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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.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 12, 2009 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780307452702
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780307452702
- File size: 4925 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from May 1, 2009
The search for one of baseball's most famous relics.
At 3:58 in the afternoon on Oct. 3, 1951, New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson produced a baseball miracle. With his team down to its last out in the bottom of the ninth inning, he hit a three-run homer that clinched the National League pennant for the Giants. The so-called"shot heard'round the world" is documentary filmmaker Biegel's subject in the first book-length account of his search for the Thomson ball. With freelancer Fornatale (co-author: A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex, 2007, etc.), Biegel deftly chronicles the stages of his quest, which captured his interest and rescued him from deep depression and the"life of tortured fear" he experienced after a bitter divorce. The author also traces and convincingly contextualizes why that home run—which didn't even occur during a World Series game—achieved instant mythic status. To find the ball, which is worth more than an estimated $1 million, Biegel enlisted the help of private investigators, retired detectives and forensic photo experts. He also interviewed Thomson and traveled from New York to New Mexico and back to solve the mystery that started with the identity of the fan who caught the ball. The narrative is peppered with riveting oral reminiscences of the game and passages from eminent sportswriters like Red Smith, filled with the kind of epic hyperbole that makes baseball writing so captivating."The art of fiction is dead," wrote Smith."Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again."
Even mild sports enthusiasts will eat up this surprisingly moving account; baseball addicts will be over the wall.(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
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