Bill Buckner, Ralph Branca, Mickey Owen, Fred Merkle, and many others have lived with a bad play that defined their careers.
When Bill Buckner passed away six years ago at age 69, journalists nationwide urged readers to remember the player — not the one who lived in Red Sox infamy. But where were those journalists in 1986 when Buckner needed them?
Here’s the scene. Boston, looking for its first World Series title since 1918, was up three games to two as it faced the Mets at Shea Stadium in Game 6 of the Fall Classic. The Red Sox led 5-3 going into the bottom of the 10th inning. The Mets had two outs and nobody on but tied it with two runs and had Ray Knight on second base as Mookie Wilson approached the plate against Bob Stanley.
After working a 3-2 count, the speedy left-handed batting Wilson bounced a slow roller up the first-base line. Buckner moved to his left, went down to field the ball behind the bag, and watched it roll through his legs into right field. Knight scored, the Mets won, then took Game 7 to win the Series.
Some feel Wilson would have beaten Buckner to the bag anyway. In any case, it’s too bad most journalists in Boston weren’t telling the fans to remember the player — not the play — back then. Buckner played 22 seasons in the majors, was an All-Star once, and won the batting title in 1980.
But Boston wouldn’t forgive him. When he retired in 1990, he and his family stayed in Massachusetts. However, fans and the local media continued to taunt him, so Buckner moved his family to Idaho, where he bought a ranch.
Bill Buckner to the Boston Globe: I had to forgive, not the fans of Boston, per se, but I would have to say in my heart I had to forgive the media for what they put me and my family through. So, you know, I’ve done that, and I’m over that.
Wilson, who became close friends with Buckner, told NBC Sports, “I felt bad for some of the things he went through. Bill was a great baseball player whose legacy should not be defined by one play.”
It’s sad that a player’s entire career can be defined by one bad play. Yet, it is seldom determined by one good play, but a few exceptions exist.
Bill Mazeroski will be remembered for hitting the only seventh-game walk-off home run in baseball history, defeating the Yankees in 1960. Kirk Gibson will be memorialized for hobbling to the plate in the first game of the 1988 World Series and belting a two-run, walk-off home run to defeat the A’s and propel the Dodgers to win the Fall Classic. Say “Joe Carter,” and most baseball fans will think of his walk-off home run in game six of the 1993 World Series that iced the championship for the Toronto Blue Jays over the Philadelphia Phillies.
Interestingly, none of those three players was a flash-in-the-pan. All were outstanding veteran players before their big moment. But few players are remembered just for one great moment on the diamond. They are evaluated on their body of work — career home runs and/or RBIs, reaching 300 wins as a pitcher, batting titles, and All-Star selections. But in the case of a blown play, somehow, that body of work gets thrown out the window.
Ralph Branca was a three-time All-Star. The right-handed pitcher won 88 games during his 12-year major league career, including 21 for the Dodgers in 1947. But his achievements were overshadowed by one game he lost — the third and deciding game of a playoff for the National League pennant in 1951. Branca yielded the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” to Bobby Thomson, a three-run walk-off home run for a 5-4 New York Giants victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In Game 4 of the 1941 World Series, with the Yankees holding a 2-1 series lead over the Dodgers, Brooklyn catcher Mickey Owen dropped the third strike of what would have been the final out, allowing Tommy Heinrich to reach base. The Dodgers had been leading 4-3, but the Yankees went on to score four runs after the passed ball and won 7-4 for a 3-1 series lead. They won the next game to clinch the world championship.
Owen, a four-time All-Star, had a .995 fielding percentage that season — a team record at the time — and set a National League record for catchers with 476 consecutive chances without an error. He had only two passed balls during the entire 1941 regular season.
Let’s go back to 1908 when the New York Giants’ Fred Merkle committed an infamous baserunning blunder. With less than two weeks left, the Giants and Cubs were tied for first place and playing a crucial game at the Polo Grounds. With the score tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth, the Giants had a man on first with two outs. Merkle, a 19-year-old rookie making his first major league start, singled to right to put runners on the corners. The next batter, Al Birdwell, lined a ball that fell onto the right-field grass, apparently winning the game for the Giants.
The hometown fans rushed onto the field to celebrate, and Merkle, like most players, wanted to get into the clubhouse as quickly as possible to avoid them. But he raced off the field before he touched second base. Unfortunately for the rookie, Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers noticed. He somehow retrieved the ball (or, some say, any ball he could find), stepped on second, and alerted umpire Hank O’Day, who called Merkle out, nullifying the run. The game ended in a tie because of darkness.
The two teams ended the season with identical records, so the game had to be made up. The Cubs won the game and the pennant.
Merkle went on to a long and distinguished Major League career, but he was forever known as “Bonehead.”
“I wish I’d never gotten that hit that set off the whole Merkle incident,” Bridwell later told Lawrence S. Ritter in the book The Glory of Their Times. “I wish I’d struck out instead. If I’d have done that, I would have spared Fred a lot of unfair humiliation.”
“Unfair humiliation.” Buckner, Branca, Owen, Merkle, and many others have lived with that.
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This column first appeared in The Vacaville Reporter on July 18, 2019.
