What does Ralph Waldo Emerson have to do with baseball?
Not much really if you consider he lived only 43 years after Gen. Abner Doubleday "invented" the game in Elihu Phinney's cow pasture in Cooperstown, NY in 1839. The earliest known description of baseball, however, is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. But I digress.
What does Ralph Waldo Emerson have to do with baseball? Well, a phrase from his classic poem Concord Hymn (1837), originally used to refer to the first clash of the American Revolutionary War was used to describe an event that took place 114 years later at the Polo Grounds in New York.
The "Shot Heard 'Round the World" is the term for the walk-off home run hit by New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca to win the National League pennant in 1951.
By mid-August, the Giants were 13 1/2 games behind the league-leading Dodgers. But they won 37 of their final 44 games to tie the Dodgers on the final day of the season and force the three-game playoff.
They split the first two, forcing the decisive game on October 3rd at the Polo Grounds. The Dodgers took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth, but Thomson's homer turned certain defeat into a 5-4 victory.
Not much really if you consider he lived only 43 years after Gen. Abner Doubleday "invented" the game in Elihu Phinney's cow pasture in Cooperstown, NY in 1839. The earliest known description of baseball, however, is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. But I digress.
What does Ralph Waldo Emerson have to do with baseball? Well, a phrase from his classic poem Concord Hymn (1837), originally used to refer to the first clash of the American Revolutionary War was used to describe an event that took place 114 years later at the Polo Grounds in New York.
The "Shot Heard 'Round the World" is the term for the walk-off home run hit by New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca to win the National League pennant in 1951.
By mid-August, the Giants were 13 1/2 games behind the league-leading Dodgers. But they won 37 of their final 44 games to tie the Dodgers on the final day of the season and force the three-game playoff.
They split the first two, forcing the decisive game on October 3rd at the Polo Grounds. The Dodgers took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth, but Thomson's homer turned certain defeat into a 5-4 victory.
