October 27, 2004: The Curse of the Bambino Is Broken

October 27, 2004, 20 years ago: The Curse of the Bambino is finally broken. Well, sort of. The Boston Red Sox win their 1st World Series in 86 years with a 3-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals, in Game 4 at Busch Memorial Stadium.

Derek Lowe ends up as the winning pitcher in all 3 postseason series-clinchers for the Sox, the 1st pitcher of any team to do so. (Andy Pettitte became the 2nd in 2009.) Johnny Damon hits a home run for Boston. Manny Ramirez is voted the Series' Most Valuable Player‚ as he leads Boston to the 4-game sweep with a .412 batting average and 4 RBI. The last out was Cardinal shortstop Edgar Renteria grounding back to pitcher Keith Foulke, who threw to 1st baseman Doug Mientkiewicz.

With the New England Patriots having won Super Bowl XXXVIII 9 months earlier, this win also gave Boston its 1st MLB-NFL double. They would achieve it again in 2018-19.

Some people had joked that the Red Sox winning the World Series would be a sign of the Apocalypse. Well, according to the Bible, one such sign is the Moon turning blood red -- and, in fact, there was a full lunar eclipse during the game. (Although this was hardly a surprise, as newspapers and news networks had mentioned it before nightfall.)

A sign held aloft at the victory parade in Boston sums it all up: "Our (late) parents and g'parents thank you." So many people said, "We wanted them to win it in our lifetime, just once." Well, as Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe, who has written more and better about the franchise than anyone, said in the following weeks, "There was no spike in the obits. We checked. All those people who said they couldn't die until the Red Sox won a World Series decided to live a little longer."

Of course, they didn't win it just once in those people’s lifetimes – except for those who died between October '04 and October '07.

And now that we know that the Red Sox are a bunch of lying, cheating, dirty, low-down, no-good bastards, we can tell the truth: They still haven't really won a World Series since 1918*. The Curse lives.

So all those Sox fans who weren't old enough to suffer through Harry Frazee, Johnny Pesky, Harry Agganis, Tony Conigliaro, Larry Barnett, Bobby Sprowl, Bucky Dent, John McNamara and Bill Buckner – though most of them did get through what Nomar, Pedro and Grady put them through – and showed more bastardry in victory than their forebears ever showed in defeat can kiss my 27 rings (well, 7 in my lifetime – for the moment), and then they can kiss my Pinstriped ass.

October 20, 2004: The Boston Red Sox Slay the Pinstriped Dragon

October 20, 2004, 20 years ago: The Red Sox ruin the anniversary of Mickey Mantle's birth. Unlike the 2003-18 Red Sox, Mickey didn't need no steroids to win baseball games. The chemicals he ingested were, most definitely, not performance-enhancing.

Having dropped 3 straight to the Sox to force a Game 7 at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees had nothing left, at least not emotionally. The Red Sox led 6-0 after 2 innings. It was 8-1 after 4. The final was 10-3.

Having let Andy Pettitte and David Wells get away, the Yankees had no lefthanded starting pitchers to counter the Boston lefthanders: David Ortiz (who hit a home run in the 1st inning), Johnny Damon (who hit one in the 2nd and another in the 4th), Trot Nixon (limited to a single in 5 at-bats), and the switch-hitting Mark Bellhorn (who homered lefthanded in the 8th) and Bill Mueller (who hit 2 singles).

Instead, manager Joe Torre had a choice of Kevin Brown, a great pitcher not that long ago but now unreliable; and Javier Vázquez, who, as his later career would confirm, seemed to pitch well for everybody but the Yankees. Torre removed Brown after loading the bases in the 2nd, already down 2-0 because of the steroid-aided homer of Ortiz. He brought in Vázquez, who gave up the 1st of Damon's homers, a grand slam.

This was not the kind of loss that crushes you because you apparently had it won at the end, and blew it. We got beat early. From the 1st inning onward, we knew the Red Sox were going to win the game. We knew it, and their fans knew it. There was nothing that could be done. And we had to stick it out, all 9 innings, and hear those Red Sox fans give us the business in our house for, as it turned out, 3 hours and 31 minutes. Never mind what the clock said: This was the longest game in Yankee history.

To paraphrase the movie Goodfellas: It was revenge for Bucky Dent, and a lot of other things. And there was nothing that we could do about it. The Red Sox were beloved in the national media, and the Yankees weren't. And we had to sit still and take it. It was among the New Englanders. It was real chowderhead shit.

It was 12:01 AM, October 21, when Ruben Sierra grounded to 2nd for the final out. So not only had the Sox ended the Curse of the Bambino, they had ruined the birthdays of both Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford.

Finally, after losing the Pennant to the Yankees on the final day in 1949, blowing the Division title to the Yankees in 1977 and 1978, losing the ALCS to the Yankees in 1999, and the shock of 2003, the Red Sox and their fans had their revenge over the Yankees. They had slain the big Pinstriped Dragon. 

But, as Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe, who knows more about the Red Sox than anyone, pointed out, it wasn't over: "The Curse of the Bambino is not that the Red Sox can't beat the Yankees. The Curse of the Bambino is that the Red Sox can't win the World Series." They lost the 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986 World Series; the 1948 AL Playoff game; fell a little short of the AL Eastern Division title in 1972, 1974, 1979 and 1991; and lost the ALCS in 1988 and 1990. And some of those losses were crushing. But none of those defeats had anything to do with the Yankees, although the 1986 World Series loss, the most crushing of them all, was to a New York team.

Shaughnessy's Globe teammate, columnist Bob Ryan, was asked if only the Pennant, even with a win over the Yankees, would have been enough. He was emphatic: "Let's get this out of the way, right now: Would it have been enough for the Red Sox to beat the Yankees, without winning the World Series? The answer is, 'No!'"

It would take 7 more days for the Sox to truly break the Curse, beating the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. The Cards had beaten them in the Series in 1946 and '67. The Sox have since beaten them again, in 2013.

Lost in the excitement of the Red Sox' revenge over the Yankees, Jim Edmonds hit a home run in the bottom of the 12th inning, to give the Cardinals a 6-4 win over the Houston Astros at Busch Memorial Stadium, and send the NLCS to a decisive Game 7. The Cards won the next day. But the Red Sox swept them in the World Series, and finished the job.

On July 30, 2009, it was revealed that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, the 2 biggest reasons the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and again in 2007, had failed steroid tests. They hadn't earned a fucking thing. They'd cheated. Ortiz was still there when they won it all again in 2013. Those 3 titles are fake, and they goddamned well know it. 1918 * Forever.

The baseball media, of course, will never give the Yankees the same benefit of the doubt that they give the Red Sox. Well, to hell with them. The world knows the truth, whether they accept it or not. They would say the Yankees "cheated" to win their titles. Really? The evidence against the 1996-2003 Yankees is incredibly flimsy. The evidence against the 2003-2013 Red Sox is overwhelming. The evidence against the 2018 Red Sox, while separate, is also pretty strong.

The Curse of Kevin Mitchell: Now 35 Years

No, I won't stop posting this every year on the anniversary. Why should I? The hard part is finding a different photo every year.

October 27, 1986: The New York Mets win the World Series. I was not happy about this.

They have not done so since. I am very happy about that.

After Game 7 was pushed back a day by rain, the Boston Red Sox actually seem to be shaking off the historical, hysterical Game 6 loss. They lead the Mets, 3-0 in the bottom of the 6th inning. Bruce Hurst, with an extra day's rest, is doing just fine. The Sox have chased Ron Darling. Sid Fernandez has relieved him. The Sox are just 12 outs away from their 1st World Championship in 68 years after all.

Can they hold it? These are the pre-steroid Boston Red Sox, what do you think? The Mets tie it up in the 6th. The idiot manager John McNamara brings in Calvin Schiraldi, who choked in the 10th the night before, to pitch the 7th, and Ray Knight leads off with a home run.  he Mets make it 6-3 by the inning's end.

The Sox make it 6-5 in the top of the 8th, so there's still hope, but then Al Nipper serves one up to Darryl Strawberry, and he hits one out, and takes a leisurely stroll around the bases, allowing NBC to run about a dozen commercials.

The Mets let reliever Jesse Orosco bat for himself, and he drives in another run, and he gets the last out by striking out Marty Barrett. Mets 8, Red Sox 5. Orosco hurls his glove high into the Flushing air.

The Mets won their 1st World Championship on October 16, 1969. It took them 17 years and 11 days, but they had now won their 2nd World Championship.

Anyone then thinking that they wouldn't win their 3rd World Championship for at least another 35 years would have been asked what he was smoking.

*

But, tonight, exactly 35 years later, more than one-third of a century, the Mets are still looking for that 3rd World Championship. They've won just 2 more Pennants and just 2 more World Series games since that night -- 1 in 2000, and 1 in 2015. To make matters worse, following the 1st of those Pennants, they went on to lose to the Yankees in the World Series, 1 of 5 the Yankees have won since 1986.

Indeed, since October 27, 1986, the Mets have reached the Playoffs 6 times, not a bad total at all. Of the other 25 teams then in existence, 5 have not done that well. Baltimore, San Diego and Montreal/Washington have each made it 5 times; Seattle, 4; and Kansas City, 2 -- but both of the Royals' were Pennants, and 1 was a World Series win over the Mets.

But the Yankees have done it 21 times, including 7 Pennants and 5 World Championships. As late as 1992, before the Yankees started contending again, it could be argued that the Mets were the top baseball team in New York. It has never been true again -- it wasn't even true in 2015.

World Series wins since 1986? The Yankees 5, the Boston Red Sox 4, the San Francisco Giants 3; 2 each for the Minnesota Twins, the Toronto Blue Jays, the Florida (now Miami) Marlins, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Los Angeles Dodgers; and 1 each for the Oakland Athletics, the Cincinnati Reds, the Atlanta Braves, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Anaheim (now named Los Angeles, through they're still in Anaheim) Angels, the Chicago White Sox, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Kansas City Royals, the Chicago Cubs, the Houston Astros and the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals.

