Thomson hit the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" in 1951, a home run that won the New York Giants the National League pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers in a three game playoff. Even if you care nothing of baseball or baseball history, you've likely heard the famous radio call of the game by Russ Hodges ("The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!") and seen grainy footage of the swing. The home run is an iconic moment in American sports history, the type of event that gathers up lore like a magnet with the passage of time. The title bestowed upon the home run, accurate or not (not sure the world heard anything), helps it to retain that aura of magic, giving future generations reason take interest in a singular moment from a baseball game that took place in the far-distant past.
American soccer has its own "Shot Heard 'Round the World": Paul Caligiuri's looping goal against Trinidad and Tobago back in 1989 that sent the United States to the World Cup for the first time in forty years. Again, regardless of the accuracy of the appellation, it is meant to convey the event's importance, at least for those of us on the American side. While "Shot Heard..." works in a somewhat literal sense, it unfortunately leans on the history of that previously same-name event, at least in a sports context; the origin of the phrase itself is in the first shot fired in Revolutionary War, a much more significant event in terms of world history.
The title is more accurately applied to Caligiuri's goal than Thomson's home run, as Jamie Clary argues over at Yanks Are Coming, but that's beside the point for me; by tossing onto the goal that put the US back on the soccer map a title already used, the event is minimized by association. There was already a "Shot...", undeserving as it might have been of being called such, and doubling up just causes soccer to suffer by comparison. Baseball's place in American history is sacrosanct; soccer comes off like the weak brother latching onto the glorious history of a "more important" sport.
For now, anyway. As soccer chugs along, I expect that goal will take on added significance from year to year; but it will never approach the legend of Thomson's home run, in part because it mattered to such a small portion of the population at the time it took place, and happened abroad in a country many Americans would struggle to locate on a map. Thomson's shot benefited from taking place in New York; in 1951, with three teams in the city, baseball the king of sports in America, and the New York the undisputed center of everything, a game-winning home run in a playoff between two hated rivals was naturally going to be the stuff of legend. Hence that hit's grip on the "Shot..." title.
My point, I suppose, is that it would just be nice if Caligiuri's goal was called something else, so it would have some resonance outside of a narrow soccer context.
The goal in Port of Spain isn't the only major American soccer event to be subject to the "borrowing" of a name already applied elsewhere; note the retroactive application of "Miracle on Grass" to the 1950 US upset of England. Annoying and forced, the title does the massive win no justice, and only serves to establish that it is secondary to the "Miracle on Ice" of 1980. Whether it is or not is a matter of opinion, but the fact that the soccer upset trades on the well-established name of the hockey upset tilts perception from the outset.
These references don't have to be clever. American sports are filled with moments simply known as "The ____" - "The Catch*", "The Call", "The Drive", "The Fumble" (those last two are personal favorites). American soccer has yet to have "The Goal", and I have to wonder what it might take for a score to gain the honor. Perhaps the winner at Azteca, if, or when, that finally happens?
Time will only tell if Donovan's goal to beat Algeria in the dying minutes, a nominal candidate for some kind of iconic name, will ultimately reach a pantheon status down the years. I suspect it might not, if only because the run for the US at the World Cup ended so ignominiously just a game later; had the Americans matched or bettered their 2002 run and gone farther than ever before in the modern era, perhaps something may have stuck. As it is, its a unifying moment that is more famous for the reaction it elicited than for what it ultimately brought the team.
As soccer's popularity grows, the game will have its iconic moments uniquely titled. For now, I suppose there are worse things than American soccer sharing one the name of its greatest moments with Bobby Thomson's historic home run.
*Okay, so "The Catch" has been used more than once. But I think most people think of Clark's touchdown rather than Mays' over-the-shoulder effort, or perhaps that's generational bias.
