 game playoff to decide the league championship was in itself unusually exciting. I'm pretty sure that the fact that it involved two teams from NY played a role in raising the stakes in the eyes of the press and to the ultimate immortality of Thomson's role. The Giants and Dodgers split the first two games of the series. The third game found the Dodgers leading 4-1 going to the bottom of the 9'th inning for the home-team Giants. The Giants managed to plate one run and then had 2 runners on base with 2 outs when Bobby Thomson stepped to the plate.

I had always thought that Bobby Thomson's HR that day was almost a fluke, a chance occurence by a pretty average or even below average ballplayer. I learned something new today. I discovered that Bobby Thomson was actually a pretty darn good player who was known for hitting HR's. In fact, he hit a total of 264 HR's in a career that lasted just over 12 seasons. He averaged about 22 HR's per season for his career. That's pretty darn good even by recent standards. In the history making 1951 season, he hit a career high 32 HR's which was 5'th best in the majors. Giants fans had every right to hope for something good to happen when Thomson came to the plate that October afternoon.

The Dodger's pitcher was Ralph Branca who had once won 21 games for the Dodgers, but was on the downside of his career by 1951. With 2 runners on base and a rookie named Willie Mays in the on-deck circle, Thomson hit a shot down the LF line that found the short porch in the Polo Grounds for a walk-off game winning, playoff-series winning HR. The Korean War was in progress, and radio had recently gained the ability to cover the world. The game was broadcast on Armed Forces Radio. I believe an episode of M.A.S.H was based on the event. Thomson's HR would soon be immortalized as "The Shot Heard Round the World." And it was! Adding to the drama was Giants radio broadcaster Russ Hodges who screamed into the microphone, "The Giant win the pennant!" "The Giants win the Pennant!" over and over for several minutes.

I remember listening to the last game of the 1966 season. The Giants had already been eliminated in a very close race with the Dodgers for the NL Pennant. The game had a sad, autumn feel to it, even to a young kid 10 years old at the time. As the postgame show came to an end, they replayed Hodges' call of Bobby Thomson's HR. That is a moment I will never, ever forget. I had read about the event in the Word Book Encyclopedia and in a book about the history of baseball written by Russ Hodges, but hearing a recording of Hodges' call just sent a wave of excitement through me that, for a moment, made me forget that the Giants had just finished second to the Dodgers for the second year in a row. When it was done, I was left with a yearning to hear the game where the Giants won the World Series in my time that has burned inside me for 44 years now. I'm still waiting for that game and that call!

Source: http://whenthegiantscometotown.blogspot.com/2010/08/blast-from-past-bobby-thomson-rip.html