A funny moment afterward

Comedian George Carlin, who died this week, grew up in New York as a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and once recalled where he was when Bobby Thomson hit his “shot heard ‘round the world.”

It was Thomson’s ninth-inning homer off Brooklyn’s Ralph Branca in 1951 that gave the New York Giants the pennant and broke Dodgers hearts everywhere.

“I was sitting at home listening on a little Crosley Radio,” Carlin told Bob Costas on an HBO program in 2002. “I had my little cat in my hand, a little kitten, it was a black cat and I named him Ezzard, after [heavyweight boxer] Ezzard Charles.

“When Bobby Thomson hit that home run and I heard Russ Hodges describing it, I tossed the cat,” Carlin said. “I looked over and saw him heading for the window, an open window and we had two stories . . . fortunately for Ezzard, the curtains were there.

“He grabbed the curtains, then swung out over the yard and swung back in and I went and got him. He had good hands. And he lived.”

Trivia time

Who did Charles defeat in a heavyweight title fight in 1951?

Fond memories

Celtics forward Brian Scalabrine has no regrets that he didn’t get to play when Boston beat the Lakers for the NBA title.

The former USC player sat on the bench in street clothes during the deciding sixth game, but ran into the locker room before it ended to put on his uniform for the celebration, the Boston Herald reported.

When Scalabrine, 30, was asked about not having played, he replied: “Maybe now you could say I didn’t play a second, but in five years you guys are going to forget.

“In 10 years I’ll still be a champion,” he continued. “In 20 years I’ll tell my kids I probably started, and in 30 years I’ll probably tell them I got the MVP.”

Mind over matter?

“Baseball is 90% mental - the other half is physical,” Yogi Berra once said, and doesn’t Jeff Francoeur know it.

The Atlanta Braves right fielder was back in the lineup Monday after taking a day off to rest his sore arm and hand, and to contemplate his recent batting slump.

He was hitting .277 in April, but his average had since tumbled to .243 as of Tuesday, and Francoeur acknowledged that one problem might be that he’s been listening to too much advice.

“I think I’m listening to so many people . . . by the time I get to the [batter’s] box I’m confused,” Francoeur said. “You’ve got to be clear.”

Like Yogi.

Brash Busch

Many NASCAR fans love to boo Kyle Busch, the cocky young driver who won his fifth Sprint Cup series race of the year Sunday in Sonoma.

But Marcos Breton of the Sacramento Bee found Busch refreshing in a sport he called “dominated by pretty-boy big names.

“It used to be that drivers could cuss and scrap with other drivers, that rivalries and heated emotions were just part of racin’,” he wrote.

“But hundreds of millions in sponsorship dollars changed that equation and instituted a form of hypocrisy that called for drivers to be maniacs in the car and soft-spoken PR men out of it,” Breton said.

“Now here is Busch, making it OK for a winning driver to be brash, to be something other than a sponsor-thanking lackey.”

Trivia answer

Jersey Joe Walcott. But in a rematch four months later, Walcott knocked out Charles with a left hook in the seventh round to win the title.

And finally

Who let the dogs out? Fresno State’s Bulldogs are playing Georgia’s Bulldogs for the title in the College World Series. And if that’s not confusing enough, Fresno State -- and underdog when the tournament began -- has taken to calling its team the “WonderDogs.”

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james.peltz@latimes.com