Scapegoat and Society: An Analysis of Ritual Blaming Practices in Major League Baseball

By Alex Prewitt History 122: America and the National Pastime Professor Sol Gittleman December 13, 20111

DEDICATIONS

To my parents, who like all other humans love to make excuses. To coach John Cornwell, for teaching me that the two most important things about baseball are: No picking your nose and no eating bugs. To Fred Merkle, Fred Snodgrass, Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman, for shouldering the blame of entire fan bases. To Professor Sol Gittleman, for teaching me at once about baseball and the world.

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TABLE OF CONTENTSTitle Page....................................................................................................................................................1 Dedication...................................................................................................................................................2 Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................................3 Preface........................................................................................................................................................4 CHAPTER 1: Origins of the Scapegoat...................................................................................................7 Characteristics of the Scapegoat..............................................................................................................9 Historical Examples..............................................................................................................................10 CHAPTER 2: Rene Girard & Ritual Blaming Practices......................................................................14 CHAPTER 3: Fred Merkle, The Original Scapegoat...........................................................................18 Background............................................................................................................................................19 Merkles Boner.....................................................................................................................................20 The Aftermath.......................................................................................................................................21 CHAPTER 4: Fred Snodgrass................................................................................................................24 CHAPTER 5: The Ball Gets By Buckner............................................................................................29 The Ball Gets By Buckner..................................................................................................................30 The Aftermath.......................................................................................................................................32 CHAPTER 6: Steve Bartman and the Outsider....................................................................................36 The Man With The Headphones............................................................................................................37 A Story About The Fans.......................................................................................................................40 CHAPTER 7: Resolutions and Cathartic Homecomings......................................................................43 Bibliography.............................................................................................................................................46

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PREFACEWe exist in a society that loves to deflect blame onto others. Inside and outside the sports world, we constantly operate under the assumption that erroneously deflecting culpability will somehow absolve ourselves of all guilt. This selfish mentality allows us to rest easy, to sleep at night knowing our problems have been passed onto others. It is someone elses problem now, we think, thereby rationalizing a decidedly irrational situation. But what about those onto whom we have passed the blame? What about scapegoating, the ubiquitous practice of singling out a singular scapegoat onto whom all our problems are placed? When frantically attempting to rid ourselves of guilt, we often forget about those we have wronged in the process. The practice of scapegoating can be traced back to Biblical texts, to the Old Testament and the book of Leviticus. Religious scholars like Ren Girard have written extensively about the scapegoat and its connections to human behavior. But somewhere along the line, notions of the scapegoat superseded their religious or psychological origins and transitioned into the everyday sports lexicon. Scapegoating is no longer about righting our moral wrongs through religious means; it has transformed into righting the wrongs of those on our favorite sports teams whom we feel have personally let us down. Longtime Boston manager Terry Francona was fired in early October because the spotlight fell on the expendable scapegoat, held responsible by both the Red Sox fan base and front office for the teams 9.5-game collapse late in the season that cost Boston the American League Wild Card. Players will get blamed on an micro level, for blowing a late-inning lead or for committing a crucial error, but these all occur in single games, and Boston blew a lead over the course of an entire month. Someone had to be labeled the scapegoat for the teams failure to hold a lead. Terry Francona, I wrote in my Oct. 4 column for the Tufts

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Daily, was the unfortunate rule, not the exception.1 When the team suffers a loss, especially at a key point in the season, one person is often blamed even though other players or the whole team, for that matter could easily be held just as culpable.2 Scapegoating is a curious practice, one that can ultimately be explained by human nature. For, as Sir James Frazer wrote, Because it is possible to shift a load of wood, stones, or what not, from our own back to the back of another, the savage fancies that it is equally possible to shift the burden of his pains and sorrows to another, who will suffer them in his stead.3 To that end, scapegoating is also ritualistic, and is deeply engrained in our daily behavior. As long as societies have existed, so too has ritual blaming, for we rarely face our own faults but readily pass blame onto others. By taking the responsibility of blame for bad things occurring to a group, a scapegoat can make it possible for the group to continue to function.4 We would rather shoulder the burden onto an innocent soul than accept that we wronged. And in a culture so obsessed with sports as in America, athletes and coaches often undertake the brunt of our relatively meaningless anger. After all, it is only a game, right? Perhaps, but in the case of many, scapegoating has defined lives and ruined careers, all because of one mistake. In this paper, I will attempt to link such blaming practices to four of baseball historys most famous scapegoats, all of whom have had their lives defined by one specific play in which they cost their respective teams an important victory. Fred Merkles Boner in the early twentieth century cast a humble youngster aside as baseballs original scapegoat. Fred Snodgrass committed a common error in dropping a fly ball, but the mistake helped the Red Sox win the1

