Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World [Hardcover]

Brian Biegel (Author), Pete Fornatale (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2009

The captivating, utterly improbable but ultimately true story of one man’s quest to solve sports’ greatest mystery: What happened to the most famous of all home-run balls–the holy grail of sports?


October 3, 1951. Giants third baseman Bobby Thomson hit the most dramatic home run in the history of baseball. The moment occurred in the bottom of the ninth inning of a sudden-death playoff game between the New York Giants and their arch rivals from Brooklyn, the Dodgers. People across the nation watched on their new TV sets, and the home run became known as “the Shot Heard ’Round the World.”

But after clearing the left-field wall, the central artifact of the play–the ball itself–inexplicably went missing. The mystery of what happened to the legendary baseball has remained unsolved for a half century.

Until now.

Miracle Ball is the gripping account of author Brian Biegel’s two-year effort to unravel the mystery that experts said could never be solved. After his father, Jack, finds a baseball at a thrift store with clues dating back to 1951 and believes it could possibly be the most coveted piece of sports history, father and son begin a journey to prove its authenticity. Biegel becomes consumed with the quest–recognizing it as the only chance to rescue himself from an emotionally devastating personal crisis that had long been crippling him.

The trail takes Biegel, a sports fan and documentary filmmaker, from an auction house in Long Island to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, to a backroom meeting straight out of a Martin Scorsese film to a dusty oil field in Texas, finally arriving at his final destination on a quiet gravel road in New Mexico, the last place he ever expected to be.

Along the way the author meets an amazing cast of characters, including Bobby Thomson himself, who help him in his quest. Each adds their personal memories of the golden age of baseball, giving a broader scope and greater depth to this real-life detective story. As entertaining as it is inspiring, Miracle Ball is a story about faith, family, and heroes, about overcoming the odds and coming into the light, and about discovering the wondrous result of believing in yourself–and the amazing benefits of unconditional love.

A sports story for the ages, an engrossing mystery narrative, and a moving account of a man’s unbreakable bond with his family and of his struggles to save himself, Miracle Ball delivers both heart and headlines.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

BRIAN BIEGEL is an award-winning writer and filmmaker whose credits include Getting My Child Back: Fighting Autism and the documentary film version of this book similarly titled Miracle Ball: The Hunt for the Shot Heard Around the World. He has written and produced on-air promotions for ABC and USA networks and written and produced an Off-Broadway play called Bark Out Loud. He lives in Manhattan.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

p r o l o g u e

“The Holy Grail of Sports”
Wednesday, October 3, 1951

The sun hung over the first-base side of the Polo Grounds, reflecting off the apartment buildings that lined Harlem River Drive and onto the open end of the stadium behind the left field stands. The clock in center field read 3:58. The details of the play itself are familiar to most baseball fans. Branca had Thomson down in the count 0-1, the result of a called strike right down the middle.

It was the bottom of the ninth. Two men on base. The Giants trailed the Dodgers by two runs in the last game of a three-game playoff series. The winner would advance to the World Series against the New York Yankees. Out of the windup, Branca threw a fastball, high and tight. But this time Thomson, the lanky outfi elder turned third baseman, was ready. He pulled the pitch to left field—a sinking line drive.

The fans in the lower portion of section 35 followed the flight of the ball. A photo captured the moment perfectly. There was an overweight, middle-aged man in a white T-shirt and a black jacket in the first row. Next to him was a buzz-cut teenager
with thick-rimmed eyeglasses. A row above them stood a man with a handlebar mustache and a fedora. In the fourth row, a bushy-haired man stood with his arms stretched above his head and his mouth wide open.

The crowd’s loyalties were evenly divided: The Dodgers fans prayed that the ball would somehow find its way into left fielder Andy Pafko’s mitt; the Giants fans prayed that it wouldn’t. The teams’ rivalry—the oldest in professional sports—dated back all the way to the nineteenth century, but it had never seen a moment like this.

