Ralph Branca, RIP

Image from USA Today.

Ralph Branca won 21 games in 1947. Ralph Branca had a respectable lifetime ERA of 3.79. Ralph Branca pitched for all or part of 12 seasons in the majors, was a three-time All-Star and a respected member of the Brooklyn Dodgers pitching staff for years.

But almost all of his obits lead with the same thing: Ralph Branca, gave up ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World,’ dead at 90.

Some baseball players are forever associated with one pitch or one event. I know a guy who spit every time he heard Calvin Schiraldi’s name because of Schiraldi’s role in losing Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. I think of Donnie Moore as a Braves reliever, but most people probably remember him for giving up that home run to Dave Henderson in the 1986 ALCS.

And Branca? He gave up the most famous home run of them all, the one by Bobby Thomson that won the 1951 pennant for the Giants in a game they were losing 4-1 going into the bottom of the ninth.

Branca, though devastated by the home run, was a true sportsman. He appeared at card shows with Thomson and helped form the Baseball Assistance Team (B.A.T.), which helps former major leaguers in need. The priest he visited after the homer had it right.

Later Branca recalled sitting with a priest and family friend, asking why this had happened to him.

“Because,” he was told, “you’re strong enough to bear it.”

P.S. I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a link to Red Smith’s column about the game, still one of the greatest deadline-written pieces in journalism history: “Now it is done,” it begins. “Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again. …”