Alex Prewitt, Doing the Goat, Tufts Daily, 4 Oct. 2011, http://www.tuftsdaily.com/alex-prewitt-live-frommudville-1.2645147 (accessed 7 Nov. 2011). 2 Christopher Bell, Scapegoats: Baseballers whose careers are marked by one fateful play (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2002), Back Covers. 3 Jnan M. Sellery & John B. Vickery, The Scapegoat; Ritual and Literature (USA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972), 3. 4 Tom Douglas, Scapegoats: Transferring Blame (New York: Routledge, 1995), 6.

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1912 World Series and haunted him until his death. Bill Buckner committed perhaps the most famous error in history, an E-3 that forced the Hall of Fame-caliber first baseman to shoulder the burden of an entire Red Sox nation for 18 years. Steve Bartman, he of the turtleneck, headphones and glasses, represents the ultimate outsider after getting blamed for continuing the Chicago Cubs long-lasting curse just years ago by doing what all fans in his situation would have done. All four men, despite their other various accomplishments, will forever be associated with their blunders, an unfortunate reality that nonetheless provides ample case studies for analyzing the causes and effects of scapegoating practices within Major League Baseball. For if the sport is labeled Americas National Pastime, blaming has apparently developed into a close second.

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CHAPTER ONE: ORIGINS OF THE SCAPEGOATAny discussion of the scapegoat necessitates a journey to the Old Testament, to get a sense of the terms historical origins before proceeding into its connections with Major League Baseball. In 1536, an English translator of the Bible named William Tyndale was strangled and burnt at the stake by the Catholic establishment, but when an English translation of the Bible was undertaken two years later, it was extensively predicated upon Tyndales already exhaustive works, but credited to Thomas Matthew to prevent an outcry among anti-Tyndale Catholics.5 In this way, Tyndales translation of the Bible survived, and even thrived; much of his work is still found in the King James Bible today. The issue at hand surrounds Tyndales translation of specifically Leviticus 16:10 and 16:21-22. The first passage reads, But the goat, on which the lot fell to be scapegoat, shall be presented alone before the Lord, to make an atonement with him and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. The latter section states: And Aaron shall lay his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat and shall send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities upon him into a solitary land; and he shall let the goat go into the wilderness. Given this translation, the now-colloquial scapegoat appears to have originated from Tyndale, who created it to express his translation of the Hebrew word azazel, a word that appears to have several meanings, all of which relate to the notion of the scapegoat. For instance, in Paradise Lost, Milton writes, that proud honour claimd/Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall6 According to E.C. Brewer in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Azazel is the counterpart of the devil, cast out of heaven for a refusal to worship Adam.7 All of these demonic5 6

Ibid. Ibid., 11. 7 E.C. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (London: Book Club Associates, 1978), 62.

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associations ultimately morphed into one standard assumption: Any kind of unfortunate outcast came to be known as Azazel.8 But given these complex meanings, the question still remains as to from where Tyndale exactly derived the word scapegoat to include in his Biblical translation. Looking closely at the ritual described in the aforementioned passage from Leviticus might shed better light onto the terms origins. On this ceremony in Leviticus, Brewer wrote the following: SCAPEGOAT. Part of the ancient ritual among the Hebrews for the Day of ATONEMENT laid down by Mosaic Law (see Lev. xvi) was as follows: two goats were brought to the altar of the TABERNACLE and the high priest cast lots, one for the Lord and the other for AZAZEL. The Lords goat was sacrificed, the other was the scapegoat; and the high priest having, by confession, transferred his own sins and the sins of the people to it, was taken to the wilderness and suffered to escape.9 The operative word here is escape. The priest transferred his sins and the sins of the people onto the goat, who was compelled to escape the town and henceforth banished forever. Tyndale likely read into this ritual the idea that the goat was suffered to escape, as Brewer puts it, thereby coining the word scapegoat as based on this notion. This translation led to the French term bouc emissaire, the title of Ren Girards pioneering philosophical work on the scapegoat, and to the English version that we use in a colloquial sense today. According to group work consultant Tom Douglas, author of a book on the scapegoat, Tyndale was likely trying to convey a significant difference between the process of sacrifice, which was the fate of the Lords goat, and that of the ritual transfer of evil.10 While death may or may not have befallen the goat, the focus remained on the community itself, whose sole goal was to cleanse itself of all sins by transferring them to the animal and allowing it to escape into the wilderness. The term escape, however, implies free will, that it is in the goats best interest

