The Echoing Green

Author:

By Joshua Prager

Format:

Hardback

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 3-4 days.

Price:

£16.99

Tagged with:

Baseball, Baseball Teams, New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers

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Further Details

• Published: 19th Sep 2006
• ISBN: 0375421548
• Pages: 512

From the Publisher:

The 1951 regular season was as good as over. The Brooklyn Dodgers led the New York Giants by three runs with just three outs to go in their third and final playoff game. And not once in major league baseball's 278 preceding playoff and World Series games had a team overcome a three-run deficit in the ninth inning. But New York rallied, and at 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca. The Giants won the pennant.

"The Echoing Green" follows the reverberations of that one moment-the Shot Heard Round the World - from the West Wing of the White House to the Sing Sing death house to the Polo Grounds clubhouse, where a home run forever turned hitter and pitcher into hero and goat.

It was also in that centerfield block of concrete that, after the home run, a Giant coach tucked away a Wollensak telescope. The spyglass would remain undiscovered until 2001, when, in the jubilee of that home run, Joshua Prager laid bare on the front page of the Wall Street Journal a Giant secret: from July 20, 1951, through the very day of that legendary game, the orange and black stole the finger signals of opposing catchers.

"The Echoing Green" places that revelation at the heart of a larger story, re-creating in extravagant detail the 1951 pennant race and illuminating as never before the impact of both a moment and a long-guarded secret on the lives of Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca.

A wonderfully evocative portrait of the great American pastime, "The Echoing Green" is baseball history, social history and biography-irresistible reading from any angle.

From the Critics:

“For anyone, like me, who followed baseball during the golden age portrayed here, this wonderful book is an absolute treasure. But it is far more than a book about baseball; it is a beautifully rendered story about the relationship between two men whose lives became permanently intertwined in a matter of minutes one October day more than half a century ago. A master storyteller, Prager captures the reader from beginning to end”

Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of A Team of Rivals

“Through diligent, painstaking and persistent research, Joshua Prager brings the 1951 pennant race to life in The Echoing Green. He adds Tabasco to the story by charging that the Giants were stealing signs at the Polo Grounds and that Thomson knew what Ralph Branca was about to throw him - a mediocre fast ball. This is juicy stuff and Prager's portrait of the time and the people in it is quite splendid”

Roger Kahn, author of The Boys of Summer

“The Echoing Green is an intriguing, groundbreaking, and always riveting story of one of the greatest games ever played and its aftermath. A terrific read”

Kevin Baker, author of Paradise Alley

“Down-slope from Coogan's Bluff, the hollowed, hallowed ground on which Thomson bested Branca, the intrepid and indefatigable reporter Joshua Prager has revealed the dark side of the miracle”

Nicholas Dawidoff, author of The Catcher was a Spy