Scapegoats in Sports : By Their Deeds--Win or Lose--They Are Known

If luck is defined as preparation meeting opportunity, what do you call the moment when Ralph Branca let loose the pitch that made Bobby Thomson a legend and Branca a goat?

Ask Bill Buckner, if he would talk, what name he gives his own awful instant, frozen forever on videotape, when the ground ball goes through his legs along with the Red Sox’s lock on the 1986 World Series.

Would you give the same name to the intersection of bad luck and bad timing that may forever haunt pitcher Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams, the man who finds himself the embodiment of Philadelphia’s World Series loss this year?

“There’s been other home runs like it, Mazeroski in 1960, Bucky Dent in 1978, but mine is the one that’s remembered,” said Branca, whose pitch to Thomson cost the Dodgers the 1951 pennant to their cross town rivals the Giants and earned him a lifetime of jokes and jibes.

“It was all wrapped up in the intense rivalry between the Dodgers and the Giants and that it happened in the media capital of the world,” Branca said, whose shame was immortalized by radio announcer Russ Hodges’ hyperventilating chant: “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”

If sports must have its winners and individual stars, then it must also have losers and fallen heroes--the unfortunate ones whose often long and illustrious careers are eclipsed by a second’s miscue.

Some outlasted their embarrassment: a blunder by Babe Ruth that cost the the 1926 World Series is hardly remembered today. Others have prospered: Branca says his notoriety made for success in selling insurance. He even appears with Thomson at baseball card shows.

But mostly, that moment of infamy is a heavy weight to carry.

Buckner left Massachusetts this summer after he pushed a man against the wall of a Pawtucket, R.I. ball park. “Don’t give him the ball,” the man told an autograph-seeking fan. “He’d just drop it anyway.”

“At least once a week I hear something about it,” Buckner said at the time. “I’m tired of it.”

In the tragic case of Donnie Moore, a bad pitch proved too much to bear. The ace reliever for the California Angels was forever shaken by a key home run he gave up in the 1986 American League Championship game with the Red Sox. Three years later he wounded his wife and shot himself dead.

“His career ended with that pitch,” said his agent Dave Pinter. “He couldn’t live with himself.”

Williams, whose erratic fastball has made him no stranger to adversity, is spending hunting season in the seclusion of his Texas ranch. Despite reports of death threats and vandalism to his New Jersey condominium, the reliever has tried to shrug off the ninth-inning home run he threw to Toronto’s Joe Carter, reminding everyone and himself that it is, after all, just a game.

“There’s no comparison,” Pinter said. “Williams is a character. He’ll survive.”

The formula for sports infamy is inexact. Generally, your gaffe must be one of high profile; an error or miscue, unnoticed in the regular season, takes on epic proportions in a championship game.

To be remembered, such a mistake might be best committed toward the end of your career. Good works after The Event might help obscure your shame.

Nearly everyone remembers that Buckner’s fielding error came one out away from a Red Sox World Series victory. Fewer are aware his 20-year career in baseball included a batting title and eight seasons over .300.

“Everything that happens in the World Series is magnified about 50 times,” said Bill Deane, senior researcher at the National Baseball Library and Archives. “Hero or goat, it tends to be overblown and that’s a shame. People like Buckner who had a good career become associated with one play.”

Babe Ruth managed to live down a mistake early in his career.

In the seventh game of the 1926 World Series, with two men out in the ninth, Ruth walked, representing the tying run in the 3-2 ball game with St. Louis.

Cleanup hitter Bob Meusel was at bat; Lou Gehrig was in the on-deck circle. But the Babe decided to steal second, a questionable move considering his less-than fleet-of-foot physique. He was thrown out and the Cardinals claimed the Series.

“It was the only dumb play of Ruth’s life on the field,” said Allan Zullo, who has made a living from co-authoring “The Baseball Hall of Shame” book series. “The rest of his career eclipsed it.”

But there are exceptions to every rule. Fred Merkle was a rookie with the Giants in a 1908 playoff game with the Cubs. Merkle was on first; another runner was on third with the score tied. A hit sent the man on third home, winning the game.

Merkle, in the habit of the day, never ran to second. The Cubs called for the ball and tagged second, officially forcing Merkle out. The game had to be replayed after a near-riot. The Cubs won, clinching the pennant.

The sports columns of the day were unmerciful. In a world where writers called corpulent pitchers “Fatso,” Merkle became forever “Bonehead.” He bore the nickname like a curse throughout his impressive career.

“He never lived it down,” Zullo said. “People were always taunting him. The fans and the bench jockeys were really vicious.”

Eleven years later, while managing the Daytona Beach Ormands, one of those fans called him Bonehead again. Merkle walked off the field and never returned to baseball.

How do some players deal with, sometimes even profit, from their mistakes while others, as in the extreme case of Donnie Moore, do not?

It often comes down to a matter of personality. Pinter said the intensity that made Moore the best reliever in Angels history worked against him.

“Donnie took every pitch home with him,” he said. “He took it upon himself.”

Moore’s downward spiral started when he threw a home run pitch to the Red Sox’s Dave Henderson in the ninth inning of the championship game. The Angels led the series 3-1.

All that stood between the Angels and a pennant was Henderson; one more strike, one more out and the champagne chilling in the Angels’ clubhouse would flow. Henderson’s homer sent the game into extra innings and an eventual Red Sox win. Boston took the next two games and the pennant.

“He cracked up after that,” Pinter said.

Branca did have someone to talk to after sitting silent for 30 minutes. He asked his future brother-in-law, a priest, “Why?”

But Mickey Owen, a veteran catcher with the Dodgers, had more pragmatic advice.

“Branca. He was crushed by it,” Owen recalled from his home in Springfield, Mo. “I said, ‘Ralph you pitched a lot of baseball, but it wasn’t till now that you’ll be remembered all your life.”’

Owen knew of what he spoke. Ten years earlier he dropped a third strike that would have pulled the Dodgers into a tie at two games apiece with the Yankees in the World Series. Instead, the batter reached first base, the Yankees went on to win the game and took the next game and the series.

“I felt terrible at the time, but you just go on,” Owen said. “I was never a person to condemn myself. I considered myself lucky just to be in the major leagues. If I got disappointed in everything I do. I’d have quit and given up a long time ago.”