8 9

Douglas, op. cit., 7. Brewer, op. cit., 967. 10 Douglas, op. cit., 8.

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to leave the community. As we will see when examining various case studies within Major League Baseball, oftentimes the choice is involuntary. Players like Bill Buckner were cast aside because of a mistake they made; their banishment from the baseball community was hardly an escape. Rather, it should be considered an exile. Before proceeding, however, while we still concern ourselves with the actual term scapegoat, it is of interest to note what Douglas describes as two other words in the English language that connote the transfer of evil: whipping boy and sin-eaters. Sin-eaters were, according to Brewer, hired by the deads relatives to absorb the sins of the deceased through the process of eating beside the corpse.11 The logic here is clear: Families believed it possible to transfer their loved ones sins onto another who could shoulder the load. Yet this differs from the concept of the scapegoat, in that a hired ceremony took place for the dead, whereas scapegoats deal exclusively with the sins of the living transferred onto another conscious and innocent human. The concept of whipping boys, on the other hand, also deals with the transfer of evil and bad feeling in modern folklore, but the idea of substitution takes place. The whipping boy was a young or inferior person whose duty was to accept punishment for wrong-doing performed by his or her superior.12 This makes sense, given that it was deemed unthinkable for a royal ruler to blame himself for sins, especially from a political standpoint, when the royal ideology of a divinely appointed rule was rampant. Substitutes were found in order to uphold the law and bring punishment to someone. And therein lies the essence of human nature surrounding the scapegoat: We feel the need to blame someone because our moral compasses are innately stuck in the middle ground between staunch correctness and willful ignorance. We feel the need

11 12

Ibid., 9. Ibid.

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to uphold the law, because those are the rules by which our society is governed. However, we are terrified to place the blame upon ourselves, the act of substitution regarding whipping boys running parallel to the scapegoat notion. Tyndales invented word clearly has a long history of use, but before moving on to looking at his influence within baseball, we will first evaluate characteristics of the scapegoat to help classify what makes such people so easy to blame. Characteristics of the Scapegoat What is the scapegoat, and how can we spot when someone is being scapegoated? Can we trace identifiable characteristics across all scapegoats to better link them together? Douglas, for instance, posits that a desire to expel fear and failure can be found behind all scapegoats. As he writes, it highlights the element of fear as the propelling motivation to seek for ways of allaying imminent peril and, second, it shows that the process of propitiation was a communal effort.13 Indeed, this communal notion comes up often in modern definitions of the scapegoat, all of which fall under similar behavior patterns that can help identify the role of the scapegoat in this process. Even though the term scapegoat originally described religious and social behavior occurring around Tyndales time, it really describes a mode of behavior, manifested through the expression of a very deep human need.14 And when a community remains unwilling to discover the real causes of their problems, instead rushing to judgment, oftentimes to those who may be already disliked [or] are inevitably seen as different,15 it creates a dysfunctional society in which public frustration and public clamor to rid itself of blame inevitably results in casting another citizen out of the community. But, as Michael Schofield writes, the paradox in this situation is as follows: The sacrifice does not decrease our troubles. It increases them. Not only is it unjust and gruel to the goat, it covers up the problems instead of solving them. The13 14

Ibid., 14. Ibid. 15 Ibid., 39.

