Here is Ralph Branca, the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher who came out of the bullpen to give up the "Shot Heard 'Round the World," Bobby Thomson's home run that won the 1951 pennant for the New York Giants, who had been 13 and a half games behind the Dodgers in August, and down 4-2 going into the bottom of the ninth in the final playoff game.

He's prostrate on the stairs in the Dodgers' dressing room, face buried in his arms. Branca is 25 years old. He's won 76 big league games, including 13 that year and 21 in 1947. He would win four in each of the next three years, and then, except for a two-inning relief appearance in 1956, would be out of baseball.

Here is Ralph Terry, the New York Yankees pitcher who came out of the bullpen to give up a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series to Bill Mazeroski of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the only home run ever to end a Series seventh game. He's on the Yankees' plane back to New York, knocking back drinks. "I was in a daze for a few weeks," he would say later. Terry is 24 years old. The next year he would win 16 games. The year after that, he would win 23, and then he would throw a four-hit shutout to win Game 7 of the World Series.

And here is Willie McCovey, who made the last out of that '62 Series. He had stepped to the plate against Terry in the ninth inning of Game 7 with his San Francisco Giants trailing the Yankees 1-0, but with runners on second and third and two outs. After hitting a long foul, he hit a screaming line drive right into the glove of second baseman Bobby Richardson. A few feet in any direction and it would have been a base hit to win the Series. McCovey is 24 years old. He would play another 18 years in the majors, belt 457 more home runs to go with the 64 he'd already hit, but he would never play in another World Series.

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Now it's 1986 and McCovey has been voted into the Hall of Fame. He's walking through the San Francisco airport, on his way to catch a plane to New York for a press conference in Cooperstown. A reporter asks him how he'd like to be remembered. "Well," the big man says, "I'd like to be remembered as the guy who hit the line drive over Bobby Richardson's head."

In "Heartbreaker: Baseball's Most Agonizing Defeats" longtime Chicago baseball writer John Kuenster tells 15 such stories from the second half of the 20th century, some (Branca, Bill Buckner's error in the '86 Series) more agonizing than others (Cubs sort of fold down the stretch in '69). But he misses one. It should be Chapter 6, right before "1972: A Wild Pitch Sinks the Pirates." Or it could just replace that Cubs story as Chapter 5.

It would be titled "1971: The North Venice Little League Minor Dodgers Almost Win a Game."

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