This gets even more embarrassing when you look at some of the droughts that ended: The Cubs 108 yers without a World Championship, the White Sox 88, the Red Sox 86, the Twins 63 (they had never won since moving from being the Washington Senators), the Giants 56 (they had never won since moving from New York to San Francisco), the Astros 56 (their 1st ever), the Expos/Nats 51 (their 1st ever), the Angels 42 (their 1st ever), the Dodgers 32, the Royals 30, the Braves 28 (they had never won since moving from Milwaukee to Atlanta), the Phillies 28.

Also, the last time the Mets won a World Series, these teams did not yet exist: The Marlins, the Rays, the Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies. The Marlins and Rays have matched the Mets with 2 Pennants, the D-backs and Rox 1 each.

And I'll bring up the Yankees again: They've won as many World Series since the Mets' last title as the Mets have won Pennants in their entire history. So the old "How many were you alive for?" argument doesn't work.

On the other hand, if a Mets fan followed my path (aside from choosing the Yankees, of course), and watched his 1st game on television at age 7, and that was in 1987, that would mean we now have Met fans in their 40s who cannot remember their team winning the World Series. It would be like me with the pre-renovation Yankee Stadium, the Yankees playing at Shea, the Chris Chambliss home run, and the Mets' Pennant of 1973: They would know it happened within their lifetime, but not within their memory.

Or, to put it another way: The youngest player on the '86 Mets was John Mitchell, a pitcher who appeared in 4 games that season, and he's 56 years old, a year younger than Dwight Gooden, who turns 57 next month. The oldest? George Foster, now 72. (He was gone by the time the reached the postseason. The oldest player on the postseason roster was Ray Knight, who is about to turn 69.)

Gary Carter is dead. That's as much of a shock as the fact that Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and Lenny Dykstra are still alive, after all they've done to themselves (and others). Darryl and Doc, at least, seem to be repentant. "Nails" -- or "Dude," as he's known to his teammates on another bunch of ne'er-do-wells, the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies -- is not.

Looking at the clips from 1986, they're in color, and they look like they could have happened yesterday. The world has changed so much since. We've had retrospectives like Jeff Pearlman's book The Bad Guys Won! ESPN has done 2 30 for 30 documentaries on the 1980s Mets: Doc & Darryl in 2016, and Once Upon a Time in Queens just last month.

What the hell happened? Well, when something goes wrong, people like to look for scapegoats. Someone frustrated with the Red Sox' inability to win a World Series since 1918 thought he found a reason: They hadn't won since they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919, and the phrase "The Curse of the Bambino" was born. The phrase was popularized by Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, and became the title of his 1990 book about the history of that franchise.

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December 11, 1986, a date which lives in Flushing infamy: The Mets sent Kevin Mitchell, Shawn Abner, Stan Jefferson, Kevin Armstrong and Kevin Brown (no, not that Kevin Brown, though he did also pitch for the Padres later) to Mitchell's hometown, San Diego, for Kevin McReynolds, Gene Walter and Adam Ging. Forget everyone else, if you hadn't already: The keys to this trade were Mitchell and McReynolds.

McReynolds was a good player, but he was not a member of the glorious '86 team that went all the way. When the Mets didn't go all the way again, he became a scapegoat, and got the hell booed out of him. Fair? Of course not.

But it wouldn't have mattered so much if Mitchell hadn't panned out. And, as far as his hometown Padres were concerned, he didn't: On July 5, 1987, not even at the All-Star Break of his 1st season with them, he was batting just .245 in 62 games, so they sent him, and pitchers Dave Dravecky and Craig Lefferts, up the coast to the San Francisco Giants, getting back 3rd baseman Chris Brown, reliever Mark Davis (both of whom became All-Stars but never helped the team into the Playoffs) and 2 guys you don't need to remember. So Mitchell-for-McReynolds didn't help the Mets or the Padres.

These two Mitchell trades, however, helped the Giants tremendously. Before the trade, they had been in San Francisco for 29 years and had reached the postseason exactly twice, the last time, 16 years earlier. In 1987, the Giants won the NL West, as Mitchell responded to the change of scenery by hitting .306 with 15 homers and 44 RBIs in just 69 games for them.

In 1988, Mitchell tailed off a little, and the Giants tailed off a lot. But in 1989, he hit 47 home runs, had 125 RBIs, put up a sick OPS+ of 192, and made one of the great catches of all time, a running barehanded catch in St. Louis -- off the bat of defensive "Wizard" Ozzie Smith, no less -- that almost sent him barreling into the stands. Not since the salad days of Willie Mays had the Giants seen that kind of outfield defense.

He won the NL's Most Valuable Player award, and helped the Giants win only their 2nd Pennant in 35 years, while the Mets finished 2nd in the NL East for the 5th of 6 times in a span of 8 years – the others being the '86 crown and the '88 Division title. (Funny, but nobody ever talks about how bad trading Mitchell away was for the Padres.)

Problems with his weight and other disciplinary issues led to Mitchell being traded several times. But he did help the Cincinnati Reds into 1st place in the NL Central Division when the Strike of '94 hit, and still had an OPS+ of 138 as late as 1996.

But he played his last big-league game in 1998 at age 36, and after bouncing around the independent minors, including stints in New Jersey with the Newark Bears and the Atlantic City Surf, he called it a career. Sort of: He went back to his native San Diego, playing in an "adult baseball league" (no, no porn stars involved – that I know of), and won a title with his team in 2009.

At 59, he is now an instructor for youth baseball teams, and recently recovered from a nasty neck injury that put him in the hospital for a month. By the time he returned to Shea for the celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the title in the Summer of 2016, he was walking on his own again, and hoping to go back to his passion for motorcycles. He belongs to a motorcycle club (not a "biker gang" -- he calls it "Just a bunch of old guys having fun") called the Hood Beasts. 

Mitchell in 2016, at the title team's

30th Anniversary reunion at Citi Field

Mitchell had an adolescence connected to gangs in San Diego. He has been arrested for assault twice since his last major league game, although on neither occasion did the case go to trial. He was once listed as a tax delinquent to the tune of over $5 million. And then there's the shocking story that Dwight Gooden told, in his first memoir, of an act of animal cruelty -- a story which Doc, in a later memoir, admitted that he made up, and Mitchell has called "wildly untrue."

It seems silly to suggest that he was angry about being traded by the Mets so soon after winning the Series, certainly not so angry that he would place a "curse" on them. After all, he went to his hometown, the team he grew up rooting for. They soon traded him, but that worked out really well for him. Perhaps not in terms of team success, but, in terms of fame and fortune, getting away from the Mets was the best thing that could have happened to him.

Still, the fact remains that the Mets won a World Series, and were expected to win more; then, just 45 days after they won said Series, they traded Mitchell away, and they haven't won one since.

Are the Mets cursed? Or have they just been hit with a 3-decade-long combination of good competition and their own incompetence -- on the field, in the dugout, and in the boardroom?

Other teams have waited longer. Some, a lot longer. Some of those teams have had bizarre moments and crashes-and-burns that suggest being cursed. Some haven't, and have just... not... gotten it done.

The Mets?

* Post-season chokes in 1988, 1999, 2006, 2015 and 2016.

* Regular-season chokes in 1998, 2007 and 2008. 2021 should also count: They were in 1st place for over 100 days, and ended the season with a losing record.

* Near-misses for the Playoffs, that can't really be called "chokes," in 1987, 1989, 1990, 2001, 2019, and, in this COVID-19-forced expanded-playoffs season, 2020.

* Injury-riddled seasons, aside from those, in 1995, 1996, 1997, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2017. (Certainly, 2016 and 2020 qualify.)

* The Madoffization of the Wilpons' finances in 2008.

* And losses to teams they considered rivals in 1987 (Cardinals), 1989 (Cubs), 1998 and 1999 (Braves), 2000 (Yankees), 2006 (Cardinals again), and 2007 and 2008 (Phillies both times). Depending on how you want to definit it, that's at least 14, and possibly as many as 24, out of 35 seasons with possible "Curse Material."

The Curse of Kevin Mitchell? Do you believe?

Met fans like to use the old line of 1965-74 relief pitcher Tug McGraw: YA GOTTA BELIEVE!

I'd rather believe in the curse on the Mets than believe in the Mets themselves.

Postscript: After the Mets' disaster in Game 2 of the 2015 World Series, I wrote on Facebook, "On October 27, 2036, when (God willing, I'll still be around for it) I do my 50th Anniversary blog post for the Curse of Kevin Mitchell, you can bet a World Series share that this game will be mentioned."

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October 27, 1858: Theodore Roosevelt Jr. is born at 28 East 20th Street in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan. (He would drop the Jr. after his father died in 1880.) Over a century and a half later, he remains the only legitimately-elected President to have been born in New York City.

Others have, at some point or another, lived in the City: Washington, both Adamses, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Grant, Arthur, Cleveland, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Obama. Eisenhower was, for a time, president of Columbia University, and Obama was a student there. So was Monroe, at a time when it was still called King's College.

TR was a member of the boxing team at Harvard University. (Yes, colleges once had boxing teams, even the Ivies.) He loved tennis, although, knowing it was considered an elitist sport, refused to allow the press to photograph him while he played. (He warned his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, not to let them take his picture while he played golf, another sport then considered elitist, but Taft didn't listen to him.)

Seeing a newspaper photo of a bloodied Swarthmore College player, Robert "Tiny" Maxwell, in 1905, TR called in the top football officials of the time, and told them to do something about the violence in the game, or he would act. Not knowing how far he would go, fearing he might pass a law banning the game, in 1906 they formed what became the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and passed rule changes including the forward pass.

Had he ordered football shut down, that might have given soccer its best chance to succeed in America until the current boom. But he didn't.

Mount Rushmore, outside Rapid City, South Dakota, has the faces of 4 Presidents, chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borghlum for the following reasons: George Washington, as the father of the country; Thomas Jefferson, not at all for writing the Declaration of Independence, but for the Louisiana Purchase, beginning America's westward expansion; Abraham Lincoln, for saving the Union and making the Transcontinental Railroad possible; and Theodore Roosevelt, for being the 1st President to really have a connection with the West, as he had a ranch in North Dakota.

