Bobby Thomson Dies at 86

Bobby Thomson, the baseball player who hit “the shot heard 'round the world,” died on Monday at the age of 86. Thomson’s homerun against the Brooklyn Dodgers came on October 3, 1951 and capped the New York Giants’ late-summer comeback to capture the National League pennant; in mid-August, the Giants had trailed the Dodgers by 13.5 games, but a 16-game winning streak had them tied with the Dodgers for first in the season’s final weekend, and Thomson’s homerun pushed them over the top. “I can remember feeling as if time was just frozen,” Thomson once said of the homerun. “It was a delirious, delicious moment.” After advancing to the World Series, Thomson’s Giants lost to the Yankees in six games.