| The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca, And the Shot Heard Around the World |  | Creator: Joshua Prager
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (a)
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  52 reviews
Format: Abridged, Import
Edition: Abridged
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
ISBN: 0743564316
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780743564311
ASIN: 0743564316
Publication Date: September 12, 2006
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| Customer Reviews: Read 47 more reviews...
Fantastic Book July 30, 2008
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.
Waking up the Echoes July 7, 2008
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.
 The Echoing Green July 3, 2008
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)
Are you interested in the Brooklyn Dodgers? How about June 24, 2008
the New York Giants? Do you remember them? Even better. The Echoing Green is a book or should I say cd you'll enjoy. I understand the book may be a tough slough, but listening to it was enjoyable. Joshua Prager confronts one of baseball's historical moments. Bobby Thompson hit a ninth inning homerun off pitcher Ralph Branca to give the Giants a win over the Dodgers & propel them into the 1951 World Series. Mr. Prager certainly takes his time about it. He ranges far & wide going back in time with the history of Thompson, Branca, Leo, the Dodgers, the Giants etc. Did Bobby Thompson know what pitch was coming when he hit it? That questions is ultimately unanswerable. Probably yes. It was available to him. Did it matter? To lots of people in & out of baseball it does & still resonaates today. From a centerfield office in the Polo Grounds Giants coaches with a telescope could see the catchers sign to the pitcher & though a system of buzzers & signs let the batter know what was comimg next. This apparently was down during the last half of the season. The system was installed by an electrician, who was a Dodgers fan. That this homerun changed the life of two relatively obscure ballplayers is indisputable. And tragic. Both Thompson & Branca had to live up to or live down it forever. It defined their lives. Lots of detail & stories for a hardcore baseball fanatic. You want my cd, be the first to read this review & let me know where to send it. It's yours ppd.
 The Echoing Green June 9, 2008
The book is very interesting because of the subject, but it is over-written, and the writing gets in the way of the material.
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