Downtown Rapid City recently commissioned statues of all the Presidents, including the living former Presidents, although they don't yet have one for the current occupant of the White House.

When Epic Rap Battles of History did Winston Churchill vs. Theodore Roosevelt, Dan Bull, a British rapper playing Churchill, told "Epic Lloyd" Ahlquist, playing TR, "They put your fat head on a mountain to save face, but if Rushmore were a band, you'd play bass!"

I say that TR is "the only legitimately-elected President to have been born in New York City." Officially, he is the 1st of 2 Presidents to have been born in The City -- and he would have beaten the shit out of the 2nd. Granted, that would have required a lot of beating, because Donald Trump is full of shit. But TR was fond of what he called "The Strenuous Life."

October 27, 1871, 150 years ago: William Magear Tweed, a.k.a. Boss Tweed, who controlled the Democratic Party in the City of New York and the State of New York through the Tammany Hall "political machine," is arrested on corruption charges. A State Senator and a one-term member of Congress, as "Grand Sachem" of Tammany, his construction and other schemes led to the machine pocketing as much as $200 million in his 13 years in charge -- about $4.5 billion in today's money.

Although he escaped from jail and got to Europe, he was arrested in Spain, because a policeman recognized him from the cartoons drawn by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly. Tweed often complained that the poor immigrants and their families that he was trying to help couldn't read, but they could see the cartoons, and that was what led them to turn their backs on him. Tweed died of pneumonia in prison, in 1878. He was just 55 years old, although he was always quite fat.

Nast also drew the first "jolly old elf" image of Santa Claus, putting that image into the public consciousness for all time; and drew an elephant to symbolize a heavy vote for the Republican Party, leading to it becoming the Party's symbol. While he frequently drew a donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party, and "Uncle Sam" as a symbol for America as a whole, he did not originate either symbol. But he did as much as anyone else to bring Boss Tweed to justice, and for that, we owe him our thanks.

October 27, 1896, 125 years ago: Michael Hogan is born Tipperary, Munster, Ireland. Unusually for a Catholic at that time, he had no middle name. He was a right full back, and Captain of the Tipperary County football team. That's Gaelic football, which resembles rugby, with the most notable exception being that the ball is round like a soccer ball.

On November 21, 1920, with the Irish War of Independence ongoing, he played for Tipperary in a challenge match against Dublin County, at Croke Park in Dublin. During the game, officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary entered the stadium. In retaliation for General Michael Collins' "Squad" killed 15 members of the Cairo Gang, a group of British Intelligence officers, earlier in the day, these "Black and Tans," already known and hated for their extrajudicial killings, and opened fire. Hogan was 1 of 14 people killed.

It was one of many days in Ireland's struggle that has become known as "Bloody Sunday." In 1924, a new stand was built at Croke Park. It was named the Hogan Stand in his memory. In 1999, as part of the stadium's redevelopment, a new Hogan Stand was built. A plaque at the now 82,300-seat stadium commemorates Bloody Sunday, including Hogan's death.

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October 27, 1904: The 1st Subway line opens in New York. It runs from City Hall to Grand Central Station (roughly today's 4, 5 and 6 trains), then turns onto 42nd Street (today's S, or Times Square-Grand Central Shuttle), then up Broadway to 207th Street (today's 1 train) before making one final curve into the Bronx to Bailey Street (this part is part of today's A train). The fare is 5 cents -- $1.46 in today's money.

The Polo Grounds of the time, and its 1911 successor, were served by the 155th Street station that opened on this day. It was supposedly on this line in 1908 that Jack Norworth, a songwriter, saw a sign saying, "Baseball To-Day, Polo Grounds," inspiring him to write the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

It would be 1918 before "34th St.-Penn Station" opened to service the 1910-built Pennsylvania Station, and thus to the successor station and the "new" Madison Square Garden built on the site. The 34th Street station on the 8th Avenue side of Penn Station opened in 1932, as did the 42nd Street station that serves the Port Authority Bus Terminal that opened in 1950, and the 50th Street station that served the old Garden from 1932 until its closing in 1968.

The current 4 train station at 161st Street and River Avenue opened in 1917, and began serving Yankee Stadium at its opening in 1923; the D train station there opened in 1933, probably to coincide with the opening of the nearby Bronx County Courthouse. The Prospect Park station now used by the Q train became part of the City Subway in 1920, and was used to get to games at Ebbets Field.

The station now served by the 7 train opened in 1939 for the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, well predating the 1964-65 World’s Fair and the opening of Shea Stadium and the National Tennis Center. It was named "Willets Point Blvd." from 1939 to 1964 and "Willets Point-Shea Stadium" from 1964 to 2008, and has been renamed "Mets-Willets Point," as the MTA did not want to use the name "Citi Field" due to CitiGroup's role in the 2008 financial crisis.

October 27, 1907: Union Station opens in Washington, D.C., 6 blocks north of the U.S. Capitol, replacing 2 earlier stations. It hosts service for the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (a.k.a. the B&O). In 1971, in the wake of the bankruptcies of most of America's passenger railroads, it becomes the headquarters of Amtrak.

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October 27, 1922: Ralph McPherran Kiner is born in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. He grew up in Alhambra, California, outside Los Angeles. From 1946 to 1952, he led the National League in home runs every year, twice topping 50 homers in a season.

He was a one-dimensional player, but he was the best player the Pittsburgh Pirates had. Still, the team wasn't doing well, on the field or at the gate, and team president Branch Rickey said, "We finished last with you, and we can finish last without you," meaning, "We can finish last without having to pay your salary," and sold him to the Chicago Cubs.

A back injury ended his career in 1955, after only 10 seasons. But in those 10 seasons, he hit 369 home runs. If it had been 20 years, double that, and it becomes 738 home runs – not as many as Hank Aaron and the cheating Barry Bonds ended up with, but more than the man who held the record then, Babe Ruth. Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn said, "Ralph Kiner can wipe out your lead with one swing."

Kiner allegedly said, "Home run hitters drive Cadillacs, singles hitters drive Fords." That line has also been attributed to Luke Appling, but he probably didn't say it, since he was a singles hitter (albeit one of the best ever).

Kiner went into broadcasting, and joined the staff of the expansion New York Mets in 1962. His postgame show Kiner's Korner did so much to teach a generation of us about the game. But Ralph's broadcasting, well, had its moments. Remembering early Met Marv Thronberry and '73 Met George Theodore, he called Darryl Strawberry "Darryl Throneberry" and "George Strawberry." He said, "Darryl Strawberry has been voted into the Hall of Fame five times in a row" – he meant the All-Star Team. He called Gary Carter "Gary Cooper." He called himself "Ralph Korner" many times.

He once called his broadcasting partner "Tim McArthur." At the end of the game, Tim McCarver said, "Well, Ralph, Douglas MacArthur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind,' and the Mets obviously weren't prepared tonight." Kiner said, "He also said, 'I shall return,' and so will we, right after these messages."

Then there was, "Today is Father's Day, so for all you dads out there, Happy Birthday." Like Herb Score in Cleveland and Jerry Coleman in San Diego, he is sometimes cited as having said, "He slides into second with a standup double." But he definitely said, "Kevin McReynolds stops at third, and he scores." Like Phil Rizzuto across town with the Yankees, he frequently called home runs that ended up off the wall or caught.

My favorite Kinerism is when he cued up an ad for Manufacturer's Hanover, a bank now owned by CitiGroup, by saying, "We'll be right back, after this message from Manufacturer's Hangover."

He blamed his malaprops on hanging around Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra so much in the Mets' early days. But when he did call a home run correctly, it was with a variation on the classic theme: "That ball is going, it is going, it is gone, goodbye!" And he paid one of the great tributes to a player, when he cited the fielding of the Phillies' 1970s center fielder: "Two-thirds of the Earth is covered by water. The other third is covered by Garry Maddox."

A bout with Bell's palsy left him with a noticeable speech impediment, and as he reached the age of 80, his workdays were cut back, but into the 2010s, he still did Met games on Friday nights. As the Mets' radio booth is named for Bob Murphy, their TV booth is named for Kiner. The Pirates retired his Number 4, the Mets elected him to their team Hall of Fame, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He died in 2014, at age 91, and was, deservedly so, one of the game's most revered figures.

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October 27, 1941, 80 years ago: David Joseph Costa is born in Yonkers, Westchester County, New York. A guard and a defensive end, Dave Costa was a 4-time AFL All-Star, with the Oakland Raiders and the Denver Broncos. He died in 2013.

Also on this day, Leonard Wayne St. Jean is born in McMillan, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A defesnive end, Len St. Jean was also an AFL All-Star, and the New England Patriots later named him to their 1960s All-Time Team. He is still alive.

October 27, 1946, 75 years ago: Rick Gerald Austin (not "Richard") is born in Seattle. A pitcher, he pitched a perfect game for Washington State Univesrity against Gonzaga University in 1968. His major league career was less notable, as he went 4-8 from 1970 to 1976, for the Cleveland Indians and the Milwaukee Brewers. He is still alive.

Also on this day, Ivan Reitman is born in Komárno, Slovakia. He has directed Meatballs, Stripes, the 1st 2 Ghostbusters films, Legal Eagles, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Dave, Junior, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and, most recently, the football film Draft Day.

*

October 27, 1951, 70 years ago: Jayne Harrison (no middle name) is born in Washington, D.C. The 1st black woman to win the Miss USA version of Miss Ohio (a few years before Halle Berry did), she became an actress under her married name of Jayne Kennedy. She was a regular correspondent on CBS' The NFL Today in the 1978 and 1979 seasons, the 1st black actress to appear on the cover of Playboy (but she didn't pose nude for the magazine), and the 1st black woman to host an exercise video. Some people were calling her "the black Farrah Fawcett."

She's stayed out of the public eye the last 30 years, and has raised 4 now-grown daughters.