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scapegoats punishment deflects the same fate from us for the sins we have committed ourselves.16 And in modern times, wrote sociologist Elliot Aronson, scapegoat has come to describe a relatively powerless innocent individual who is made to take the blame of something that is not or, in the case of the baseball players and fans examined in this paper, not completely his fault.17 Unfair indeed for the scapegoat, but it is a tradition deeply rooted in history and human nature. Historical Examples Perhaps some historical examples of scapegoating, outside the realm of baseball, will aid in understanding the concept, before moving on to the aforementioned MLB case studies. For example, when the gods used to warn the King of Uganda that the Banyoro, his enemies, were working magic against him, the king would send a scapegoat to the Bunyoro frontier.18 The scapegoat was either a man and a boy or a woman and her child, chosen because of some bodily defect, which the gods had noted and by which the victims were to be recognized.19 Numerous animals were sent alongside the humans, whose limbs were broken and they were left to die. The common belief was that the potential disease, originally intended to be cast upon the Ugandan people by magic, had been thus transferred to the scapegoats. Similar practices also surrounded post-war rituals and after a new king had been crowned. To demonstrate the widespread practice of scapegoat rituals, we turn to the aboriginal tribes of China, which selected a particularly strong man to act as a scapegoat in order to protect against pestilence. Coated in face paint, the man would dance with the view of enticing all pestilential and noxious influences to attach themselves to him only.20 He is then beaten out of16 17

Michael Schofield, The Strange Case of Pot (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971), 178. Douglas, op. cit., 109. 18 Sellery & Vickey, op. cit., 6. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

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town, pursued by men and women alike. A similar ritual unfolds in the Punjuab, where they hire a man, brand him with a sickle and cast him into the jungle. Like the goat of the Leviticus tradition, it is imperative that this man not look back, for fear that the ill will would return. When disease breaks out among a herd, the Oraons take the herdsmen and drive him out of the village after beating him with sticks. In the Western Himalayas, scapegoating customs manifest itself in a ceremony known as Barat, in which a child is slid down a rope into a valley. Animals other than goats dogs, for instance, are popular with the Bhotiyas of Juhar in the Western Himalayas are also used, as are men, like in Ontisha on the Niger, as well as women, like the Siamese.21 Primordial societies clearly contain a long tradition of scapegoating, and the practice even extended into medieval, first-world Europe. In one church said to be founded by Charlemagne, a man, stained with heinous sins, is dressed in mourning robes on the first day of Lent and turned out of the church. During the 40 days of Lent, the man wandered throughout the city, barred from entering churches or speaking to anyone.22 In Switzerland, moreover, up until the eighteenth century, a custom existed of annually expelling a scapegoat, represented by a boy disguised as an old witch or a goat or a donkey. In Munich until a hundred years ago, a man dressed as the devil was chased through the streets on Ascension Day. Examples also exist from classical antiquity, such as in ancient Rome, when on the fourteenth of March a man donning skins was beaten out of the city with long white rods.23 John B. Vickery and Jnan M. Sellery, professors at the University of CaliforniaRiverside and Harvey Mudd College, respective, observe three common characteristics in these historical examples, some of which will be later applicable to the way the baseball community treats its outsiders. First, the evils seem invisible and intangible, while a visible and tangible21 22

Ibid., 7-11. Ibid., 12. 23 Ibid., 23.

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exists to convey them away. Second, they write that before entering on a new year, people are anxious to rid themselves of the troubles that have harassed them in the past; hence it comes about that in so many communities the beginning of the new year is inaugurated with a solemn and publish banishment of evil spirits.24 The connections to this papers focus is obvious: Before moving onto new seasons and reinvigorating hope for the future, baseball fans must cast out the scapegoats who caused them pain in prior years. Oftentimes, this falls on a player who made a crucial error, an expendable manager who oversaw a disappointing season or, in one case, a fan simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

CHAPTER TWO: REN GIRARD & RITUAL BLAMING PRACTICESRen Girard, a French philosopher who has written extensively about the scapegoat mechanism and ancient ritual sacrifice, exemplifies the implementation of the scapegoat ritual24

Ibid., 21.

