70 years ago the Dodgers and Giants played the greatest game in the history of baseball. As the 1951 season entered mid-August, the Dodgers were in first place by 13½ games, with the Giants lagging behind in second. This was a time when the American and National Leagues each had eight teams with the best team in each league advancing to the World Series at the end of the season, meaning the Dodgers had all but wrapped up the pennant. No one told that to the Giants, who finished the season on a 37-7 stretch, coming all the way back to force a three-game playoff against the Dodgers with the winner advancing to face the Yankees in the World Series. All of it culminated in the third game, with the Dodgers leading 4-1 going into the bottom of the ninth, needing three outs to advance to the World Series. That’s when the Giants once again started rallying, cutting the lead to 4-2 with two men on when long-time Giant Bobby Thompson stepped up to the plate to face newly inserted pitcher Ralph Branca. Thompson proceeded to hit a three-run home run to win the pennant, in a moment that would forever be known as the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”
In order to properly contextualize Thompson’s home run, we have to look beyond simply the stakes of the moment on paper. While it is certainly up there, this is not the most important moment in baseball history strictly based on the moment itself. This Home Run won the pennant, but there have been Home Runs to win the World Series, including one by Bill Mazeroski in Game 7 of the 1960 Fall Classic. What makes this the greatest moment in baseball history is the context of New York baseball at the time, and the importance of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry. This was a time when New York ruled the baseball world, when the sport's three best teams all came from the same city while also being representative of the cultural dynamics of post-war America. You see, this was a time when the New York suburbs were still developing, meaning that the fandom of the three teams was increasingly concentrated in the city. The Yankees were viewed by both teams as the white elites of Manhattan. They were the team of the rich Wall Street elite, the team for whom people in suits went to a stadium where the ushers all wore white gloves. What’s more, the Yankees were still four years away from integrating despite the fact that Jackie Robinson was in his fifth year for the Dodgers by that point. The Dodgers and Giants were viewed as the teams of the everyman, the teams for the melting pot immigrant and minority communities in Brooklyn and the Bronx. In a country and a city that was entering a period of racial and ethnic strife, this was the one setting where it didn’t matter whether you were Jewish or Italian or Irish or Black or Russian. It simply mattered whether you were from Brooklyn or the Bronx and whether you rooted for the Dodgers or the Giants. This created a rivalry that at the time was on par with that of the Red Sox and Yankees, because while they were the two best teams in the National League, the Dodgers and Giants rivalry went beyond the field. It penetrated classrooms, synagogues, and churches, and served as an extension of the working class of New York. Never before or since have two teams' fan bases been so geographically concentrated- but that in turn created even more passion and a connection between the teams and their communities that has never been replicated in the history of American sports. These teams largely reflected their fanbases, with the game featuring a combined four black future Hall of Famers, including Jackie Robinson and a rookie Willie Mays. The game-winning Home Run was hit by Bobby Thompson, an Irish immigrant who moved to New York when he was 2, while the pitched was Ralph Branca, the son of Italian and Jewish immigrants. Simply put, this game mattered. When you combine the cultural dynamics of New York City, the intensity of the rivalry, the nature of the Giants comeback, and the fact that the winner had to go across the Harlem River to face the hated Yankees at a stadium less than a mile away from the site of Thompson’s home run, there has never been a more important game or home run in baseball history.