October 27, 1954: The divorce of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe is certified in San Francisco. Apparently, Joe wanted Marilyn to stay home and be a good little Italian wife -- even though, with a birth name of Norma Jeane Mortensen, Marilyn was of Scandinavian descent. And she wanted to keep acting. Supposedly, the last straw was the skirt-billow over the subway grate scene, filmed for The Seven Year Itch on September 15, 1954, in front of the Trans-Lux Theatre, at 586 Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street.

It's been alleged that Joe hit her on occasion. Even if that despicable possibility is true, in 1961, he got her out of a psychiatric institution to which she'd been committed. And, with rumors abounding that they might remarry before she died in 1962, he organized her funeral and kept all the Hollywood leeches out.

For 20 years, he had roses sent to her grave every day, until he found out they were being stolen by tourists and local kids. He seemed never to have gotten over her: According to his lawyer, Morris Engelberg, when Joe died in 1999, his last words were, "At least I'll finally get to see Marilyn again."

We haven't gotten over her, either: Even in the 1st verse of "We Didn't Start the Fire" and the spoken-word part of "Vogue," respectively, Billy Joel and Madonna rhymed their names. Each made the other a bigger public figure, and they're still tied together: In a 2012 episode of Epic Rap Battles of History, Cleopatra, played by Angela Trimbur told Marilyn, played by Kimmy Gatewood, "You'll sleep with any guy who says he likes it hot. Even Joe DiMaggio took a swing in your batter's box!" 

To paraphrase Elton John's song about her, "Candle In the Wind," I would've liked to have known her, but I wasn't born yet -- her candle may have burned out, but the world never will forget.

*

October 27, 1961, 60 years ago: William Charles Swift is born in Portland, Maine. With the 1992 San Francisco Giants, Bill Swift went 10-4, and led the National League with a 2.08 ERA. In 1993, he went 21-8. In 1995, he helped the Colorado Rockies, in only their 3rd season, win the NL Wild Card. He finished 94-78, with 17 saves, and his 767 strikeouts lead all Maine-born pitchers. He has since served as the head coach at Arizona Christian University in Phoenix.

Also on this day, the designers, builders and crew of the USS Constellation get a ticker-tape parade in New York. The aircraft career had been built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and served the U.S. Navy until being decommissioned in 2003.

October 27, 1971, 50 years ago:  Theodoros Zagorakis is born in Kavala, Greece. The midfielder won the 2000 League Cup with Leicester City, and the 2002 Greek Cup with AEK Athens. In 2004, he captained Greece to win Euro 2004. In the Final, they beat Portugal on home soil, and Theo was named Man of the Match and Player of the Tournament. In 2014, he was elected to the European Parliament.

October 27, 1981, 40 years ago: In the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, this is the day that the alien who ends up being named "E.T." is stranded on Earth. He ends up staying for 5 days, including Halloween.

According to Steven Spielberg, the film's director, E.T.'s real name was "Zreck."

October 27, 1985: The Kansas City Royals rout the St. Louis Cardinals 11-0 in Game 7, to win their 1st World Championship, and the 1st All-Missouri World Series since the Cardinals-Browns matchup of 1944. They become only the 6th team to rally from a 3-1 deficit and win the Series (and remain the last to do so). Series MVP Bret Saberhagen pitches the shutout while Cardinals ace John Tudor allows 5 runs in 2 1/3 innings.

The Cards are still upset over the blown call that cost them Game 6 – 34 years later, despite 5 Pennants and 3 World Series wins, they and their fans still are – and allowed it to affect their performances and their minds for Game 7.

After being lifted from the game‚ Tudor punches an electric fan in the clubhouse and severely cuts his hand. Fellow 20-game winner Joaquin Andujar is ejected for arguing balls and strikes during Kansas City's 6-run 5th inning, screaming at Don Denkinger, who blew the call at first base the night before and is now behind the plate. Manager Whitey Herzog also argues, and is also tossed, mainly for questioning Denkinger's call the night before. The Cardinals finish the World Series with a .185 team batting average‚ lowest ever for a 7-game Series.

It took the Royals 29 years to even reach the Playoffs again, and I began to wonder if they were cursed. But they won the Pennant in 2014, and went all the way in 2015, so if they were cursed, the curse was broken.

Also on this day, Billy Martin is fired by the Yankees for an unprecedented 4th time (not counting all those firings in 1977 that didn't take), and is replaced by former Yankee outfielder Lou Piniella‚ who had been the team's hitting instructor since retiring as a player in 1984.

October 27, 1986: On the very day the Mets won their last World Series to date, Jonathon Joseph Niese is born in Lima, Ohio. He pitched for the Mets from 2008 to 2015, appearing in all 3 rounds of the 2015 postseason, including 4 of the 5 games of the World Series. He was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for 2016, and then reacquired by the Mets, and released.

He was signed to minor-league deals by the Yankees in 2017 and the Texas Rangers in 2018, but, each time, he was released in Spring Training. He was signed by the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League in 2019, and was quickly snapped up by the Seattle Mariners and assigned to their top farm team, the Tacoma Rainiers. But he was released in July, and hasn't pitched in a regular season major league game in 4 years. Although plagued by injuries, he has a career record of 69-68.

October 27, 1989: After a 10-day delay following the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the World Series resumes at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Ceremonial first balls are thrown out by 12 rescue workers, from both sides of San Francisco Bay, San Francisco and Oakland.

The title song from the 1936 musical film San Francisco, about the 1906 quake ("San Francisco, open your Golden Gate... ") is sung on the field by the cast of a San Francisco-based drag-queen stage show, Beach Blanket Babylon, and in the stands by 60,000 people. After the events of the last 10 days, suddenly no one has the energy to make bigoted or silly remarks about gay people, drag queens, or people dealing, directly or otherwise, with AIDS.

Game 3 begins, but it is over nearly as quickly as it was 10 days earlier, as the Oakland Athletics hit 5 home runs, to beat the San Francisco Giants, 13-7. The A's can wrap it up tomorrow.

I wasn't aware of this at the time, although I had set my VCR to record it. I was otherwise engaged, at Jay Doyle Field in East Brunswick, to see EB play Madison Central of Old Bridge, the school now called Old Bridge. We pulled one of the biggest upsets in the history of Middlesex County football, 10-9, ending Madison's 24-game winning streak. They'd beaten EB 33-0 in the 1987 Playoffs, 55-3 in the 1988 regular season, and 31-7 in the 1988 Playoffs. We'd graduated most of our good players, while they still had a lot left from their title teams.

It remains the biggest upset in EB's 60-season football history, and probably our most satisfying regular-season win ever.

*

October 27, 1991, 30 years ago: The Minnesota Twins become World Champions with a 1-0 victory in 10 innings over the Atlanta Braves, behind Jack Morris's masterful pitching. Gene Larkin's single off Alejandro Pena scores Dan Gladden with the game's only run.

The game is the 1st Game 7 to go into extra innings since the Senators-Giants Series in 1924. Morris is named the Series MVP for the Twins‚ who win all 4 games in the Metrodome while losing all 3 in Atlanta -- repeating their pattern against St. Louis in 1987. Four of the 7 games are decided on the final pitch‚ while 5 are decided by a single run‚ and 3 in extra innings. All are Series records. Morris's 10-inning masterpiece turns out to be the last extra-inning complete game of the 20th Century.

Through the 2021 season, the Twins' record in World Series play is 11-10: 11-1 at home (3-1 at Metropolitan Stadium in '65, 4-0 at the Metrodome in '87 and again in '91, and they have yet to get that far at Target Field) and 0-9 on the road. However, since that day, 30 years ago, they have never won another Pennant. The Braves have, although once in the World Series, they've rarely been better off.

October 27, 1994: Had the 1994 baseball season been allowed to reach a conclusion, this is the day that Game 5 of the World Series, had the Series gone that far, would have been played, at the home park of the American League Champions.

October 27, 1999: The Yankees defeat the Braves‚ 4-1‚ to win their 25th World Championship. Roger Clemens gets the win‚ hurling 4-hit ball before leaving the game in the 8th inning, to finally get his 1st World Series ring, 13 years after his only previous appearance, with the ill-fated '86 Red Sox.

Mariano Rivera gets the save‚ his 2nd of the Series. Jim Leyritz hits a solo homer in the 8th, the last home run, and the last run, in baseball in the 20th Century. The last out is Keith Lockhart flying out to left field, where the ball is caught by Game 3's hero, Chad Curtis. Rivera wins the Series MVP award. It is also the last major league game for New York baseball legend -- if not quite "hero" -- Darryl Strawberry, who goes 1-for-3 as the Yankee DH, his last hit a single off John Smoltz in the 2nd inning.

Four years earlier, as the final out was registered of the 1995 World Series, NBC's Bob Costas called the Braves "The Team of the Nineties." That label made sense at the time. Going into this Series, in the decade, the Braves had won 8 Division Titles and 5 Pennants, but just that 1 World Series; the Yankees had won 3 Division Titles (4 counting the strike-shortened 1994), 3 Pennants and 2 World Series.

This Series decided it, and in indisputable fashion, as the Yanks were now 2-0 over the Braves in Series play in the decade. This time, after the final out, Costas gets it right: "The New York Yankees. World Champions. Team of the Decade. Most successful franchise of the Century."

*

October 27, 2001, 20 years ago: Game 1 of the World Series, the 1st ever played in the Mountain Time Zone. The Arizona Diamondbacks pound the Yankees by a score of 9-1 behind Curt Schilling, who hurls 7 innings to win his 4th game of the postseason. Craig Counsell and Luis Gonzalez (cough-steroids-cough) homer for Arizona as Mike Mussina takes the loss for New York.

October 27, 2002: The Angels win their 1st World Series in 42 years of play – under any name -- as they defeat the San Francisco Giants‚ 4-1‚ in Game 7. John Lackey gets the Series-clinching win, making him the 1st rookie to win Game 7 of a World Series since Babe Adams of the 1909 Pirates. (My, how times have changed.)