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into academia. His works reflect a focus on the origins of violence and religion, and how the two are inextricably interwoven through what he dubbed mimetic desire, or desiring the same thing as someone else.25 Within ancient Greek sources, Girard found elements of sacrificial crisis that embodied elements of group violence, revenge, dismemberment of victims, and the performance of violence to eliminate violence.26 He argued that violence is at once terrifying and seductive, and plays an essential role in ritual sacrifice. Mimetic desire caused by competition and its resulting violence for the object of desire was contagious.27 The solution was to direct the outrage onto the scapegoat, thereby ending violence by channeling it towards the victim and away from the community, effectively sacrificing one for the collective goal of later unifying society. In the baseball world, violence rarely manifests itself in physical form. Murders never happen because of bad losses. But Girard would still have much to analyze from a ritual standpoint. Fans take to the comment boards and talk radio shows, anonymously spewing hatred verbal violence. They march from the ballpark to a technological chopping block to sacrifice a scapegoat. Each week during the National Football League season, the Minneapolis StarTribune, for instance, grades the following aspects of the Minnesota Vikings performance based on a fan vote: offense, defense, special teams and the coaches. The final category, also voted upon by the fans after losses, labels the goat. A relatively contemporary writer, Girard would likely find scapegoat mechanisms in baseball fascinating. He based the majority of his work in Violence and the Sacred off the theory that sacrifice plays a very real role in these societies, and the problem of substitution concerns the entire community.28 Violence, according to Girard, is not to be denied, but it can be diverted25 26

Carl Olson, Theory and Method in the Study of Religion (Canda: Wadsworth, 2003), 352. Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

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to another object, in this case the scapegoat. A frequent motif in both the Old Testament and in Greek myth, wrote Girard, is that of fraternal war. The tales of both Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau describe situations in which brothers pitted against one another can only resolve their fatal penchant for violence through the intervention of a third party. The jealous described in the Bible is, according to Girard, just another term for the lack of a sacrificial outlet. Take the story of Jacob and Esau, for instance, in which Jacob receives the blessing of his father Isaac. An old man, Isaac summons his eldest son, Esau, upon whom he intends to bestow a final blessing before he passes away. He first instructs Esau to bring him venison from the hunt, a request that the younger son Jacob overhears. Isaacs wife, Rebekah, helps Jacob prepare the savory dish that Isaac requested so that he may deliver it under the guise of his older brother to receive Isaacs blessing. By covering his skin with that of slaughtered goats, Jacob mimics his brothers hairiness and dupes his father. According to Girard, Then the son must seek refuge, literally, in the skins of sacrificed animals. The animals thus interpose themselves between father and son. They serve as a sort of insulation, preventing the direct contact that could only lead to violence.29 A similar situation unfolds in the Greek myth of Odysseus, in which the devious character of sacrificial violence likewise surfaces.30 To summarize the incident, Girard writes: Odysseus and his shipmates are shut up in the Cyclops cave. Every day the giant devours one of the crew; the survivors finally manage to blind their tormenter with a flaming stake. Mad with pain and anger, the Cyclops bars the entrance of the cave to prevent the men from escaping. However, he lets pass his flock of sheep, which go out daily to pasture. In a gesture reminiscent of the blind Isaac, the Cyclops runs his hands over the back of each sheep as it leaves the cave to make sure that it carries no passenger. Odysseus, however, has outwitted his captor, and he rides to freedom by clinging to the thick wool on the underside of one of the rams.31

29 30

Ibid. Ibid. 31 Ibid.

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In each of these two cases, an animal intervenes at the crucial moment to prevent humanon-human violence from occurring. The victim, however, is not a substitute for a particularly endangered individual, even though it appears that the stories are centered on specific people escaping harm. Rather, wrote Girard, the scapegoat is a substitute for the entire community, offered up by the members of said community themselves. The sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence; it prompts the entire community to choose victims outside itself.32 This notion of the outsider being cast as a ritual scapegoat will later surface when examining situations in Major League Baseball, specifically when the Steve Bartman case arises. In that case and in others, the sacrifice serves to restore coherence to the community, to bring peace in lieu of violence. Violence is a vicious cycle, one in which vengeance professes to be an act of reprisal, and every reprisal calls for another reprisal.33 Furthermore, it threatens to involve the entire community, spreading like wildfire every time the notion of vengeance surfaces in part of the social order. For his part, Girard connected the scapegoat mechanism to religion, but for our purposes of studying the practice within baseball, his characteristics of the scapegoating process still apply. Girard himself defined the scapegoat effect as that strange process through which two or more people are reconciled at the expense of a third party who appears guilty or responsible for whatever ails, disturbs or frightens the scapegoaters. They feel relieved of their tensions and they coalesce into a more harmonious group. They now have a single purpose, which is to prevent the scapegoat from harming them, by expelling and destroying him.34 In the second chapter of his book The Scapegoat, Girard offers various stereotypes of persecution: a crisis of the loss of the distinctions necessary to social order; accusations made against victims onto whom the alleged32 33

Ibid. Ibid. 34 Rene Girard, The Girard Reader, ed. James G. Williams (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996), 12.

