Robert Brown "Bobby" Thomson played major league baseball from 1946 through 1960. On October 3, 1951, as a New York Giant, he belted a home run to win the National League Pennant in his team's final at-bat. That "shot heard round the world" became what many consider the most dramatic event in the history of American sports. The home run capped a thrilling pennant race between the New York Giants and their bitter rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. In front of a national television audience, Thomson and the Giants reveled in their victory just as New York delighted in its place at the cultural center of a thriving postwar America. But Thomson's home run retained significance well beyond the 1950s. Beginning in the 1970s, as Major League Baseball increasingly cloaked itself in the garb of nostalgia, the shot heard round the world symbolized a simpler America, where an average...