Garret Anderson's bases-loaded double in the 3rd inning scores 3 runs for Anaheim. Troy Glaus is named Series MVP. The Giants had a 5-0 lead in Game 6, and were up 5-3 and just 9 outs away from winning the Series, but they blew it.

Soon, people begin to wonder if the Giants are a "cursed team." The Curse of Horace Stoneham? The Curse of Captain Eddie (Grant)? The Curse of Candlestick? The Kurse of Krukow? Who knows. And, now that the Giants finally have won 3 World Series as a San Francisco team, who cares?

This is the 21st World Series to be played between two teams of the same State, the 7th from a State other than New York, and the 4th from California. In each case, it remains, through 2020, the last.

October 27, 2004: The Curse of the Bambino is finally broken. Well, sort of. The Boston Red Sox win their 1st World Series in 86 years with a 3-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Memorial Stadium.

Derek Lowe ends up as the winning pitcher in all 3 postseason series-clinchers for the Sox, the 1st pitcher of any team to do so. (Andy Pettitte became the 2nd in 2009, and the 1st to start and win all 3 series-clinchers.) Johnny Damon hits a home run for Boston. Manny Ramirez is voted Series MVP‚ as he leads Boston to the 4-game sweep with a .412 BA and 4 RBI.

Some people had joked that the Red Sox winning the World Series would be a sign of the Apocalypse. Well, according to the Bible, one such sign is the Moon turning blood red -- and, in fact, there was a full lunar eclipse during the game. (Although this was hardly a surprise, as astronomoers had announced it years in advance, and newspapers and news networks had mentioned it before nightfall.)

A sign held aloft at the victory parade in Boston sums it all up: "Our (late) parents and g'parents thank you." So many people said, "We wanted them to win it in our lifetime, just once." Well, as Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe said in the following weeks, "There was no spike in the obits. We checked. All those people who said they couldn't die until the Red Sox won a World Series decided to live a little longer."

Of course, they didn't win it just once in those people's lifetimes – except for those who died between October '04 and October '07. And now that we know that the Red Sox are a bunch of lying, cheating, dirty, low-down, no-good bastards, we can tell the truth: They still haven't really won a World Series since 1918*. The Curse lives.

So all those Sox fans who weren't old enough to suffer through Harry Frazee, Johnny Pesky, Harry Agganis, Tony Conigliaro, Larry Barnett, Bobby Sprowl, Bucky Dent, John McNamara and Bill Buckner – though most of them did get through what Nomar, Pedro and Grady put them through – and showed more bastardry in victory than their forebears ever showed in defeat can kiss my 27 rings (well, 7 in my lifetime – for the moment), and then they can kiss my Pinstriped ass.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah. Also on this day, Arsenal play for the 1st time since their 49-game League unbeaten streak was broken by some major cheating that Manchester United were allowed to completely get away with. It's a League Cup match against the other major Manchester team, Manchester City, at the City of Manchester Stadium (now the Etihad Stadium), and ends in a 1-1 draw.

Making their Arsenal debuts are Spanish goalkeeper Manuel Almunia and Swiss centreback Philippe Senderos. Both would infuriate Arsenal fans. In Senderos' case, it was less his never really panning out, and more his being the 1st player to receive the Number 6 jersey since Tony Adams, the longtime Captain known as "Mr. Arsenal," had retired. Fans never warmed up to him. He was loaned out to A.C. Milan in 2008 and to Everton in 2010, and was sold to Fulham at the start of the next season. Having played for Switzerland in the 2006, 2010 and 2014 World Cups, he later played in America, for the Houston Dynamo, and is now retired.

With Almunia, it was different. He had to go into the 2006 UEFA Champions League Final when starter Manuel Almunia was wrongly sent off by the referee, and managed to keep the clean sheet going until Samuel Eto'o scored in the 76th minute, a goal that should have been disallowed as offside. Four minutes later, Juliano Belletti won the game for Barcelona.

Lehmann went back to Germany in 2008, making Almunia the starter. He was not up to the standard of legendary Arsenal goalies Alex Wilson, George Swindin, Jack Kelsey, Bob Wilson, Pat Jennings, John Lukic, David Seaman and Lehmann. Fans sang, to the tune of "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore," "Manuel will not let them score, Al-mu-ni...a!" But, just as often, they called him "The Clown." He was not re-signed after his contract ran out in 2012, and, after 2 years at Watford, he retired.

Soccer games like these, in Europe, were pretty much the only other games played on the day. It was midweek for football, the NBA didn't start its season for another 6 days, and the NHL team owners had locked the players out, with the result being that there was no 2004-05 season. So I can't do a "Scores On This Historic Day" for the day the Red Sox "broke the Curse of the Bambino."

Also on this day, Paulo Sergio Oliveira da Silva dies. Better known as Serginho, the Brazilian played for São Caetano as a defender, and was playing for his team in a Campeonato Brasileiro match against São Paulo when he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest 60 minutes into the match.

A later autopsy showed Serginho's heart to weigh 600 grams, twice the size of an average human heart, causing mystery towards his real cause of death. He had just turned 30, and his team was defending league champions. His son Raymundo followed in his father's footsteps and also played in the Brazilian league.

Also on this day, The West Wing airs the episode "The Birnam Wood." President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and his staff take the Prime Minister of Israel and the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority to Camp David, and, somehow, negotiate a solution that never seems to have occurred to any real-life President.

But White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry has been arguing with Bartlet, and, after telling him the solution won't work, and being told by Bartlet that it would, says to his best friend, whom he prodded into running for President and has guided in that office for 6 1/2 years, "My counsel is no longer of use to you." He resigns. A few minutes later, after taking a walk in the woods, he has a heart attack, and nearly dies.

What was not known to the general public at the time is that Leo's portrayer, John Spencer -- like his character, a recovering alcoholic whose heavy drinking had compromised his health -- had cancer. This storyline enabled him to step away from the show for treatment. Alas, Spencer's illness returned the following season, and he died, forcing the writers to kill Leo off as well.

October 27, 2006: The St. Louis Cardinals defeat the Detroit Tigers, 4-2, to take the 2006 World Series. Jeff Weaver – Jeff Fucking Weaver? Are you kidding me?!? – gets the win for St. Louis, who get a pair of RBIs from Series MVP (and former Trenton Thunder shortstop) David Eckstein. Sean Casey homers for Detroit.

After the 2004 Series, when the Cardinals lost to the Red Sox, Cardinal fans began to speculate about a Curse of Keith Hernandez. Hernandez had helped the Cards win the 1982 Series, but manager-GM Whitey Herzog didn't like him and traded him to the Mets in 1983.

After this, the Cards reached but lost the Series in '85 (on the Don Denkinger blown call and their Game 7 11-0 meltdown) and '87, blew a 3-games-to-1 lead in the '96 NLCS, reached the Playoffs in 2000 and '02 but failed to win the Pennant, and looked awful in losing the '04 Series. Someone brought up pitcher Jeff Suppan's baserunning blunder in '04, and noted that he wore Number 37, which was Hernandez's number in '82.

But this win, in the Cardinals' 1st season at the 3rd Busch Stadium, their 10th title, 2nd all-time behind the Yankees and 1st among NL teams, erases any possibility of a curse on them. It should be noted that the Cards' 83 regular-season wins are the fewest of any team to win a World Series in a full 162-game, or even 154-game, season.

October 27, 2007: After 25 years at the drafty, unsuitable arena at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, the New Jersey Devils play their 1st game at the Prudential Center in downtown Newark. The Ottawa Senators spoil the party, winning 4-1, with Chris Neil scoring the 1st goal. Brian Gionta scores the 1st for the Devils.

Also on this night, in the 1st World Series game ever played in the State of Colorado, Daisuke Matsuzaka becomes the 1st Japanese pitcher to start a World Series game. (Hideki Irabu was on the Yankees' World Series roster in 1998 and '99, but did not start any games. Hideo Nomo never appeared in a World Series.) He allows 2 runs on 3 hits in 5 1/3rd innings, to get the win against the Rockies in the 10-5 Red Sox Game 3 victory.

After paying $51.1 million for the rights simply to negotiate with the righthander, Boston obtained "Dice-K" from the Seibu Lions, signing the World Baseball Classic MVP to a 6-year deal worth $52 million.

With where the Sox have been since, especially with Dice-K missing so many games due to injury, how does the deal look now? Pretty good, since he did help them win a World Series. As far as is publicly known, he isn't one of the steroid freaks that helped the Sox cheat their way to said victory -- but with all of those injuries, you could wonder.

*

October 27, 2010: Game 1 of the World Series, the 1st ever for the Texas Rangers. It doesn't go so well for them. The highly-anticipated matchup of the Rangers' Cliff Lee and the San Francisco Giants' Tim Lincecum goes by the boards, and turns into a slugfest. The Giants score 6 runs in the bottom of the 5th inning, and win 11-7.

October 27, 2011, 10 years ago: Game 6 of the World Series. In 1986, the Red Sox had a 2-run lead in the 10th inning of Game 6, and were 1 strike away from winning their 1st World Series in 68 years... and blew it. Exactly 25 years and 2 days later...

The Texas Rangers had a 2-run lead in the 9th inning of Game 6, and were 1 strike away from winning the 1st World Series in the 51 years of the franchise, 40 of them in their current location... and blew it... and then had the exact same setup in the 10th inning, and blew it again! David Freese hit a game-tying triple in the 9th. He wasn't involved in the 10th inning comeback, but in the bottom of the 11th, he hit a walkoff home run, and the Cardinals won, 10-9.

If the '86 Red Sox were not officially off the hook for the biggest World Series choke ever seen to that point, thanks to the Red Sox of 2004 and '07, they were now, thanks to the Rangers having a bigger one.

October 27, 2012: The last game is played at Ivor Wynne Stadium, formerly Civic Stadium, in Hamilton, Ontario. The Canadian Football League's Hamilton Tiger-Cats beat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 28-18. They had played at the 29,000-seat facility since 1950, and one of their forebears, the Hamilton Wildcats, had played there since it opened in 1930.