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crimes that undermine said law and order are transferred; and the signs of the victims, both within the existing cultural system and regarding those outside, like foreigners.35 Keeping those stereotypes in mind, we will now turn to the National Pastime.

CHAPTER THREE: FRED MERKLE, THE ORIGINAL SCAPEGOATFor traditional scapegoating practices, the scapegoat was the means by which the accumulated ills of a whole year are publicly expelled [through] an animal.36 Expelling moral wrongdoings, disease and ill will was the primary motivation for scapegoating. And if this approach is transferred to the realm of sport, the parallels are too noticeable to ignore. Sport is35 36

Ibid., 107. Sellery & Vickey, op. cit., 7.

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based around a simple, binary equation: Teams either win or lose. When the former happens, heroes are born. But when the latter occurs, our scapegoating tendencies kick in and blame is cast out in heaping portions in the secular, athletic world. Even though ritual violence rarely occurs, we can still see the behavioral elements discussed by Girard and other scholars. By casting out the individual victim, sports fans can salvage the group dynamic and look forward to better days. This was never more apparent than with Fred Merkle, the original scapegoat on whom we begin our analysis of four Major League Baseball case studies. Background Fred Merkle attracted the attention of the New York Giants in 1907 when he played first and third base for Tecumseh of the South Michigan League, signing for $2,500 after batting .271 with a league-leading six home runs for the Class D squad.37 Later that year, he appeared in 15 games for the Giants, batting .255 with 12 hits and 5 RBIs.38 In 1908, Merkles Giants found themselves vying for the National League title with the Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates. New York, managed by John McGraw, was led by pitching ace Christy Mathewson, while the Cubs, winners of the previous two NL pennants, fielded an infield that included second baseman Johnny Evers and shortstop Joe Tinker, not to mention ace Mordecai Three Finger Brown. Throughout the summer, all three teams remained in either first, second or third place, and Merkle ended the season having played in 38 games, batting .268 with 11 hits, 1 home run and 7 RBIs.39 The stage for Merkles controversial mistake was set on September 4 earlier that year, in a game between the Pirates and Cubs, when an incident occurred that would ultimately seal37

Trey Strecker, Fred Merkle, accessed December 18, 2011, http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm? a=v&v=l&bid=999&pid=9541 38 Baseball Reference, Fred Merkle, accessed December 18, 2011, http://www.baseballreference.com/players/m/merklfr01.shtml 39 Ibid.

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Merkles fate three weeks later. With the bases loaded and the score knotted at 0-0 in the bottom of the tenth inning, Owen Wilson drove home Pittsburgh manager Fred Clarke, but as Warren Gill, who reached first base after getting hit, headed for second base on Wilsons apparent gamewinning RBI, he stopped short of the bag to watch the ball go into centerfield and headed into the clubhouse.40 Chicago centerfielder Jimmy Slagle saw that Gill failed to touch second and threw the ball to Evers, who then stepped on the bag. Evers cited rule 5.9, which called a person out for not touching second after the winning run had crossed home plate on a base hit.41 However, Hank ODay, the games lone umpire, claimed to not see the play at second base, and refused to reverse the call despite Evers persistent pleas. Merkles Boner The Gill incident can be directly correlated to the moment that made an eternal scapegoat out of Fred Merkle. With 25,000 fans in the stands at the Polo Grounds on September 23, the Cubs took on the Giants with the season winding down. New York came to bat in the bottom of the ninth with the score tied 1-1. With Moose McCormick on first, Fred Tenney would have normally been the next batter, but he awoke that morning with a backache and could not play.42 His replacement in the lineup was the 19-year-old Merkle. Though he had struck out three times that day, Merkle hit a line drive just past first base that set up runners at first and third. Shortstop Al Bridwell came up and singled up the middle, driving home the winning run. But once McCormick crossed the plate, Merkle halted just short of second and headed into the Giants clubhouse, doing what every other player including Warren Gill just three weeks prior had done.

40

Christopher Bell, Scapegoats: Baseballers Whose Careers Are Marked By One Fateful Play, (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 8. 41 Ibid., 9-10 42 Ibid., 12.

