NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

Treder, Steve.
A Legacy of What-Ifs: Horace Stoneham and the Integration of the Giants
NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture - Volume 10, Number 2, Spring 2002, pp. 71-101

University of Nebraska Press

Steve Treder - A Legacy of What-Ifs: Horace Stoneham and the Integration of the Giants - NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 10:2 NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 10.2 (2002) 71-101 A Legacy of What-IfsHorace Stoneham and the Integration of the Giants Steve Treder Bobby Thomson's home run that won the 1951 National League pennant for the New York Giants is quite possibly the most celebrated single play in the history of baseball. It holds this status primarily, of course, because it was such a suddenly dramatic and heroic act, climaxing an incredible pennant race story with an even more incredible exclamation point. But "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" is also so widely known and so gleefully (or achingly, by Dodger fans) remembered because of the spectacular radio call it brought forth from Giants broadcaster Russ Hodges, whose manic "The Giants win the pennant!" and "I do not believe it!" repetitions were a magnificent explosion of flabbergasted joy. But the careful listener to Hodges's exultations will also hear him proclaim, once he has finally regained the capacity to report on more than his own level of astonishment, these words: "Horace Stoneham has finally got a winner!" It's interesting that the broadcaster would choose, at this of all moments, to invoke the name of the team's owner. Somehow one doubts that Walter O'Malley's achievement would have been interjected had the Dodgers won. It's revealing of the warm...