Scapegoats: Baseballers Whose Careers are Marked by One Fateful Play

This work considers baseball players whose careers have been defined and misrepresented by one moment in which they botched a play, costing their teams an important victory (often a pennant or World Series win), and ever since have taken most of the blame for the team’s breakdown. Fred Merkle, whose failure to tag second after a game-winning single lost the pennant for the Giants in 1908; Mickey Owens, whose passed ball resulted in the Dodgers losing Game 4 of the 1941 World Series to the Yankees; Ralph Branca, who delivered one of the most talked about home runs in history to Bobby Thomson in the 1951 NLCS; Mike Torrez, whose home run pitch to Bucky Dent was the final event in the Sox’s collapse of ‘78; Tom Niedenfuer, whose blown save in the 1985 NLCS cost the Dodgers the pennant; Donnie Moore, the California Angels pitcher remembered for giving up a home run in Game 5 of the 1986 ALCS; Bill Buckner, whose E-3 brought him blame for the Red Sox’s World Series loss in 1986; and Mitch Williams, cited for his three-run home run pitch to Joe Carter in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series that lost the world championship for the Phillies.