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To his credit, Evers did the exact same thing as he did against the Pirates, scrambling to get the ball to second base in a whacky set of events that included Giants pitcher Iron Man McGinnity throwing the ball into the left field stands. The umpire that day was Hank ODay, the same one who ruled against the Cubs but called Merkle out for not touching second and later called the game over due to impending darkness. The Cubs ultimately tied the Giants for the pennant in October, forcing a one-game tiebreaker held at the Polo Grounds. Merkle did not appear in the game, and Chicago won 4-2, eventually winning the World Series. The Aftermath The baserunning gaffe took an immense personal toll on Merkle, who during the offseasonlost weight and sank into a deep depression.43 And in an age of muckracking journalism, the media poured it on even harder. Merkle himself faulted the sportswriters for hyping the incident that led people to label him Bonehead after committing a mistake that most ballplayers made at the time. On September 23, the day after the game, an article appeared in the New York Times that wrote the following about Merkle: Censurable stupidity on the part of player Merkle in yesterdays game at the Polo Grounds between the Giants and Chicago placed New York teams chances of winning the pennant in jeopardy. His unusual conduct in the final inning of a game perhaps deprived New York of a victory that would have been unquestionable had he not committed a breach in baseball play that resulted in Umpire ODay declaring the game a tie.44 Indeed, the incident had little effect on Merkles numbers he started for the Giants the following season, collecting 148 hits and 70 RBIs in 144 games, and later hit .309 in 1912 with 11 home runs but the collective baseball community insisted on pouring the hatred on Merkle, effectively making him the sports first well-known scapegoat. Ironically, a biography of Merkle

43 44

Chris Christensen, Merkle Revisited, Elysian Fields Quarterly 4 (1998): 40. W.W. Aulick, New York Times, September 24, 1908.

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on the Baseball Biography Project describes him as one of the games fastest and best baserunners. Even so, that same biography begins with the following sentence: Due to a single base-running blunder on September 23, 1908, Fred Merkle became known by such unflattering epithets as Bonehead, Leather Skull, and Ivory Pate.45 And as we will see with Snodgrass, Buckner and Bartman alike, the sports media led the charge of scapegoating, for hate sells more papers than love. The writers at the game clearly felt a big, sensationalistic story approaching and leapt at the chance to cast blame onto one person. Listed below is a sample of some of the sentences written about Merkle in the days following his blunder, accompanied by cartoons that depicted Merkle with an outsized forehead, the standard visual exaggeration for stupidity46: A one-legged man with a noddle is better than a bonehead. Gym Bagley, New York Evening Mail, September 25 If only [Merkle] would run to second base when it is required--which reminds us of a man who had a thousand-dollar back and a ten-cent head. In fact, all our boys did rather well if Fred Merkle could gather the idea into his noodle that baseball custom does not permit a runner to take a shower and some light lunch in the clubhouse on the way to second. --New York Herald, September 24 Minor-league brains lost the Giants a game after they had it cleanly and fairly won. --Charles Dryden, Chicago Tribune, September 24, referring to the fat-headed Merkle. No plays came up in which Merkle had to think, so he got by. --Jack Ryder, Cincinnati Enquirer, September 26 Fans clearly got over Merkles blunder in the immediate; after all, the Giants still had a legitimate shot at winning the pennant. But once New York was eliminated and why was blame not placed on those who failed to deliver against the Cubs the baseball community reverted back to that September game, to cast the proverbial spotlight on their new scapegoat. Even though McGraw vehemently defended his player, calling it criminal to cast blame on45 46

Strecker, op. cit. Mike Cameron, Public Bonehead, Private Hero: The Real Legacy of Baseballs Fred Merkle, (Crystal Lake: Sporting Chance Press, 2010), 98.