The prayers of the home team’s fans were answered: Thomson had hit a home run; the Giants won the pennant. Thomson’s blast became known as the Shot Heard ’Round the World. As for the baseball itself, that’s been a mystery ever since. Just after the ball cleared the wall, it bounced out of a fan’s glove and ricocheted seven feet to the left—straight into the hands of a person who would ensure that its fate would not be discovered for more than fifty years.
 
It is the most iconic moment in the history of American sports—Bobby Thomson’s game-winning home run to clinch
the 1951 pennant for the Giants at the Polo Grounds. It’s been mythologized by everyone from sportswriters and broadcasters to literary giants like John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, and Don DeLillo. There have been equally dramatic home runs, but none have had the lasting cultural impact of the Shot Heard ’Round the World.

But as obsessively documented and frequently relived as that moment was, something happened that day that remains a mystery. As Bobby Thomson rounded the bases and broadcaster Russ Hodges so memorably shouted, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” the central artifact of the play—the ball itself—landed in the left-field seats and then . . . vanished.

While much has been written and said about the Thomson home run and its impact, remarkably little is known about what happened to the actual ball. It is one of sport’s greatest mysteries. Legendary sportswriter Vic Ziegel has called the Thomson ball “the Holy Grail of sports.” Over the past fifty years, several people have claimed to own it (often motivated by an exploding memorabilia market that has seen other well-known home-run balls fetch millions of dol-
lars at auction), but all of their claims have been disproved. The president of one prestigious auction house has estimated the odds of locating the ball at an astronomical 1 in 200 million. Similarly, every baseball historian I spoke with told me that there was no way to learn what really happened to it.

Fortunately for me, they were wrong.

This is the story of my two-year quest to solve the mystery that was supposed to be unsolvable. Several years ago, my father realized that he might have the famous missing baseball, and what began as a way to help my dad became, frankly, an obsessive hunt. It’s a journey that brought me from an auction house on Long Island to
the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, to Bobby Thomson’s ranch-style home in New Jersey, to a forensics lab in Northern Long Island, to a dusty oil field in Texas, and ultimately to a spot on a quiet graveled road in New Mexico that was just about the last place I ever expected to be.

What kept me going was not simply the desire to unravel this legendary sports mystery. Like life itself, my search became all about the journey. Along the way, I met an incredible cast of characters: a celebrated sportswriter who has made a career out of writing about the Thomson ball; a crazed Dodgers fan who slept inside the Polo Grounds the night before the game; a retired NYPD detective who found an important clue hidden (in plain sight) in an old photo; a
baseball fanatic whose uncanny memory provided a crucial piece of the puzzle; two men from New Jersey who shared a seemingly astounding tale that turned out to fi t precisely with the other evidence; and many others.

It had been more than half a century since Thomson’s home run clinched the 1951 National League pennant, but everywhere I turned, it seemed as if there was another person telling a passionate story about the home run, or another eminent author or director who used it as a backdrop in his work. The response became overwhelming
when the New York Daily News ran a story on my search (in fact, it was one of the longest non-news features in the history of the paper).

Despite being a lifelong baseball fan, only in exploring this mystery did I come to fully appreciate what that game, and what those two teams, meant to baseball fans, and to New Yorkers of that era. As people told their stories, I began to understand why grown men cried in public over the game’s outcome; why schoolchildren schemed to follow the contest during their classes; why a young deli worker—now the own er of the New York Mets—was so startled by
Thomson’s home run against his beloved Dodgers that he sliced off a piece of his pinkie fi nger while making a salami sandwich; why a Marine in a bunker in Korea, a die-hard Giants fan surreptitiously listening to the game on Armed Forces Radio, became so excited when he heard Russ Hodges’s call that he accidentally shot off his rifle, spurring a fire fight with the enemy; and why a little boy watching the home run on TV felt so inspired by the miracle that something was born inside him—his faith in God. He later became a renowned monsignor in the Catholic Church and team chaplain of the New York Jets. Bobby Thomson’s moment was the stuff of flashbulb memories for millions.

