Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World

Great Book!!!

This book is a must for anyone that is a baseball fan or a baseball historian. The 1951 Shot Heard Round the World is one of the most historical home runs in baseball history. It happened 57 years ago but it is still rated as one of the biggest home runs in baseball history. This book traces the history of the actual home run ball and who might have caught it. It is intriguing and once you begin reading, you will not be able to put it down. It even produces a picture of the writer and his trials and tribulations during some turbulent personal times. A great book!!!

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Miracle Ball

This book is a work of genius. Biegel brings forth the importance of family, self-discovery, and perseverance. A must-have in everyone's library.

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interesting investigation

Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World is the story of one man's quest to find one of the more treasured artifacts of professional baseball: the Thomson 'shot heard round the world', from the 1951 playoff between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. Long given up as a mystery item, lost to time, the book tracks the author's journey from suburban New York and New Jersey, the Baseball Hall of Fame, to an out of the way Catholic convent in New Mexico. The reader meets characters as diverse as New York private investigators, modern crime scene lab technicians, nuns, international businessman and Bobby Thomson himself. In a lot of ways though, the greatest character in this investigation is the author himself, and his relationship with his family, as he recovers from a serious downturn in his life.


Biegel, a long time New York film producer, has attempted to capture a moment in time with his investigation that would be familiar, especially to New York residents at the height of the baby boom era, of local neighborhoods and all the rivalries and attempts to create a better life from the ruins of the Depression and WWII. In a sense, the search for this ball is used to capture a fleeting moment of time, as a representative of a passing era. Using the common experience of a game, whose details are still remembered nearly 60 years later, Biegel explores his life, family and modern America.


This book, a companion read to a film about the search for the "Miracle Ball", is probably too long for the subject, even with its two year search and many characters. As much as the subject was widened, it was never more than a story about one man's personal rise from an abyss in life, and how his search for a bit of memorabilia, enabled him to find some real truth. The story here probably could have been condensed to have been a long magazine article.


While the conclusion is a bit circumstantial, it is plausible enough, though many of the incidents seem a bit forced leading up to the search's conclusion. Still, this book adds an interesting light to a famous moment in American sports history, particularly to the baby boom generation.

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