I received a new book this week titled "Walkoffs, Last Licks and Final Outs," written by Bill Chuck and Jim Kaplan. The sub-title is "Baseball's Grand (and not-so-grand) Finales," and the foreword is by Jon Miller, the popular play-by-play broadcaster who does "Sunday Night Baseball" with Joe Morgan on ESPN.
The volume is a descriptive collection of the greatest finishes in the history of Major League Baseball, including pennant races, memorable game-ending hits and home runs, final days in the careers of big league superstars and the last moments of play in American and National League stadiums no longer standing.
Included, of course, is Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round The World," the pennant-winning, three-run playoff blast off Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds in 1951 to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers and put the New York Giants in the World Series, long before the term "walkoff" became part of baseball lexicon.