The Ticats played the 2013 CFL season at the 13,000-seat Alumni Stadium in nearby Guelph, while the old stadium was torn down, and the 24,000-seat Tim Hortons Field was built on the site. They moved in for the 2014 season.

October 27, 2013: As if the interference call ending last night's game wasn't weird enough, Game 4 of the World Series also has a weird ending. The Red Sox win the 1st World Series game to ever end on a pickoff, beating the Cardinals, 4-2.

Kolten Wong, a 23 year-old rookie pinch-running for Allen Craig, is caught off 1st base by Boston closer Koji Uehara, ending the Busch Stadium contest with the dangerous Carlos Beltran at the plate.

The Cardinals had momentum after the previous night's wacky ending, but now, they won't win another game that counts until March 31, 2014.

October 27, 2015: Game 1 of the World Series at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. The Kansas City Royals played in the World Series just last year. The Mets? Not since October 26, 2000, 15 years earlier.

Matt Harvey starts for the Mets. The 1st pitch thrown by "The Dark Knight" is hit by Alcides Escobar for an inside-the-park home run, the 1st in Series play since Mule Haas of the 1929 A's -- 86 years earlier. Curtis Granderson hits a home run off Royals starter Edinson Vólquez, giving the Mets a 3-1 lead. But the Royals tie it in the bottom of the 6th, taking Vólquez off the hook. Only then is he told that his father died earlier in the day.

The Mets took a 4-3 lead in the top of the 8th, and were just 2 outs away from taking Game 1, when Jeurys Familia blows his 1st save opportunity since July 30, by giving up a home run to Alex Gordon. He becomes the 5th player, the 1st since Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius of the 2001 Yankees, to hit a game-tying 9th inning home run in World Series play.

The game goes into extra innings, and Granderson makes a sensational catch of a Jarrod Dyson drive in the 11th. But in the bottom of the 14th, David Wright, the Mets' 3rd baseman and Captain -- and, to hear Met fans tell it, "the face of New York baseball" now that Derek Jeter has retired -- makes a throwing error that lets Escobar reach 1st. Ben Zobrist singles him over to 3rd, and Eric Hosmer flies out to center, a sacrifice fly that brings home the winning run. Royals 5, Mets 4.

This was the 1st time in World Series history that the same player scored both the 1st run of the game on the 1st pitch, and the last run of the game on the last pitch. The game tied the record for the longest game by innings in World Series history, shared with Game 2 in 1916 and Game 3 in 2005. The loss made 42-year-old Bartolo Colón the oldest player ever to lose a World Series game.

It was also the 7th time in the Mets' 25 World Series games to that point in which they had a lead and blew it. That ratio would get worse.

October 27, 2018: Game 4 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium. Rich Hill starts for the Dodgers, having pitched in relief the night before, in the longest game in Series history. This made him the 1st pitcher to start a Series game the day after pitching in one since Fred "Firpo" Marberry of the Washington Senators in 1924.

The game is scoreless until the bottom of the 6th, when the Dodgers score 4 runs on an error and a 3-run home run by Yasiel Puig. But the Red Sox score 9 runs over the last 3 innings, including home runs by Mitch Moreland and Steve Pearce. Kanley Jansen joins Byung-hyun Kim of the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks to give up game-tying home runs in back-to-back games. The D-backs won that Series anyway, but now, with a 9-6 win, the Red Sox take a 3-1 lead.

Before the game, a moment of silence was held for the victims of a despicable crime. Earlier in the day, Robert Gregory Bowers, a white supremacist, takes an AR-15 assault rifle, walks into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh during a Shabbat service, and shoots 17 people, 11 of whom die. Among the 17 were 4 policemen, all of whom survived. After 2 years, he has yet to go on trial.

The day before, Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr, who sent pipe bombs to several Democratic Party officials, including former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, was caught. He became known as the MAGABomber because of his van, festooned with Trump memorabilia.

Donald Trump still refuses to accept responsibility for his incendiary rhetoric, including bigoted "dog whistles," including the word "globalist" and references to George Soros, code words for "evil Jews." Soros was also the first person to receive a MAGABomb.

October 28, 2019: Donald Trump has his best day as President, with the news of U.S. Special Forces having killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of "The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant," or ISIL. (Often incorrectly called "The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria," or ISIS.)

But he screws it up by staging that photograph with generals in the White House Situation Room, with a time-stamp about 2 hours after it happened. When it actually happened, he was, big surprise, playing golf. And he may not even have been told about it before it happened, so he didn't even get to make the order himself, unlike Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011.

Naturally, Trump's 50-minute speech on the matter made it sound like al-Baghdadi was a bigger kill than bin Laden. Trump has this desperate need to be seen as bigger and better than Obama. Mainly because, the day before bin Laden was killed, Obama released his birth certificate and humiliated Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

bin Laden killed a hell of a lot more Americans than al-Baghdadi did. What's more, Trump said that nobody knew who bin Laden was before 9/11. This is a lie. There were news reports about his terrorist activities as early as 1996. In 1998, when al-Qaeda bombed 2 U.S. Embassies in Africa, it was known and publicized that bin Laden ordered it.

In contrast, I never heard of al-Baghdadi until the night he was killed. I literally never knew he was alive until I knew he was dead. ISIL/ISIS, sure, everyone's heard of them. But ask any American to name their leader before that day, and they would draw a blank.

And then Trump goes to Game 5 of the World Series. He had not been asked to throw out the ceremonial first ball. That honor was bestowed upon Washington-based celebrity chef José Andrés.

Trump took Melania. He did not take Barron, his 13-year-old son, who is a known sports fan. The World Series was 2 miles from his house, and he had tickets, and he didn't take his 13-year-old son.

Yeah, sure, it's a school night. I think a note from the President of the United States would carry some weight. Well, it would, if it were any other President.

When a group of veterans is shown on the Nationals Park scoreboard in the middle of the 3rd inning, the sellout crowd of 43,910 cheers them. When the image shifts to Trump, it is about 60-40 boos, and the boos are louder than the cheers. Fans chant, "Lock him up!" The scoreboard operator has to switch back to the camera on the veterans, and the crowd goes back to cheering.

Nobody booed Franklin Roosevelt on D-Day. Nobody booed John F. Kennedy after he solved the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nobody booed Obama after he ordered the bin Laden raid. Even George W. Bush didn't start getting booed until well after that dumb "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" stunt.

This was Trump's best day as President, and he got the hell booed out of him anyway. For this, Washington Nationals fans have my thanks forever.

Oh yes, there was a game. The Houston Astros jump out to a 4-0 lead after 4 innings, and Gerrit Cole protects it, as the Astros beat the Nats 7-1. They take a 3-2 lead in the Series, and can wrap it up by taking either Game 6 or Game 7 in Houston. However, this is a Series in which the road team has won every game. If that pattern holds, the Nats will win.

December 26, 1919: The Yankees Purchase Babe Ruth

Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert,

manager Miller Huggins, and slugger Babe Ruth

December 26, 1919, 100 years ago: The New York Yankees purchase the contract of outfielder George Herman "Babe" Ruth from the Boston Red Sox. It is the most famous transaction in the history of North American professional sports -- or, if you're a Red Sox fan, the most infamous.

Let's take a step back, to properly set it up: On July 30, 1919, Harry Frazee, owner of the Red Sox, traded pitcher Carl Mays to the Yankees for pitchers Bob McGraw and Allen Russell (neither of whom ever did much for either club) and $40,000. There was a hell of a to-do about this, as Mays had left, or "jumped" the Sox and gone home, and was suspended. At the time, the rules said you couldn't trade a suspended player.

This trade pretty much split the American League: Frazee, Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert, and Chicago White Sox owner Charlie Comiskey were on one side; on the other were AL founder and President Ban Johnson and the owners of the other 5 clubs. They were the brothers John and Ben Shibe and Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics, former Yankee manager Clark Griffith of the Washington Senators, Frank Navin and Walter Briggs of the Detroit Tigers, Phil Ball of the St. Louis Browns, and Sunny Jim Dunn of the Cleveland Indians.

The National Commission, which oversaw baseball in those days, ruled in favor of Frazee and Ruppert, and Mays became the 1st major player to go from Frazee's Sox to Ruppert's Yanks. There would be more. (Mays' role in the death of Cleveland Indians player Ray Chapman is a story for another time.)

As a result of the Mays contretemps, Frazee, Ruppert, and Comiskey, now known as "the Insurrectos," could pretty much now only make deals with each other, as the other AL owners, "the Loyal Five," wanted nothing to do with them.

Due to circumstances that Frazee should have been able to control, but didn't, he had to get rid of Babe Ruth, who, in 1918 and '19, had gone from being baseball's best lefthanded pitcher to being the biggest power hitter in the game, but also the biggest headache. He was already a carouser, and he was demanding that his salary be doubled from $10,000 to $20,000 for the 1920 season.

So Frazee sold the Babe to the Yankees, mainly because Ruppert was willing to pay $125,000 for Ruth's contract; while the other possibility, the White Sox, were run by Comiskey, a notorious cheapskate. (His parsimony led to a problem with that year's World Series, as you may be aware.)

So if you're a Red Sox fan, don't blame Frazee for what happened: He didn't have much choice, unless he wanted the press and the public to think Ruth was running the team.

The deal was announced on January 5, 1920. People in Boston weren't happy about it. But nobody could have foreseen what would result from it. Ruth revolutionized the game with the Yankees, turning the home run from a rare thing into a common occurrence. And there would be more deals between Ruppert and Frazee, as Mays would be joined on the Yankee pitching staff by former Sox Waite Hoyt, "Bullet Joe" Bush and "Sad Sam" Jones.

From 1918 to the present... Yankees 27, Red Sox 0. Without cheating, anyway.

Bill Buckner, 1949-2019

A man plays 2,541 games in the major leagues, including an All-Star Game and 23 postseason games. He deserves to be remembered for more than one play.

