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Posted by: rs on 12/02/1997@01:52hrs:
Before JFK was assassinated the only things I heard people recall out loud where they were when it happened were the News of Pearl Harbor and the day in October when Bobby Thompson (of SI, of course) poled the pitch from Ralph Branca of the hated Dodgers out of the Polo Grounds to win the Pennant for the N.Y. Giants. Having come from 13 1/2 games down at the end of the season, and with two strikes down, two runs down, two outs, and two men on base, Thompson's homer was the most dramatic in the history of the world, SI, and Baseball, before or since, all hyperbole aside.
I was an eleven-year-old Dodger hater from the word go. Loved the Yankees and the Giants. Was caught up in the baseball fever that struck every Autumn. Came home from PS29 to catch the end of the game on a kit TV my dad wired together and mounted on a shelf behind a basement wall, so you looked at the wall to watch tv. Saw the homer. Ran out into the street shouting like a fool, only that wasn't foolish then and there. Don DeLillo, in his 1997 book about the years 1951 to the present, opens with the first chapter describing this home run. In it he mentions how people felt this need to run outdoors and proclaim the home run. Last time I went outside to see what the rest of the world was doing was 1989 after the Loma Prieta Earthquake hit San Francisco and made my house rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... I needed to find out what the neighbors were thinking. They were similarly impressed. For some events, the earth moves...
Where were you for the Shot Heard 'Round the World?