SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
With apologies to historians, Revolutionary War reenactors and the entire state of Massachusetts, a shot heard around the world happened 75 years ago today at the Polo Grounds in New York City.
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RUSS HODGES: One out, last of the ninth, Branca pitches. Bobby Thomson takes a strike called on...
SIMON: The New York Giants had clawed their way back into the National League pennant race, going from 13 1/2 games out to a tie with their loathed rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, forcing a three-game playoff to decide which team would face the Yankees in the World Series. In those days, it was always the damn Yankees. Game 1 - Giants. Game 2 - Dodgers. Game 3, bottom of the ninth, Dodgers up 4-2 and on the brink of winning the pennant when they call on pitcher Ralph Branca to close it out. Giants' Bobby Thomson at the plate, two men on base. He hit Branca's second pitch into the left-field seats and set off what might be the most famous call in sports history.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HODGES: Branca throws. There's a long fly. It's going to 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 it into the lower deck of the left-field stands. The Giants win the pennant, and they're going crazy. They're going crazy. Ah. Whoa.
SIMON: A high school student named George Hirsch was at the Polo Grounds that day in 1951, but George Hirsch was a Dodgers fan. He's gracious enough to talk to us now. Thanks so much for being with us, Mr. Hirsch.
GEORGE HIRSCH: Yeah. Good morning, Scott. Thank you.
SIMON: So how'd you wind up at the Polo Grounds that day? I mean, there was school, wasn't there?
HIRSCH: There was school. And I got to my homeroom at New Rochelle High School that morning, and like everybody, we were talking about the game. And before you know it, I said to a few friends, you know, there's no advance ticket sale, of course, because no one had planned on this final game. Why don't we head out of here? And we jumped into my car, a 1937 Plymouth with a rumble seat, and off we went for the Polo Grounds.
SIMON: I mean, this was, like, one of the most intense pennant races in history.
HIRSCH: Yeah. It really was. And as you know, Scott, back then, baseball was really the sport in this country. And New York was the center of the baseball universe. Everybody - everybody had a team. I mean, if you didn't have a team back then, you just basically didn't have a pulse.
SIMON: We heard a clip from Russ Hodges' famous call. But Red Smith, the great sports writer, wrote what is sometimes considered the greatest sports lead ever. Let me read.
(Reading) The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.
So did you feel you were in the presence of history?
HIRSCH: Absolutely. Oh, gosh. I felt I was at the center of the world. Certainly, before Bobby Thomson swung at that second pitch, I just felt - this is exactly where I would want to be at this very moment. And the next morning, the three of us came to school. And we were given these pink slips, which meant, come to the principal's office - not a good thing at all. And the vice principal - she was a disciplinarian named Loretta Coons. She kept us waiting, and then she brought us into her office. And she said, who among you are Dodger fans? And three of us raised our hands. And she paused for a second, and she said, well, you've suffered enough. She said, I'm a Giants fan. They...
SIMON: Ha.
HIRSCH: Yesterday, she said, Scott, you probably saw the greatest game ever played. So here's what we're going to do. After school today, you're going to come back down here, and you're going to tell me all about the game - every detail. And then we're going to let it go.
SIMON: Aww. Now, that's a wise educator.
HIRSCH: Absolutely (laughter). I agree.
SIMON: So it gets to be early October every year - a feeling comes over you?
HIRSCH: Yeah. But, you know, I've never had that same love affair that I had with the Dodgers. It's just not the same. I love Shohei Ohtani. I think they're a great team and all that. But I just couldn't bear to be a LA Dodger fan. Just never seemed right to me.
SIMON: 'Cause they win too much?
HIRSCH: Because they left Brooklyn. They left us in the lurch (laughter). You know, you just can't forgive them for that. So I didn't go to LA with them.
SIMON: George Hirsch, former Brooklyn Dodgers fan, sharing some memories of the shot heard round the world. Thank you so much for being with us, and we'll look forward to next year too.
HIRSCH: Thank you, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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