William Joseph Buckner was born on December 14, 1949, in Vallejo, California, the East Bay town that was already home to actor Raymond Burr, disc jockeys turned singers Johnny Otis and Sly Stone, baseball player Ping Bodie and football player Dick Bass; and would later be home to baseball stars Tug McGraw and CC Sabathia, University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido, football stars Mike Merriweather and Rashad Ross, basketball star DeMarcus Nelson, and Olympic swimmer Natalie Coughlin.

He grew up north of San Francisco, in American Canyon, California. He was an All-State receiver at Napa High School, but it became clear that his best sport was baseball. He was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1968, and made his major league debut with them on September 21, 1969, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Wearing Number 38, he pinch-hit for pitcher Jim Brewer, against future Hall-of-Famer Gaylord Perry, in the top of the 9th inning, and popped up to 2nd base. The Dodgers lost 4-3 to their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, in 10 innings, due to 3 walks and an error.

That would be his only appearance in 1969. He played 28 games in 1970, and made the majors for good in 1971, wearing Number 22, and playing 1st base, left field and right field. He batted .319 in 1972, and .314 in 1974. He also stole 31 bases that year.

That 1974 season would be memorable, both at the beginning and at the end. At the beginning, on April 8, he was playing left field for the Dodgers, and a home run went over his head, uncatchable. It was the 715th career home run for Hank Aaron, breaking Babe Ruth's record. Remember this point for later.

At the end, the Dodgers won the National League Pennant, their 1st since 1966 and the team of Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Maury Wills. This was the beginning of their era of Don Sutton, Tommy John, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith. In the 8th inning of Game 3 of the World Series against the Oakland Athletics, he hit a home run off Jim "Catfish" Hunter. But the A's won the game and the Series anyway.

*

He batted .301 in 1976, but he injured his ankle, which would bother him for the rest of his career. The Dodgers traded him, Ivan DeJesus and Jeff Albert to the Chicago Cubs for Rick Monday and Mike Garman. This was a good trade for both teams. Monday became the Dodgers' center fielder on their Pennant-winning teams of 1977, '78 and '81; while Buckner, moved to 1st base, and DeJesus, at shortstop, were big upgrades over what the Cubs had.

Buckner batted .323 in 1978, and won the NL batting title with .324 in 1980. In 1981, he batted .311, led the NL with 35 doubles, and made his only All-Star Game. In 1982, he batted .306, his 7th and .300+ season, had his 1st 100+ RBI season with 105, and again led the NL in doubles, with 38.

Unfortunately, these were bad years for the Cubs, made all the worse by one of the worst uniforms in baseball history: Poweder-blue road uniforms, with white "reverse pinstripes."

The Seventies were over,

but Buckner still had the Tony Orlando mustache.

Then came a stroke of bad luck: On May 25, 1984, the Cubs traded Buckner to the Boston Red Sox for Dennis Eckersley and Mike Brumley. The trade paid immediate dividends for the Cubs, and Eckersley helped them win the NL Eastern Division title.

The Red Sox, at that point, were in a transition period: While they still had Jim Rice, Dwight Evans and Bob Stanley from their hard-hitting but near-missing late 1970s team, Carl Yastrzemski, Carlton Fisk and Fred Lynn were gone. But new players were coming up: Roger Clemens, Bruce Hurst, Mike Greenwell, Marty Barrett.

The change of scenery from Wrigley Field to Fenway Park, and a switch to uniform Number 6, helped Buckner: In 1985, he batted .299, and reached career highs 46 doubles, 16 home runs and 110 RBIs. In 1986, at age 36, he tailed off a little, partly due to injuries, and batted only .267. But he hit a new career high with 18 homers, and had 102 RBIs. He hit .340 in September, helping the Red Sox outrun the New York Yankees and win the American League Eastern Division title. His 3 RBIs in the AL Championship Series helped the Sox beat the California Angels for the Pennant.

*

This is the nightmare scenario for a Yankee Fan: A World Series between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox. The Other Team vs. The Scum.

I was rooting for the Red Sox. Why? Well, it was 1986. This was before Big Papi and Manny Being Manny and all the other steroid cheats. This was before Pedro the Punk and Varitek the Coward and Crybaby Curt. This was before Papelbum and Youkilis wiggling his ass at the plate. Not only weren't the Sox "The Scum" yet, but it didn't occur to me to call them that until I got into English soccer in 2008, and I found out that fans from Newcastle in the north to Southampton in the south called their team's arch-rivals "The Scum."

Yes, it was a rough Pennant race that year, and the Sox beat the Yanks out. Yes, I remembered the battles of the late 1970s -- well, maybe not 1975 or '76, as I was not quite old enough to watch baseball on TV yet; but definitely '77 and '78. I knew the battles. Thurman Munson vs. Carlton Fisk. Reggie Jackson vs. Jim Rice. Ron Guidry vs. Dennis Eckersley. Bill Lee vs., well, every Yankee. Bucky Dent vs. Mike Torrez. And, ultimately, Carl Yastrzemski vs. Rich Gossage -- Yaz vs. the Goose.

But, to me, then, the Mets were The Enemy. I didn't have to live in New England, surrounded by Sox fans. I had to live in Central Jersey, surrounded by Met fans, people with all the arrogance of Yankee Fans but having earned none of it. (This was also shown in hockey, as Ranger fans hated Islander fans for the same reason, until the Isles did earn it.)

And while I may have hated Rice and Fisk and Eck and Lee and, especially, Jerry Remy, who always seemed to do well against the Yankees, before becoming the Sox' broadcaster, their Phil Rizzuto or Richie Ashburn, I didn't hate Yaz. Or Dwight Evans. And, on the current team, I didn't hate Buckner, or Wade Boggs, or Mike Greenwell, or Bruce Hurst. I kind of liked them. Certainly, I respected them. I even liked Roger Clemens -- for the moment. That would change. And change back. And change back and forth a few times.

I had no problem rooting for the Red Sox against the Mets. The fact that the Sox were the American League team had nothing to do with it. Met fans will always root for the National League Champions in the World Series. Even if it's the Philadelphia Phillies or the Atlanta Braves. Even if it's one of the teams that abandoned New York after the 1957 season, the Los Angeles Dodgers or the San Francisco Giants.

Yankee Fans don't think that way: We might root for the American League Champions in the World Series, but not because they're the American League team.

So, yeah, I wanted the Red Sox to win the 1986 World Series. As had been sung in The Sound of Music, I was 16 going on 17. As would later be said in politics, "It was as youthful indiscretion."

Going into the World Series, both of Buckner's ankles were injured. Sox manager John McNamara had been replacing him for defensive purposes, with Dave Stapleton. The Red Sox took the 1st 2 games of the World Series against the Mets, but the Mets won the next 2. The Sox won Game 5, and needed just 1 more win for their 1st World Championship in 68 years.

It was October 25, 1986, at Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadow, Queens, New York, New York. The Sox were leading Game 6 5-3 in the 10th inning, putting them 3 outs away. Buckner was 0-for-5, and should have been taken out for defensive purposes one more time. But McNamara wanted him to be on the field for the celebration.

Sox pitcher Calvin Schiraldi got the 1st 2 outs. Then he began one of the worst meltdowns in baseball history. He allowed a single to Gary Garter. He allowed a single to Kevin Mitchell. He allowed a single to Ray Knight, scoring Carter and making it 5-4.

McNamara took him out, replacing him with Stanley. Buckner remained at 1st base, instead of Stapleton being sent out there.

Stanley pitched to Mookie Wilson. He got 2 strikes on him, but Mookie fouled some pitches off. Between Schiraldi and Stanley, there were 13 separate pitches that could have been the last out for the Sox.

Finally, Stanley threw a wild pitch that nearly hit Wilson, and Mitchell scored. 5-5. Tie ballgame. Someone did the math, and determined that, before Stanley threw that pitch, the odds were 320-1 against the Mets winning the Series. Now, the lead was blown.

And Buckner had nothing to do with it.

Stanley pitched to Wilson again. Wilson swung awkwardly. Under ordinary conditions, this would have been an easy play: Ground ball to the 1st baseman, who would flip to the pitcher, who would step on 1st for the out, ending the inning.

These were not ordinary conditions. Stanley did not run to cover 1st. And Buckner was playing hurt. He bent over to pick up the ball, and, well...

When I saw it, I said, "He's not gonna get it." But what that meant didn't quite register. Then, when my prediction came true, it registered, and I yelled, "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh... my... God!"

Vin Scully had the call on NBC:

Three and two to Mookie Wilson. Little roller up along first, behind the bag! It gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it! (After letting the roar of the crowd tell the story for a minute) If one picture is worth a thousand words, you have seen about a million words. But, more than that, you have seen an absolutely bizarre finish to Game 6 of the World Series. The Mets are not only alive, they are well, and they will play the Red Sox in Game 7 tomorrow! 

"A picture is worth a thousand words." -- Arthur Brisbane,

American newspaper editor, 1864-1936

Jack Buck, on CBS radio:

Here's the pitch to Mookie Wilson. Winning run at second. Ground ball to first, it is a run... an error! An error by Buckner! The winning run scores! The Mets win it, 6-5 with 3 in the 10th! The ball went right through the legs of Buckner, and the Mets, with 2 men out and nobody on, have scored 3 times to bring about a 7th game, which will be played here tomorrow night. Folks, it was unbelievable.

Bob Murphy, on the Mets' station, WHN, AM 1050, soon to become the original WFAN:

Three and two the count. And the pitch by Stanley. And a ground ball,  trickling, it is a fair ball! Gets by Buckner! Rounding 3rd, Knight! The Mets will win the ballgame! The Mets win! They win!

(No, he didn't say, "The Mets win the damn thing!" He did say that, but not on this occasion.)

Ken Coleman, on the Red Sox' station, WRKO, AM 680: 

Ground ball to 1st base, Buckner, it gets by him! And here comes the winning run!

