Wait Till Next Year by Goodwin Doris Kearns

Author:Goodwin, Doris Kearns [Goodwin, Doris Kearns]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780684847955
Amazon: B0002OUQVC
Barnesnoble: B0002OUQVC
Goodreads: 77125
Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd
Published: 1997-10-01T06:00:00+00:00

Giant Bobby Thomson swings for a home run against Dodger Ralph Branca to make the “shot heard round the world” and win the 1951 National League pennant. The Giants mob Thomson as he crosses home plate. It was the worst day of my life as a fan.

October 3, 1951, was unseasonably warm, more like summer than early fall. When I returned home for lunch, both my sisters had already arrived, having left the city so they might watch the big game with my mother. Jeanne had graduated from high school with high honors the previous June and had followed Charlotte into the nursing program at Lenox Hill. Despite Charlotte’s claim that she had been drawn to nursing for its starched white uniforms, she had already become an exceptional nurse. At the age of twenty-four, she was the head nurse on the evening shift of the male surgical ward. Her tough, no-nonsense supervision of the nursing staff had earned her the nickname “Stonewall Jackson.”

When I implored my mother to let me remain at home after lunch, she agreed without hesitation. “Of course,” she said. What other decision was possible? Our teachers had let us listen to the first two games on the radio. But I badly wanted to watch this culminating game. And I wanted to be in the sanctity of my home, sitting on the couch, my scorebook across my lap. Later, I discovered that more than half my classmates had failed to return to school that afternoon.

Each team had saved its best for last—Sal Maglie against Don Newcombe, both twenty-game winners. For seven innings, they battled to a 1-1 tie. It was the worst kind of stressful game. Then, in the top of the eighth, after a Duke Snider single sent Pee Wee Reese to third, the fearsome Maglie threw a sharp breaking curve which soared past both Robinson and his own catcher. Reese scored and the Dodgers were ahead. “It serves the old bean-bailer right!” I said. Now, with a man on second, hoping to set up a double play, Durocher ordered Maglie to walk Robinson. But the next batter, Billy Cox singled, both runners scored, and the Dodgers were ahead 4-1. Quickly, I turned to my scorebook and meticulously drew the lines which told the story, anxious to inscribe the glorious moment for enduring history.

In the eighth inning, a visibly tiring Newcombe pitched himself out of a jam, and the score was still 4-1 as the game entered the bottom of the ninth. “Three more outs,” I prayed silently, “just give us three more outs.” And even though I always feared the worst in the most gloomy depths of my imagination, I could never have conceived what was to come.

After Alvin Dark led off with a single, Don Mueller hit a ground ball up the middle, sending Dark to third. With one out, Whitey Lockman hit a solid double, scoring Dark and sending Mueller to third, where he collapsed on the base path, having caught his spike on the base.

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