And for me, the quest became deeply personal as well. It was from my father, who grew up a short distance from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, that I inherited my love of baseball; it was for my father that I set out on this mission, as I attempted to determine whether his ball really was the Shot Heard ’Round the World; and it was my father and mother whose unwavering encouragement gave me the strength and confidence I needed to persevere during the darkest
period of my life.

Recovering from a bitter divorce and struggling with crippling depression and anxiety, I saw in the Thomson ball a way out, a way to regain my old sense of self. But depression is a powerful opponent and not one I was able to defeat on my own. What spurred me on was the love and unconditional support my parents showed me. As it turned out, this pursuit was the best kind of therapy I could ever want: Set a goal for yourself and work toward it—and refuse to be told you can’t do it. I have come to believe that this mission saved my life.

And for all the amazing things that happened during the search—the series of exceedingly unlikely twists of fate that brought me to my goal, the joy I saw in my mom’s face as I got closer to the truth, the opportunity to bring closure to my dad’s million-dollar dream, and the long-buried secret that lay at the end of the trail—I have come to regard this famous piece of cowhide as a miracle ball.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Crown (May 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307452689
• ISBN-13: 978-0307452689
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (100 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,026,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Summertime magic for baseball fans, July 31, 2009

By 

ck "moonshadow" (Hawaii nei) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Devoted baseball fans will tell you that their game blends head and heart more powerfully than any other. I learned my love for the Giants (by then in San Francisco) and all things baseball at my favorite uncle's knee, even though the only games I could sit in the stands for as a kid were those played by my beloved Hawaii Islanders, an AAA club. (We listened to the Giants on the radio, and the Islanders' road games as re-creations by the amazing Les Keiter, but that's a story for another day.)

The author of Miracle Ball, Brian Biegel, also found his love for baseball quite young, nurtured by his parents, who'd followed the Dodgers when they were still on the east coast, and then rooted for the expansion Mets when that program started. Nurturing and passion are two bright threads that Biegel weaves through this story of his hunt for the homerun ball that ended the Dodgers' 1951 hopes and propelled the Giants into the World Series representing the National League.

Throughout the book, Biegel shares various fans' anecdotes of that era of the game and that game in particular. Interwoven with them is the tale of personal challenges he was facing, and the incredible possibility that his own father might have bought that long-lost ball at a Salvation Army thrift shop for $2. During his 2-year search for the ball Bobby Thomson hit into the hands of an unknown fan, Biegel spoke with a number of people in the baseball world. He also tapped the expertise of police and private detectives and photo analysts. Thanks to a combination of solid research, good sources and a sprinkling of lucky coincidence, Biegel was able to trace the path of the shot heard 'round the world.

The answer to the mystery made me smile. The person who caught that ball was truly a fan. Once you read the book, I think you'll agree that the right person caught the ball. Tempting as it might be to skip ahead to look at the period photos, please don't, because Biegel's tracing of his search is much the better way for the tale of the ball to unfold.

My only nitpicks about this book are that the lead-in section runs a bit long, and that there's a little too much detail of Biegel's personal challenges, but I acknowledge that the latter is a matter of personal taste.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting - albeit elementary - glimpse into one of baseball's greatest mysteries, June 14, 2009

By 

Paul Stuart ""...also I'll brush my teeth... (Canberra, ACT AUSTRALIA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Almost by birthright, every kid from Brooklyn is an instant Brooklyn Dodgers sentimalist. Even when - as is my case - the team's sudden exodus out West pre-dates one's own existence by decades. The Mets - of course - became the door prize to this legion of grooms left at the altar. To become a (gasp!) Yankees fan meant marrying our best friend's sister simply out of unwanted convenience.

