To mark the death of former New York Giant Bobby Thomson, whose 1951 playoff home run has become an iconic moment, I headed for my shelf of baseball books. I was looking for my copy of Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Wait Til Next Year," her touching memoir about a childhood as a long-suffering Brooklyn Dodgers fan, but I must have loaned it out. (If you have it, give it back!) So instead, I re-read a piece from Roger Kahn's great book, "How the Weather Was." A fitting tribute that recalls a simpler time.
Here's an excerpt from Kahn's "The Day Bobby Thomson Hit His Home Run": Then the ball was gone, under the overhanging scoreboard, over the high wall, gone deep into the seats in lower left, 320 feet from home plate. For seconds, which seemed like minutes, the crowd sat dumb. The came the roar. It was a roar matched all across the country, wherever people sat at radio or television sets, a roar of delight, a roar of horror, but mostly a roar of utter shock. It was a moment when all the country roared and when an office worker in a tall building on Wall Street, hearing a cry rise about her, wondered if war had been declared.
Rest in peace, Bobby.