shot heard around the world

the year - 1951. the site - New York. happening - best of three tiebreak between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. the Dodgers and Giants had tied for first in the National League, so they had to play a best of three playoff to determine who would play the New York Yankees. the Giants had won the first game 3-1, while the Dodgers won game two 10-0. set up game three at the Polo Grounds in New York. the Dodgers had built up a 4-1 lead going into the bottom of the 9th. Alvin Dark started the inning with a single. Don Mueller hit a base hit through a defensive gap sending Dark to third. Monte Irvin fouled out. Whitey Lockman hit a double scoring Dark and sending Mueller to third. Mueller hurt his ankle sliding awkwardly into third, and thus replaced by Clint Hartung to pinch run. Dodgers manager Chuck Dressen pulled Don Newcombe for Ralph Branca. Bobby Thomson came to the plate. Branca threw two pitches to him. the first was called a strike on the inside corner. the second was sent into the left field seats. the Giants win 5-4. the only recording was from Russ Hodges. "There's a long drive ... it's gonna be, I believe ... The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands! The Giants win the pennant and they're going crazy! They're going crazy! I don't believe it! I don't believe it! I do not believe it! Bobby Thomson hit a line drive into the lower deck of the left-field stands and this blame place is going crazy! The Giants! Horace Stoneham has got a winner! The Giants won it by a score of 5 to 4, and they're picking Bobby Thomson up, and carrying him off the field!" as the story went, Lawrence Goldberg had asked his mother to record the bottom of the 9th while he was at work. in later year. Russ Hodges said that Goldberg was a Dodgers fan who made the tape "to hear the Giants weep when the Dodgers won." Red Smith of the New York Herald Tribune titled his column "the miracle at Coogan's Bluff" (Coogan's Bluff was where the Polo Grounds was located) and this is how he started it: "Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again." the Giants eventually lost to the Yankees in the world series.