In this commonality of lament, Jackie, The Duke, Pee Wee, Gil and Campy remain ingrained as secondhand icons, likewise the sadness of an Ebbetts Field denigrated to a nondescript apartment complex.

Dem Bums are OUR bums; NY Giants infielder Bobby Thomson the precursor to Bucky Dent. Thomson, the slap-hitting supposed second thought, who - in one swing - knifed collective hearts and baseball memories for Brooklynites past and present.

In, Brian Biegel's 'Miracle Ball,' a Dodger fan turned documentarian seeks to put an unhappily ever after to where Thomson's epic stitched trajectory calls home. Inspired by his father's mystery ball, Biegel goes on a personal and professional discovery to determine why one of baseball's greatest bits of memorabilia remained as lost as Jimmy Hoffa.

Biegel certainly tells an interesting tale in doing so, and intertwines inner mental health demons, family bonding, and baseball lore quite well with his search. Arguably the most interesting part of 'Miracle Ball' lies in his relationship with his parents, in specific his unending quest for purpose in a much grander scheme than America's Pasttime.

Unfortunately, however, Biegel does not fare as well in recounting his search for Thomson's prized souvenier. It's hard not to conjure the legendary 'Boys of Summer' in reading a book dedicated to reliving Brooklyn's baseball days, a comparison that find 'Miracle Ball' (perhaps, pun intended) completely out of its league.

Biegel book reads much like one would expect a documentary writer's recount to transcribe, a surface level common thread that circumnavigates around central themes. For a book attempting to cover so much...and so few pages...this a solid flaw in 'Miracle Ball.'

While it's impossible not to like or empathize with Biegel when concluding this book, 'Miracle Ball,' however, is best served as a baseball book centered around a singular event. Perhaps the documentary - once visuals/direction are inserted - will surpass its written counterpart.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Book, Several Miracles, July 14, 2009

By 

AdamSmythe - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World (Hardcover)

This is an easy-reading, enjoyable (and in some aspects, even inspirational) book. Although it runs over 200 pages, with more normal line spacing the book would be significantly shorter. Many people will read it in a day or two, not only due to its shortness, but also because it's a real page-turner. Importantly, there are several stories intertwined within Brian Biegel's (and Pete Fornatale's) book. The main theme is Biegel's two-year search for the real story behind the disappearance of the legendary homerun baseball hit by Bobby Thompson in the final game of the three-game playoff for the National League pennant in 1951. But wait, there's more. Additional themes include the human-interest stories behind the intense rivalry between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers--and their fans--in an era when baseball really was the national pastime. Indeed, most of the book's chapters begin with a description of the 1951 environment and then transition to the present search for the baseball. Another theme concerns Biegel's tough, inspirational battle with depression, which confined him to his parents' home for months at a time. Still another theme was the dynamics of Biegel's family, particularly his relationship with his father. (My own son gave me this book for Father's Day.)

You might think it would take a near-miracle to figure out the fate of Bobby Thompson's ball over 50 years after the fact, and you'd be right. Nevertheless, with the help of an interesting group of helpers and some outright characters, Biegel doggedly follows up on lead after lead, many of them ultimately turning cold. Remember, many of the important characters in the mystery of Thompson's ball are now dead. With important and, frankly, transformational encouragement from his family, and more than a little luck, Biegel follows the 50-year-old trail of one of the most famous pieces of missing memorabilia in sports history. He encounters seemingly cavalier auctioneers, the modern day girlfriend of Bobby Thompson (by coincidence), the man himself (Thompson), New York detectives, private investigators, sports columnists, numerous passionate baseball fans, priests, nuns and an oddball or two.

I won't spoil the story, other to say that by the end of the book most readers will likely conclude that they know what happened to the missing baseball and why the ball remained a mystery for so long. As to the "miracle" in Miracle Ball, was it the ball itself? The transformation of Biegel's depression? The dynamics of his family? Or something else entirely? You be the judge.