There are a whole lot of people in the world who appreciate Edwin Donald “Duke Snider” more than me — and most of them grew up in Brooklyn. Snider, who died Sunday at the age of 84, came to define the Brooklyn Dodgers as few others, including Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. Snider was the original “great Dodger” in an era before Koufax or Drysdale, and lived and played with Robinson and Reese. These were those great Dodger teams that, after years of futility, dominated the National League, winning six pennants in ten years. Their names are legendary: Gil Hodges, Carl Erskine, Ralph Branca, Clem Labine, Carl Furillo, Joe Black, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Jim Gilliam.

For Dodger fans, the 1950s (before their sainted heroes decamped to LA) were the golden age of New York baseball — with Snider, Mantle and Mays all in center, all contenders. Brooklyn Dodger fans still claim that Snider was the best of the three (and he was very good), but memories of Snider among Brooklyn fans have been dusted with the passage of time. Snider never got on too well with New York baseball reporters or Brooklyn diehards and when the O’Malley family beat it out of town Snider (an L.A. native) was quoted as saying he preferred it that way. He said he was misquoted (and probably was), but Brooklyn’s faithful believed it. He was “surly” and self-pitying; the book on the Duke was that he never quite lived up to his potential. Which, like much else having to do with Snider, just wasn’t true. He was better than just good and was voted into Cooperstown in 1980.

Brooklyn fans are notable for telling us how they never missed a game, loved every one of “dem bums” and supported them in everything they did. It’s not true, of course, but never mind: Snider’s immortality (never a sure thing in Brooklyn) was sealed as soon as he was missed. The same holds true for the team. The Dodgers were beloved in Brooklyn, but few went to see them play, the city would not build them a new stadium and their record for futility before the glorious days of “the Duke” would make a Cubs fan wince. “Duke Snider was proof in the flesh that great teams had once played in Brooklyn,” Howard Megdal wrote in today’s New York Times, and that about sums it up.

Well, not quite. Snider patrolled center field for the Dodgers for sixteen years (11 in Brooklyn, five in L.A.), still leads all Dodgers in HRs and RBIs, had one of the best hitters’ eyes in the game (though, paradoxically, struck out a lot), led the league in runs for three consecutive years, and in home runs (with 43) in 1956. His numbers for ’53 through ’57 are astonishing. He was an eight time all star. “Swing hard,” he told hitters, “in case they throw the ball where you’re swinging.”

The death of N.Y. Giants great Bobby Thomson on Tuesday at the age of 86, drove me back to my on-again, off-again sub-hobby of investigating what exactly happened to the “Bobby Thomson ball” — the one that Thomson launched on October 3, 1951 and that ended up in the left field stands at the Polo Grounds. Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round The World” gave the Giants the 1951 pennant (“the Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant”), and ranks as the most memorable home run in baseball history. The Thomson home run lives on in film and book and legend. An important part of that legend is consumed with determining what exactly happened to the ball after it landed in the left field seats — where is it, who has it, and what is it worth? Those questions have engaged a generation of memorabilia hunters, amateur sleuths and famous authors –a gaggle of hobbyists whose obsession surely equals that held by a generation of cranks who wonder (still) whether there were shots from the grassy knoll.

How much of a mystery is this? A few years ago, a baseball auction house in New York offered $1 million to anyone who could produce “the Thomson ball,” which spurred a new round of “let no rock remain unturned” charnel house of baseball gurus and ghost hunters to begin the search anew. To no avail: the reward remains unclaimed, the ball unfound. The question of what happened to the “Thomson ball” is so consuming that even noted American authors and filmmakers have weighed in: Don DeLillo fictionalized the travels of the ball as a key dynamic in his novel Underworld (if you haven’t read it, you should), while Francis Ford Coppola, in the Godfather, has parkway attendants listening to the Thomson game when Sonny is murdered at a toll booth — a bit of apocrypha for sure, as we all know (don’t we?) that Sonny was murdered in 1948, not in 1951. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Then too, the flight of the ball sparked Giants followers and baseball afficianados to identify and question nearly every fan who was out in left field that day, going over and over the film of Thomson’s dinger as if it were the Zapruder film. Without appreciable result.

