When we were kids and there was a rain delay during a Cubs game, Jack Brickhouse always seemed to say, “Well, this gives us a chance to chat with our old friend, ‘Handy’ Andy Pafko.”

The former Cubs star, who died this week at the age of 92, went on to play with Brooklyn and Milwaukee. While he had a standout 17-year career, he also had a bit role in baseball history.

From the obit in the New York Times:

The first-place Dodgers led the New York Giants by 13 1/2 games in mid-August 1951, but the Giants caught them. On Oct. 3, in the finale of a three-game pennant playoff, Pafko was playing left field at the Polo Grounds when the Giants’ Bobby Thomson connected off the Dodgers reliever Ralph Branca in the ninth inning for a three-run, pennant-winning home run into the left-field stands.

Captured in a long-remembered photograph, Pafko was a helpless figure pressed against the wall and looking up as “the shot heard round the world” landed a few rows above him.

In Roger Kahn’s book “The Boys of Summer,” Pafko recalled Branca’s stroll from the bullpen to relieve the Dodgers starter Don Newcombe:

“Branca walked by me in left field. I hit him in the back. ‘Go get ’em, Ralph.’ But I was doubting. Branca threw a ball. Then came this shot. I started back. In Ebbets Field I might have gotten it. In the Polo Grounds it was gone.” (The Polo Grounds’ left-field fence was only 315 feet from home plate.)

The moment was “my biggest letdown ever,” Pafko said.