Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Ron Kantowski shares the whole story of the moment the Giants won the pennant

So I was having lunch with Bob Blum, the veteran Las Vegas sportscaster and recent Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame inductee, when he mentioned that he was the guy who told Russ Hodges to transfer the enduring call of The Shot Heard 'Round the World - Bobby Thomson's home run off Ralph Branca in the one-game playoff that decided the 1951 National League pennant - onto reel-to-reel tape.

Blum mentioned this little nugget from his past totally in passing. It was sort of like Terry the Toad trying to buy booze in "American Graffiti."

"Yeah, ah, let me have a Three Musketeers, ah, and a ballpoint pen, a comb, a pint of Old Harper, a couple of flashlight batteries and some of this beef jerky."

Substitute "made tape of Bobby Thomson's home run" for Old Harper, and you kind of get the context in which Blum mentioned one of the most famous dingers in baseball history.

Reprising the role of the liquor store clerk, I insisted Blum show me some ID. Or at least tell me the story.

He and Hodges, who died in 1971, were partners in a Bay Area company that produced the San Francisco Giants pregame show, after they relocated from New York. Hodges had obtained a recording of his famous call from a Dodgers fan, but it was made on a rudimentary 8-inch disk. Think Edison rather than Dolby.

"It was made on one of those things where you had to brush the shavings toward the middle so they wouldn't clog up," Blum said.

One day, Hodges and Blum were chatting about The Shot and The Call when Hodges said he didn't listen to that old disc much anymore, because it had degraded over the years. So Blum took it to an engineer at KSFO, the Giants' flagship station, who made three copies on small reel-to-reel tapes. Blum said he gave one to Hodges and one to Lon Simmons, Hodges' broadcast partner. He kept the other one for himself.

I was going to say the rest is history , but that wouldn't be totally accurate, because various radio stations already had made copies of Hodges' gleeful call from other sources. But what makes Blum's unique is that it is longer than the one you've probably heard 100 times. Blum's tape runs three minutes, 43 seconds, and begins with Branca taking his warm-up pitches.

I had never heard that version until Tuesday at lunch.

You wouldn't think that a longer tape that begins with Branca throwing warm-up pitches would add a whole lot to the shorter clip. But it does. The crowd is eerily quiet as Hodges sets the scene. He mentions that Clem Labine and Carl Erskine are warming up in the Dodgers' bullpen; that a rookie named Willie Mays is slowly heading out of the dugout toward the on-deck circle and will be the Giants' next hitter.

Then you can hear the buzz in the crowd begin to build. Branca apparently has completed his warm-up tosses.

Knowing what is coming next, I hold Blum's mini-recorder up to my ear, just in case there are some old Dodgers fans sitting in the next booth.

Bobby Thomson ... up there swingin' ... He's had two out of three, a single and a double, and Billy Cox is playing him right on the third-base line ... One out, last of the ninth ... Branca pitches ... Bobby Thomson takes a strike called on the inside corner ... Bobby hitting at .292 ... He's had a single and a double and he drove in the Giants' first run with a long fly to center ... Brooklyn leads it 4-2 ... Hartung down the line at third not taking any chances ... Lockman with not too big of a lead at second, but he'll be runnin' like the wind if Thomson hits one ... Branca throws ... ( Sound of bat meeting ball.)

And then the part that we've all heard:

There's a long drive ... it's gonna be, I believe ... THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands! The Giants win the pennant and they're goin' crazy, they're goin' crazy! HEEEY-OH!!! ( Long pause for crowd noise.)

The waitress tried to hand me the check, but I didn't notice. I was still back in 1951, sitting in the bleachers at the Polo Grounds, a giant chill running down my backbone.

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