MIAMI—When Bobby Thomson hit what the New York press, in borrowing from Ralph Waldo Emerson, anointed as “The Shot Heard Round the World,” his home run on Oct. 3, 1951 happened on a Wednesday afternoon in New York and at a time when baseball was not played west of St. Louis, when Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier only four years earlier and when the baseball-crazed country of Venezuela had seen only three of its countrymen play in the American or National Leagues.
Dare not place the home run Trea Turner hit to beat Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic quarterfinals on Saturday night on par with Thomson’s pennant-winning home run when it comes to historic meaning. But if you want to know how baseball has grown internationally and, more importantly, what the WBC games mean to those who choose to play it, just put Turner’s grand slam and the very un-USA bedlam that followed on a loop.
You’ll get it—if you still have a voice and your ears have stopped ringing.