Mets 6, Red Sox 5. World Series tied, 3-3. Game 7 was postponed a night by rain. But the idea that "The Red Sox were doomed," or "There was no way they were going to win Game 7" is ludicrous. They had their chances: They took a 2-0 lead in the top of the 2nd inning, still held that lead going into the bottom of the 6th, and closed to within 6-5 in the top of the 8th. It didn't truly become hopeless until Darryl Strawberry's home run and seemingly endless home run trot in the bottom of the 8th. Mets 8, Red Sox 5. Mets win Series.

It was almost the ultimate nightmare scenario for Yankee Fans: Thinking the Red Sox had won the World Series, and then, less than 24 hours later, seeing the Mets win it. It was as if they'd both won it.

Of course, the Red Sox had lost it. 

Even though the Yankees had nothing to do with this -- although a New York team did -- Buckner's error became the culmination of the myth of "The Curse of the Bambino." When Dan Shaughnessy, columnist for The Boston Globe, wrote his book with that title, publishing it in 1990, he brought up all kinds of weird things, and connected them to the Sox' sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees in the 1919-20 off-season, as the explanation for why the Sox hadn't won the World Series since 1918.

He mentioned the Sox' retired numbers on the right field roof at Fenway Park, reading "9 4 1 8," suggesting September 4, 1918, the day before the last World Series the Sox won. He mentioned the fact that Bruce Hurst, who stood be named Most Valuable Player of the Series before Schiraldi and Stanley blew it, could have his name rearranged: "BRUCE HURST" to "B. RUTH CURSE."

But somebody pointed out something else to him: When Hank Aaron hit his 715th career home run, to break Ruth's all-time record, the Dodger left fielder it went over was Bill Buckner. It was as if Ruth was punishing the Sox in general, and Buckner in particular. Well, what was Buckner supposed to do? Fly, to catch the ball? He wasn't Superman. (Clearly, as he was injured in the '86 Series, and Superman is invulnerable.)

Buckner was assigned the blame by Red Sox fans. He was harassed at home during the off-season. Someone threw garbage on his lawn. He got death threats in the mail and on the phone. If there had been an Internet at the time, it would have been even uglier.

During the 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and the Mets, Bud Collins, NBC Sports' tennis maven, and a huge Red Sox fan, was covering a tennis tournament in Japan. When he boarded his plane in Tokyo, he had just seen, on TV in the airport lounge, Dave Henderson hit a home run that gave the Sox the lead in the 10th inning in Game 6. Now, they were going to win the World Series for the 1st time since 1918, and he was going to miss it. Forget not being in the stadium: He wasn't on the right side of the world. He wasn't even going to see it, because he was going to be on the plane!

When the plane landed at Los Angeles hours later, he expected to find people talking about it. Oh, they were talking about it all right, but, knowing who Bud was and where he was from, they kept coming up to him and telling him how sorry they were. He'd been in the air, without today's laptops and smartphones, and he had no idea of what they were talking about. A quick trip to the airport lounge and a look at a TV showed him the collapse, and its exclamation-point error by Bill Buckner.

Collins would later say, "He was driven out of New England, because, to New England, Bill Buckner was like Rasputin. He'd done evil, wicked things. We all make mistakes, but that was a mistake that will haunt him for the rest of his life."

In 2005, ESPN launched its series The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame... Host Brian Kenny said that Buckner could have been the show's patron saint. Here were the network's...

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Bill Buckner for the Boston Red Sox Losing the 1986 World Series

First, The Best of the Rest:

Missed Opportunities. For example, the Sox left 14 runners on base in Game 6.

Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd. The Sox pitcher celebrated too soon, opening one of the bottles of champagne that had been brought into the clubhouse.

The Shea Stadium Scoreboard. Whoever was operating it put up a premature message that congratulated the Sox for winning.

Pictured: A real image that actually happened,

not "Alternate History."

5. Roger Clemens' Exit. Did John McNamara take him out too soon, or did he really have a blister, like McNamara said? Clemens is a known liar, but he has always stuck to his story that he could have pitched longer.

4. Calvin Schiraldi. All he needed was one more out. He blew Game 6, and blew Game 7, too. In the 33 years since, he's been said to have a "deer in the headlights" look. The experience left him so scarred (How scarred was he, Uncle Mike?), when he was interviewed for that ESPN show, the former Met and former Red Sock wasn't wearing Met gear, or Sox gear, but a jersey and a cap from his alma mater, Mississippi State University. (A very good baseball program, then and now.)

3. Rich Gedman and Bob Stanley. If Stanley hadn't thrown that wild pitch... if Gedman had blocked it... if either of those things had happened, it might not have mattered whether Buckner had gotten the ball and Stanley had covered 1st base.

2. Mookie Wilson. He hit the ball, so give him credit. He was one of the fastest guys in baseball at the time. Buckner, with his injured ankles, was never going to beat him to the bag. Even if Buckner had gotten to the ball, and Stanley had covered 1st, Mookie still might have beaten it out.

Then it would have been bases loaded, and the next batter would have been Howard Johnson, not a good hitter for average at the time, but with some pop in his bat. The Sox would hardly have been out of the woods.

1. John McNamara. The Boston manager had screwed the pooch in any number of ways, including not replacing Buckner with the fully-fit, better-fielding Dave Stapleton.

Throw in the fact that the Sox led Game 7 from innings 2 through 6, and anybody who blamed Buckner for losing the Series was an idiot.

But then, we are talking about Red Sox fans.

*

Buckner was treated decently at every American League ballpark in 1987 -- except Fenway Park, his home park. On July 23, despite having a decent .273 batting average and a solid 42 RBIs, the Sox released him. He was quickly picked up by the Angels, and he batted .306 the rest of the way, finishing at .286, with 5 homers and 74 RBIs -- not bad for a player in pitcher's parks (as Fenway is for lefthanded hitters, and Angel Stadium is for any hitter), and especially for a 37-year-old player with nagging injuries.

Still, the Angels released him early in the 1988 season, and was picked up by the Kansas City Royals, playing with them through the 1989 season.

In 1990, the Red Sox signed him again, making him 1 of what's now 29 players who played in the major leagues in 4 different decades -- 5 of them in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s: Buckner, Nolan Ryan, Carlton Fisk, Jerry Reuss and Rick Dempsey.

He wasn't in the starting lineup on Opening Day, so he was introduced with all the nonstarters, as is Opening Day custom throughout baseball. And he received a standing ovation. But he was 40 years old, and done. He had a .186 batting average when he was released on June 5, and retired.

He finished his career with a .289 lifetime batting average, a .321 on-base percentage, a .408 slugging percentage, and an OPS+ of exactly 100 -- in other words, exactly average. Maybe this stat doesn't always tell the truth: He was a better hitter than that, topping 110 5 times, reaching a high of 130 in 1981. He collected 2,715 hits. Only 174 of them were home runs, but 498 of them were doubles.

Here is a list of all players eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but not yet in, and not under a cloud of steroid suspicion, with more career hits than Bill Buckner: 

1. Omar Vizquel 2,877

2. Johnny Damon 2,769

3. Vada Pinson 2,757

4. Al Oliver 2,743

5. Rusty Staub 2,716

6. Bill Buckner 2,715

That's it. Vizquel will almost certainly get in, but that's because of his glove. Of the other 4, Buckner was, prior to his 1986 injuries, a better fielder than any of them.

Here is a list of all players eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but not yet in, and not under a cloud of steroid suspicion, with more career doubles than Bill Buckner: 

1. Todd Helton 592

2. Jeff Kent 560

3. Al Oliver 529

4. Dave Parker 526

5. Garret Anderson 522

Tie. Johnny Damon 522

7. Scott Rolen 517

8. Mark Grace 511

9. John Olerud 500

10. Rusty Staub 499

11. Bill Buckner 498

Tie. Torii Hunter 498

Again, pretty good company.

Am I saying that Buckner belongs in the Hall of Fame? No, I'm not. Am I saying he deserves more respect than he's gotten? You bet your sweet bippy.

*

After retiring, Buckner moved to the Boise, Idaho area with his wife Jody, and his 3 children, daughters Brittany and Christen, and son Bobby. He invested in real estate, and made a lot of money. He owned an auto dealership, and lost money. In 2011, he returned to Massachusetts to manage the Brockton Rox of the Can-Am League, and took them to a winning record. For the next 2 seasons, he served as the hitting instructor for the Boise Hawks, a Cubs farm team.

But that one play wouldn't go away. It was mentioned in the Boston-based movies Celtic Pride, Rounders, and the U.S. version of Fever Pitch. It was mentioned on an episode of The Simpsons. Buckner agreed to appear in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he again mishandled a baseball, but made up for it by catching a falling baby.

In 2004, the Red Sox finally won the World Series. Many Sox fans began to talk about "forgiving" Buckner. Forgive him? For what? When he made his error, the damage had already been done.

On Opening Day 2008, when the Sox got their World Series ring, Buckner was invited to throw out the ceremonial first ball. He got a standing ovation. He got another at Fenway's 100th Anniversary celebration in 2012. He also appeared at the 50th Anniversary celebration for Dodger Stadium that year, and the 100th Anniversary celebration for Wrigley Field in 2014.

But he developed Lewy body dementia, which produces symptoms similar to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and schizophrenia. Yes, all three. It's a hell of a way to live, and to die. Comedian Robin Williams committed suicide because he couldn't handle living with the symptoms. His widow wrote an article titled "The Terrorist in My Husband's Brain."

It also slowly killed actress Estelle Getty, disc jockey Casey Kasem, and 1950s Yankee 3rd baseman Andy Carey. Former Atlanta Braves and Hawks owner, and CNN founder, Ted Turner has it. Buckner isn't even the 1st former Chicago sports star to develop it: It killed Blackhawks Hall-of-Famer Stan Mikita, and former Bulls star and Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan has it.

Bill Buckner died yesterday, May 27, 2019, at his home outside Boise. He was 69 years old.

Let him be remembered for a good baseball career that included over 2,700 hits, an All-Star berth, and 2 Pennants. And let him be remembered for the standing ovations he received in his retirement.

That's what we need to remember about him. Not one play, but 22 seasons and a good life.

UPDATE: His final resting place is not publicly, known.