Still, I became convinced several years ago that author and baseball obsessive Brian Biegel has probably provided the best answer to the mystery. Biegel, whose father Jack claimed he bought the ball for $2 at a Long Island Salvation Army store, set out to prove him right — and (alas) ended up proving him wrong. After years of investigation, Biegel showed that a baseball loving nun (“Sister Helen”), who attended the Giants-Dodgers game in violation of her Franciscan convent rules, snagged the ball and carried it with her in a shoebox her entire life. When she died many years later in Albuquerque (and after a lifetime of selfless devotion to her order), her colleagues in the convent lovingly sorted through her personal belongings, found the ball and gave it to her sister. And what did the sister of Sister Helen do with the ball? She looked over the ball, shrugged her shoulders, shook her head and deposited both shoebox and ball in a landfill.

Craig Stammen pitched batting practice to the Philadelphia Phillies last night, giving up seven hits and seven runs in less than two innings. The ponies eventually won the contest, 14-7. Washington has yet to solve the Phillies’ line-up, which has touched Nats’ pitching for 45 runs in five games. “I just didn’t throw quality strikes,” Stammen said, after the game. “I threw a lot of stuff in the zone and over the plate. [My offspeed stuff is] breaking good, but I can’t throw them for strikes. … It’s very disappointing to let a lead slip away real quickly. Then again, I’ve had many pitching coaches and even the one I have right now [Steve McCatty] said this happens.”

Nats relievers didn’t fare much better: Jason Bergmann, Sean Burnett and Brian Bruney were roughed up, with Bruney the most exploited victim — the former Yankee now has a 13.50 ERA in his time in Washington. The Phillies are now 7-1 on the season, which matches their best major league start since 1993. Washington used six pitchers during the contest. They gave up 14 runs on 14 hits, with 176 pitches thrown — a line that compares favorably with their pitching futility of 2009. The only reliever who pitched really well was rookie Jessie English, who gave up four hits but no runs in two-and-two-third innings. The Nationals finish their time in Philadelphia tonight, with a final match-up against the powerful Phillies’ line-up. The Nationals return home tomorrow to face the 3-5 Milwaukee Brewers.

It’s Jackie Robinson Day in Baseball: Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier 61 years ago today. The 1947 NL MVP and National League Rookie of the Year had a .311 lifetime batting average was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. The Nats will celebrate Jackie Robinson Day at Nationals Park on Friday.

Bobby Thomson hit “the shot heard round the world.” Thomson’s walk off home run came at precisely 3:58 pm, New York time, on October 3, 1951 — and is considered the most dramatic moment in baseball history. Thomson’s bottom of the 9th shot came off  Brooklyn Dodgers’ right hander Ralph Branca with two men on. With the Dodgers leading 4-2, Branca threw Thomson a first pitch fastball over the center of the plate. The next pitch was inside and high and Thomson swung. The hit was not a towering fly ball, but a line drive that sailed into the left field seats of the lower deck in the Polo Grounds. It gave the New York Giants a 5-4 win and the N.L. Pennant, two games to one. The two teams had finished the season with identical 96-58 records. The Giants had taken the first of the three game playoff series (3-1) and the Dodgers the second (10-0). Deadlocked at one game apiece, the third game would decide the pennant. What made Thomson’s home run even more dramatic is that the Giants had won 37 of their last 44 games to force the playoff, having trailed the Dodgers by 13 games in mid-August.

Also known as “The Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff,” Thomson’s home run is celebrated in the immortal broadcast of Russ Hodges that was heard on WMCA-AM radio — “The Voice of the New York Giants”: “There’s a long drive… it’s gonna be, I believe…The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands! The Giants win the pennant and they’re goin’ crazy, they’re goin’ crazy!”

For many years it was not known what happened to Thomson’s home run ball. While innumerable myths have surrounded its whereabouts (most recently in Don DeLillo’s Underworld), it is now believed that a Franciscan nun recovered the ball and kept it in a shoebox for fifty years. When she died, her sister collected the shoebox and deposited it in a landfill. Willie Mays, then 20, was on deck when Thomson hit his home run.