Ah yes, I should have known this was coming.
When I wrote the 100th anniversary story of “Merkle’s Boner in 2008 for the Chicago Tribune and ESPN.com (links below), I knew exactly where to go: Keith Olbermann.
Olbermann has made it one of his life’s missions to vindicate Fred Merkle, the poor New York Giants player whose unfortunate base running incident (note Keith, not blunder) in a game against the Cubs has lived in baseball infamy.
Sure enough on the 105th anniversary of that fateful game, Olbermann weighed in again on poor Mr. Merkle last night. And forget about the “Billy Goat Curse” at Wrigley Field. Olbermann ties the Cubs’ title drought to what happened on Sept. 23, 1908.
From my ESPN.com story:
But was Merkle truly at fault? Keith Olbermann is among those who say no.
Olbermann, formerly of ESPN and now the host of “Countdown” on MSNBC, has been interested in Merkle’s case for more than 30 years. He has proposed Sept. 23 be a national day of amnesty in Merkle’s memory, but not because he did something wrong.
“I was struck by the finality of it,” Olbermann said. “He does something everybody did, for their own safety, as a game ended. He was the first player on whom the rule was ever enforced and he never lived it down.”
Indeed, the real goat might have been O’Day, the umpire. No less than Hall of Fame umpire Bill Klem delivered a stinging indictment.
“Evers talked a great umpire into making the rottenest decision in the history of baseball,” Klem said.
The damage, though, was done. Olbermann doubts Merkle will ever be vindicated.
“The goat story is still easier, and more compelling, than the story of the poor rookie victimized by a rule that was never enforced,” Olbermann said.
From my Chicago Tribune story:
The Cubs and Fred Merkle are linked by history. It has been a rough century for both.
Tuesday marks the 100th anniversary of the controversial play that landed Merkle on the short list of baseball’s all-time goats. The beneficiaries were the Cubs, who without “Merkle’s Boner” almost surely would not have gone on to win the 1908 World Series.
If not for the young New York Giants infielder, the Cubs’ last title would have come in 1907, and their century of futility would have been acknowledged, if not exactly celebrated, last year. Instead they have played the 2008 season against the backdrop of a century without a championship, which attaches a certain urgency to the playoff campaign that gets under way next week.
Merkle was an early version of Steve Bartman, a young man vilified for supposedly costing his team a pennant.
So, Keith, if this rule was so outrageous and never called, why did the public make such a big deal about it?
In the magnificent The Glory of Their Times, I believe, the old Giants say nobody blamed Merkle and that John McGraw considered him one of the smartest ballplayers he had seen and would ask him for advice when he would ask no other player.
As for Klem and O’Day, while both were great umpires, unquestionably, I wonder whether there was any rivalry between them that might have inspired Klem’s comment. Also, bear in mind Klem’s approach. He used to be asked what he would do if a batter hit the ball out of the park and missed a base. Klem replied that if he hit the ball out of the park, he had touched all the bases as far as he was concerned. I agree. But that isn’t the rule.