Coincidentally, each of my last two columns here referred to "the shot heard 'round the world". In each case, it was a different shot. How confusing can we get?

These were two different and famous events in sports over half a century ago that earned this legendary sobriquet.

First came my walk down memory lane into Madison Square Garden where Ernie Calverley of Rhode Island State hit a 62-foot basket at the buzzer to tie Bowling Green in the opening round of the 1946 National Invitation Tournament. The next "shot heard 'round the world" I wrote of was Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the third and deciding National League playoff game at the Polo Grounds in 1951.

The coincidence came about because on the day I was writing my Calverley column Whitey Lockman died. I then chose to write my next column about Lockman, the North Carolina native and New York Giant first baseman who set the stage for Thomson's home run by hitting a double. Thus the second "shot heard 'round the world" column.

Thomson's epic 3-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning is undoubtedly the most famous of all sports accomplishments known as "the shot heard 'round the world". But Calverley and a few other athletes have earned this special accolade for heroic accomplishments that won or helped win major events.

Golf produced the first such sports "shot heard 'round the world" during the second Masters Tournament in 1935. It came when Gene Sarazen, trailing the leader Craig Wood by 3 shots, sank a 235-yard, 4-wood second shot on the par-5 15th hole of the final round for a double eagle 2.

Thus Sarazen and Wood finished in a tie through 72 holes. Sarazen won the 36-hole playoff the next day by 5 strokes.

I have always limited my list of "shots heard 'round the world" to these three. After all, enough is enough. At times, the words have become just another sports clich.

For instance, nine days ago, the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman referred to Tiger Wood's long, curling putt for birdie on the 72nd hole to win the 2008 Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill as "the shot heard 'round the world". What then do you call Wood's putt a week ago on the same green to win the same tournament or his putt on the 72nd hole to tie Rocko Mediate in the 2008 U.S. Open or so many of his other clutch shots? They weren't chopped liver.

There is also Roger Maris' 61st home run in 1961 that broke the record of 60 in a season set by Babe Ruth in 1927. I could go on and on.

Reporters and broadcasters can't be blamed for a touch of hyperbole when they jumped on that phrase to describe Sarazen's double eagle, Calverley's basket or Thomson's home run. It was just a perfect fit in each case despite the fact it involved a teeny bit of plagiarism or at least a bit of borrowing.

I know of no writer or broadcaster who used the words while giving Ralph Waldo Emerson credit for being the first to compose the famous line, "the shot heard 'round the world".

Emerson, our nation's leading Transcendentalist poet, lecturer, philosopher and essayist (1803--1882), wrote a poem called "The Concord Hymn" in 1836 to commemorate the battle between the British troops and American patriots or Minutemen at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, April 19, 1775.

It was there at Old North Bridge our untrained, amateur soldiers turned back the cream of the world's military might, the Red Coats, who started the day by firing upon a handful of American militia on the village green in nearby Lexington. That initial salvo in Lexington was the start of the American Revolution and before the day was out the Americans had their first triumph of that great and long struggle.

The Battle of Lexington and Concord, which actually consisted of two separate engagements, was a small but rousing victory for Americans who forced the Red Coats off the Old North Bridge and into full retreat for about a dozen miles back to Boston from whence they had marched just a few hours before.

That march of Red Coats westward out of Boston was reason for the "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" on April 18, 1775, during which the galloping silversmith warned the citizens of Medford, Lexington, Concord and other villages, "The British are coming! The British are coming!"

Ralph Waldo Emerson came from a long line of Massachusetts ministers and was himself an ordained minister. His grandfather, Rev. William Emerson, was there at Old North Bridge firing his musket at the Red Coats like any of his parishioner-farmers who dropped the plow to pick up the musket.

Ralph Waldo, who was born in Boston, lived the last half of his life in Concord. So he had a great interest in that town and battle.

Thus he penned the opening stanza of "The Concord Hymn":

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag in April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard 'round the world.

The four-stanza "Concord Hymn" was introduced to the world when a choir sang it during the July 4, 1837 ceremonies dedicating a battle monument at the Old North Bridge in Concord.

The entire hymn is carved into the base of the most famous Minuteman statue that was sculpted by Daniel Chester French and placed at the site of the Old North Bridge in 1874. Another statue, known as the Lexington Minuteman, sculpted by Henry Hudson Kitson in 1900, stands at the site of the original skirmish in Lexington.

But the world, so full of its hatred, bigotry, revolution and struggle, produced a number of other gunfire incidents that earned the moniker of "the shot heard 'round the world".

The most infamous of these other such shots occurred June 28, 1914, when a 19-year-old Bosnian anarchist, Gavrilo Princip, shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This assassination, committed with just one pistol shot at each victim, led directly to the August, 1914, outbreak of World War I. At least it was the straw that broke the camel's back as all nations involved used this "shot heard 'round the world" for an excuse to begin the worst war in the history of man---up to that point.

Some people have referred to the firing upon Fort Sumter that opened the American Civil War as another "shot heard 'round the world". Hitler's phony assault on Polish border guards in August of 1939 that precipitated World War II has also been given this title.

But Emerson was the first person to tag a great and historic event as "the shot heard 'round the world".

Writers and broadcasters of all disciplines, just like house wives who borrow sugar or eggs from neighbors, occasionally sponge off the great works of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and many other notable authors. That is why we have so many "shots heard 'round the world" in sports and will undoubtedly have more.

Gordon White served 43 years as a sports reporter for The New York Times. His e-mail is sports@thepilot.com.