There are some nice articles on Bobby Thomson today. Here’s an excerpt from on old Roger Angell piece:

I gestured urgently to my wife, just then passing from kitchen toward bedroom with a jar of Gerber’s in her hand. “You might not want to miss this,” I said, unable to lift my gaze from the screen. “It could just be—”

“Be right back,” she said, disappearing from the room.

Too late. Several other things now disappeared as well—in rough succession: the ball into the lower grandstand seats at the Polo Grounds, above the left-field wall; self-control (“They did it! They did it! My God, they did it!” I yelled, rushing distractedly from room to room, bumping into walls and dogs and relatives); Bobby Thomson, the batter (who had just written the meaty portion of the first sentence of his obituary, whenever that would be), into embraces of his teammates around home plate; the Dodgers (severally, slowly, slumpingly, across the littered outfield and up the steep stairway to their clubhouse); and—soon thereafter, it seems—all further memory of the day and the game and my own succeeding emotions and remarks and celebratory gestures and exclamations on this the greatest moment of my life as a deep-eyed, native-born Giants fan, fan of baseball, fan of fable, fan….

The four-run ninth-inning rally, capped by Bobby Thomson’s killing homer against the Dodgers’ Ralph Branca, not only won the 1951 National League pennant for the Giants (the two teams had finished the regular season in a tie, and split the first two games of their best-of-three playoff) but stands as the most vivid single moment, the grand exclamation point, in the history of the pastime. So we believed then—knew it, on the instant—and so I believe to this day, and it’s funny that I can remember nothing else about that afternoon.