Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Monday
Evening QB
IF he hasn't already, Benny Agbayani will get over the embarrassment soon enough. Benny’s flub can’t
match ‘Bonehead’s’Sure, his two-run mental lapse Saturday when he forgot the number of outs will live on in blooper films forever. And you know his New York Mets teammates will rag him about it for at least that long.
Agbayani cost the Mets the lead when he caught a fly ball for the second out of an inning and, thinking it was the third, gave the ball to a fan instead of throwing it in. But the former St. Louis School and Hawaii Pacific star eventually will be able to laugh it off -- his teammates got him off the hook and New York won the game.
The diamond gods weren't as charitable to another National League New York player 92 years ago.
His name was Fred Merkle, and although some of the facts surrounding his misfortune are cloudy, his remains the bungle all baseball brain flatulence is measured against.
It was Sept. 23, 1908. Merkle's Giants hosted the Cubs at the Polo Grounds as the teams battled for the pennant in the closing days of the season.
Merkle was on first when Al Bridwell hit what was apparently a game-winning single. Merkle didn't bother to touch second base when he saw teammate Harry McCormick cross the plate.
Happy Giants' fans rushed the field and headed for the center-field exit as a Cubs' outfielder came up with the ball and threw it to Johnny Evers at second.
This is where the stories begin to vary.
One version has Giants' pitcher Joe "Ironman" McGinnity, who was coaching third, wrestling the ball away from the Cubs and heaving it into the stands. Evers got ahold of a different ball.
Another has Evers wrestling the "live" ball away from a Giants' fan.
At any rate, Evers caught the attention of umpire Hank O'Day, who called Merkle out at second.
With the fans all over the field and the Giants having left it, the game wasn't completed that day. It was replayed at the end of the season, when the teams were tied for first. The Cubs won, and went to the World Series.
Fred Merkle became "Bonehead" Merkle, and the play became known as "Merkle's Boner."
Merkle went on to put together a decent career with the Giants, Dodgers, Cubs and Yankees. He batted .273 from 1907 to 1926.
Although his blunder cost the Giants a World Series berth in 1908, Merkle eventually got into six Fall Classics as a player and coach. He was on the losing side every time.
MERKLE died in 1956, but people still talk about him today.
His great-grand nephew Ralph Merkle is more egghead than bonehead. He's a scientist who studies something called molecular manufacturing, or nanotechnology.
Ralph Merkle said he didn't grow up playing baseball, but over the years people asked him about Fred, and he became intrigued himself.
"People are just fascinated by his story. They're still arguing about it on the Internet a century later," the Sunnyvale, Calif., resident said. "I've seen quite a few different versions of it. The biggest question is about the ball. 'A' ball appeared. But where did it come from?"
Over the years, Fred Merkle has become somewhat of a sympathetic character, a symbol of how all of us -- even big-league ballplayers -- are capable of making really dumb mistakes.
"My opinion is he's my great-grand uncle and he's a great guy," Ralph Merkle said. "He's the family legend."
Dave Reardon, who covered sports in Hawaii from 1977 to 1998,
moved to the the Gainesville Sun, then returned to
the Star-Bulletin in Jan. 2000.
E-mail dreardon@starbulletin.com