Footnotes

I'm often fascinated by uber-footnotes in history; either in pictures (ie. who's the woman in the picture they always show kneeling over the body at Kent State?) or otherwise (ie Raymond Jones - to quote Wikipedia: The Beatles had recorded the 'My Bonnie' single with Tony Sheridan in Germany...Epstein's version of the story was that a customer—Raymond Jones—walked into the NEMS shop and asked Epstein for the "My Bonnie" single, which made Epstein curious about the group.") Who are these people? Has anyone ever interviewed them? That should be a whole book, interviews with these footnote people. There's millions of 'em.

It turns out that since his was not a national broadcast, the only reason anybody has ever even heard the famous Russ Hodges call of Bobby Thomson's home run is some guy in Brooklyn had asked his mother to tape record the game for him. It turns out the guy's name was Lawrence Goldberg. The NY Times talked to him to honor the 50th anniversary of the call (ironically, the upcoming World Series provided some pretty huge homers, including the first one ever in the month of November.)

On Oct. 3, 1951, Lawrence Goldberg made one change in his routine before he left his home in Flatbush for his job in Manhattan as a trip planner for the Automobile Club of New York. He tuned his radio to WMCA 570 and told his mother to hit the record button of his Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder when Game 3 of the Dodgers-Giants playoff reached the bottom of the ninth inning.