Shortcoming Recalled by Long Memory

Each World Series seems to produce as many scapegoats as heroes.

One of the biggest was Boston Red Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky. He took the heat when Enos Slaughter of the St. Louis Cardinals scored the winning run in the seventh game of the 1946 World Series.

Slaughter was on first base in the eighth inning when Harry Walker got a hit. It figured Slaughter would stop at third. That’s what Pesky expected when he took a relay from the outfield. As Pesky caught the ball, he relaxed, dropping his hands rather than cocking to throw. That’s all Slaughter needed. He ran through a stop sign to score the run that ended up deciding the World Series.

Pesky always took the blame, but he still never heard the end of it.

A fan long on memory but short on mercy spotted him one time at a college football game. It was a miserable game, ruined by bad weather that left the field muddy and the ball slippery. One fumble followed another.

Finally, the fan, remembering that embarrassing Series moment, yelled, “Give it to Pesky. He’ll hold on to it.”

Add Scapegoats: World mile record-holder Steve Cram of Britain thinks Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter, was made a scapegoat by track officials when Johnson tested positive for steroid use at the 1988 Olympics.

That hasn’t stopped drug abuse in track and field, according to Cram, despite attempts to crack down.

“It’s always going to be there. There’s just too much money at stake,” Cram was quoted as saying in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph in Australia.

“Drugs remain the biggest threat to our sport, the biggest problem we have and there’s obviously a lot more work which has to be done. I’d just like to see all drug takers pursued with the same effort as went into catching Ben Johnson.

“I have no evidence to back it up, but, at the time, people needed to make an example and Ben was the perfect one. He was Canadian, black and not the brightest athlete in the world. I’m not saying Ben wasn’t guilty of taking drugs. But I do think that more effort went into catching him than it did into trying to catch some others.”

Trivia time: Who holds the NCAA record for longest field goal made on the first attempt of a career?

Sanctioned by WWF: Minnesota Twin first baseman Kent Hrbek might have been practicing for his next job when he applied his controversial tag on Ron Gant in Game 2 of the World Series Sunday.

Hrbek, it seems, has serious plans to become a professional wrestler when his baseball days are over, going under the name T-Rex.

Maybe he and Gant can form a tag team.

Trivia answer: Ralf Mojsiejenko of Michigan State kicked a 61-yarder against Illinois on Sept. 11, 1982.

Quotebook: When Sallie Wheeler became the first woman to be appointed president of the National Horse Show, it was written that the National “has its first filly as president.” Responded Wheeler: “I’m so glad to be known as a filly and not an old mare.”