Given everything I’ve just said, you may be wondering why you haven’t heard more about this in the lead-up to Giants-Dodgers. If that moment was so great, why is everyone saying that this is the first time the two have met in the Playoffs without mention their history outside of the regular season? Well, this moment has started to slowly fade away, still living as the greatest moment in the history of baseball while no longer being immediately identifiable in the manner that Michael Jordan’s shot against the Jazz is, something that is emblematic of a greater problem baseball faces. You see, baseball is a sport that has largely lived on its history. It has the biggest sourcebook of any sport, going all the way back to moments that earned nicknames such as Merkle’s Boner in 1908, and Snodgrass’s Muff in 1912 (if only the internet were around 100 years ago). Not that the contemporary moments never mattered, but for a sport that has literally been nicknamed the “National Pastime,” the aura of baseball’s past always loomed large over the sport. Part of what is great about baseball is the feeling that you are a part of something greater than you can comprehend. Not in the sense that a player is a part of the team, but in the sense that when you walk into Fenway Park or Wrigley Field you are sitting just feet away from where Babe Ruth roamed. In the sense that when you go to a game as a child, you are doing the same thing that your great-grandparents did. In the sense that I can only wonder about the "Shot Heard 'Round the World", while my Grandparents were Dodgers and Giants fans living as teenagers in New York and the Bronx at the time. But that is no longer how people identify with history. The only remaining film of Thompson’s Home Run is a newsreel that follows him up the bases- meaning that we get to see everything about the excitement of the moment except for the Home Run itself landing. In a time of mass media, kids no longer want to hear stories from their parents. They’d much rather just go watch something else on YouTube. Basketball and Football do not have that problem because their history is more recent, meaning that nearly everything is on film.
The final problem that baseball has is the lack of stars in its greatest moments- something that used to be what made it great. Part of what helped create the aura around baseball is the fact that it was a true team sport. That in a game that featured six Hall of Famers, the fate of two teams would come down to Ralph Branca and Bobby Thompson. That for two teams that represented the everyman, the everymen of baseball could become heroes that fans could identify with. But that is no longer how fans identify with sports. We live in an era where the star is more marketable than the team, meaning that a star needs to be in a big moment in order for it to be identifiable. This is a disadvantage of baseball because it is the one sport where you have a limited decision over whether your star gets to decide your game, meaning that many of Baseball's greatest moments mostly feature average players. No kid playing in their backyard wants to pretend to be Bobby Thompson, or Bill Mazeroski, or Bucky Dent, or David Freese when they can pretend to be LeBron blocking Andre Iguodala or Tom Brady coming back against the Falcons? It’s no wonder that the baseball moment from yesteryear that has lived on the most is Babe Ruth’s called shot. It doesn’t matter that there is no video of the blast, because at this point whether or not the Babe actually called his shot is immaterial, a question mostly pondered by baseball’s historians. All that matters is that Babe Ruth is a name that people can identify with and calling your shot is something that kids playing on Wiffle Ball Fields and Little League Diamonds across the country can replicate, meaning that it has a lore outside of the fabric of Major League Baseball.
The decline of baseball’s history is perhaps best exemplified by the declining societal relevance of the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” This was a moment that as soon as those words were uttered everyone knew what they meant both in terms of what happened and the significance of the moment. When the Wall Street Journal wrote an article detailing a sign-stealing scheme by the Giants down the stretch of that season that echoed that of the Astros, it was front-page news, worthy of debate on talk shows across America. When the same writer recently ran a follow-up confirming that Thompson received a signal before his fateful Home Run- the one thing Thompson continuously denied- the story barely made a blip. For a moment that was once ranked by ESPN as the second greatest American sports moment of the 20th century, people are now acting as if the Giants and Dodgers have zero history outside of the regular season. Baseball already has a problem maintaining relevance in the greater context of contemporary society, a problem that has been discussed ad nauseum. But if the sport doesn't figure out a way to once again make people identify with its history, baseball is at risk of losing its spot as a central cultural piece in the story of America.
____________________________________________________________________________
Week 5 Picks
Last Week’s Record: 7-11 (0-2 locks)
Season Record: 34-36
*Lines as of Thursday Afternoon
Seahawks (+2.5) vs Rams
Falcons (-2.5) vs Jets (London)
Packers (-3, lock) @ Bengals
Vikings (-9) vs Lions
Broncos (-1.5) vs Steelers
Buccaneers (-10) vs Dolphins
WFT (+2.5) vs Saints
Panthers (-3) vs Eagles
Titans (-4) vs Jaguars
Patriots (-9) @ Texans
Bears (+5.5) @ Raiders
Chargers (-2.5) vs Browns
Cowboys (-7) vs Giants
49ers (+5) @ Cardinals
Chiefs (-3) vs Bills
Comments