Books : The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World (Vintage)
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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN num: 9780375713071
ISBN number: 0375713077
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 544
Printing Date: March 11, 2008
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: March 11, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 487707
Studio: Vintage
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Product Description:
At 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca. The ball sailed over the left field wall and into history. The Giants won the pennant. That moment—the Shot Heard Round the World—reverberated from the West Wing of the White House to the Sing Sing death house to the Polo Grounds clubhouse, where hitter and pitcher forever turned into hero and goat. It was also in that centerfield block of concrete that, after the home run, a Giant coach tucked away a Wollensak telescope. The Echoing Green places that revelation at the heart of a larger story, re-creating in extravagant detail and illuminating as never before the impact of both a moment and a long-guarded secret on the lives of Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca.
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Rated by buyers 
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I have to read this book for school, so take that into consideration for my review. The author put a lot of detail into this book. For someone not familiar with the sport, it was too much detail which bogged the book down and made it a slow read. If you love baseball and statistics, then you will probably like this book.
Rated by buyers 
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"Mueller, of all his team best at directing a pitched ball into the gaps afield, did so now..."
If you enjoy pretentious, overwritten prose such as that, you'll probably love this book. Because the entire book is written that way.
Rated by buyers -
A well researched and excruiatingly detailed book. I thouroughly enjoyed the micro-history approach of this one event and then deconstructing it from the very beginning. I hesitated purchasing the book after viewing the ESPN story. I am glad I waited for the memory to fade. I applaud the author and editor's desire to allow the minutia to trickle through. I have read many a baseball book, and the details are often either glanced or skipped and I am glad that did not happen here. I was born in 1969 and knew nothing of the event other than the five seconds from TV. This is a great story and the back story on the players, managers, Abe Chadwick, etc. are a detective's dream.
Well done.
Rated by buyers -
Joshua Prager has done it. He has forced a diehard Dodgers fan (then, not now) to stop retreating from that awful moment on Oct. 3, 1951, and come face to face with it, feel it, smell it, breathe it, understand it. This is no mere sports book. It is cultural history, a close-up view of America at midcentury and something of an espionage yarn--but not too much of that because I avoid the Deighton and le Carre types. The writing style takes some getting used to, indeed some sleuthing-out. But once you have mastered sentences like (and this is my own doing), "Now did Thomson, he who had never talked back to his mother, she of stern Scots descent, traipse to the plate and to the catcher Campanella hand his mask," you may actually warm to a form that someone in these reviews has called "latinate." The two protagonists of that day, Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca, are dealt with in microscopic detail, treated as if on couches in a shrink's office, but for me some of the lesser characters are more fascinating--the Giants who conspired to steal the Dodgers' signals and relay them to Thomson and others, the NY manager Leo Durocher, etc. There is a little too much of the hapless Dodgers fan who happens to be the electrician who installs the buzzer system in the Giants' clubhouse that helped relay the fateful signal to Thomson just before he hit "the shot heard round the world." But the unwitting fellow fits into the overall scheme. There are no short cuts in this book, no detail or stat too trivial, good news to the baseball fan, though I had a quarrel with a local yokel the other day, a kind of standard fan of standard sports books who said he was underwhelmed by The Echoing Green, which only cinched for me its offbeat excellence. Finally,if the story lacks a lightning-bolt denouement (we know the homer was hit, and the alleged culprits never quite come clean)the journey across that long-ago summer is well worth taking.
Rated by buyers 
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This book goes to the front of the sports book line. I was 15 years old when I watched Bobby Thomson hit the shot heard around the world. Joshua Prager recaptures the events leading up to the home run then takes you to a satisfying conclusion. You want a sports book. Go out and get this one. It is a can't put down read. I can't wait to see what book Prager writes next. I hope it's another baseball book.
The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World (Vintage)
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