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Merkle, because he merely did as he has seen veteran players do ever since hes been in the league,47 the rest of New York was hardly as forgiving. Merkle became a popular verb, meaning to fail to show up, arrive tardy or mess up in any way. Sometimes it was a noun, replacing either boner or bonehead.48 A Vaudeville comedian appearing on Broadway created a popular joke when he cracked, I call my cane Merkle because it has a bonehead on it.49 There are many aspects which make this scapegoat unique. First, Merkles situation was entirely avoidable. Unlike the other people focused on in this essay, Merkle was not subject to external forces like a bad hop. His task was simple: to touch second base. He never threw a pitch that resulted in a loss or made an error that cost his team a win. Moreover, his gaffe did not even directly result in the Giants losing the pennant, an event that occurred weeks later in October. Though haunted by the mistake, Merkle played for fourteen more seasons in the major leagues and was relatively successful. But, as Christopher Bell wrote, many people believed that Merkle died prematurely on September 23, 1908. The play was a bum rap, for none of Merkles contemporaries who were on first base ever bothered to touch second if a runner had crossed the plate with a winning run.50 Yet in other ways, Merkle conforms to the scapegoat archetype. Relative to the other players at the time, he was a child, an unassuming 19-year-old thrust into the spotlight in the nations biggest media market and unfairly bombarded by an arsenal of cutthroat sportswriters who milked every last euphemism for boner to sell papers. Having entered the team just one year prior, Merkle was an outsider, thereby making him an easy target for fans desperate to heap the blame onto someone for their ill feelings about the Giants plight.

47 48

Ibid., 131. Ibid., 110. 49 Ibid. 50 Bell, op. cit., 19.

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Ren Girard would call Fred Merkle a foreigner, and would point to the rabid New York fans an estimated 250,000 showed up for the one-game playoff in October as a typical example of society needing a mechanism onto which they can deflect their innately violent tendencies. Indeed, one can easily imagine a modern situation in which Merkle receives death threats over talk radio or on the Internet for costing the Giants a game. Perhaps an insane practice, scapegoating has become an integral part of baseball, and it began with Fred Merkle.

CHAPTER FOUR: FRED SNODGRASSIn the final game of the 1912 World Series, Fred Merkle hit a clutch RBI single in the top of the 10th inning that gave New York the lead over Boston, putting himself in a position to be the hero and officially atone for his transgressions that made him a lifelong goat. The first batter of the inning hit a long fly ball to center field, which was dropped by the Giants centerfielder. That man was named Fred Snodgrass, who became baseballs next major scapegoat just four years later. And Merkle did not get off easy either; he backed off a foul ball later in the inning, earning a volley of Bonehead Merkle Does It Again headlines and consequently the anger of

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his manager John McGraw.51 But this chapter is about Snodgrass, the man whose dropped fly ball earned him a permanent spot in the baseball doghouse. While attending St. Vincents College, now named Loyola Marymount College, Snodgrass and the baseball team trained with the New York Giants in three exhibition games during spring training. John McGraw umpired the games.52 In February 1908, McGraw visited Los Angeles and inquired about Snodgrass, whom he remembered from those spring training games years prior.53Both men later met at the hotel where McGraw was staying, and McGraw offered Snodgrass a $150-per-month contract, which Snodgrass later accepted and ultimately traveled with the team to Texas for spring training.54 Snodgrass made his debut in the majors for the Giants on June 13, 1908, and was present for the aforementioned Fred Merkle incident on September 23. It would not be the first time that a Giants player named Fred would be the victim of ritual scapegoating by the New York media and fans. Snodgrass spent the bulk of 1909 on the bench, playing in 28 games and hitting .300 in 70 at bats. In 1910, he was toiling away as a third-string catcher when McGraw approached him about playing in the outfield, an opportunity at which Snodgrass jumped. He would up hitting . 321 in 123 games with 44 RBIs and 33 stolen bases. When the Giants went to the World Series, eventually losing to the Philadelphia Athletics, Snodgrass was a regular, playing in 151 games and hitting .294 with 77 RBIs and 51 stolen bases. In 1912, New York won the pennant with a 103-49 record and faced the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Boston won Game 1, and Game 2 was called in the eleventh inning on account of darkness, ending it in a tie. New York evened the series at a game apiece with a 2-1 victory in Game 3, but Smokey Joe Wood struck out eight in a 3-1 Red Sox victory in Game 4. Boston edged Christy Mathewson in Game 5, but51 52

Cameron, op. cit., 140. Bell, op. cit., 21. 53 Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times (New York: William Morrow, 1966), 92-93. 54 Ibid., 106.

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New York broke through with two more wins that evened up the series at three games apiece. Since Game 2 ended in a tie, an eighth contest was needed. Boston won the coin toss to host the final game, where Fred Snodgrass downfall eventually took place.55 Once again, the game entered extra innings. Fred Merkle, the goat four years prior, singled to give New York a 2-1 lead in the top of the tenth. In the bottom of the frame, with Christy Mathewson on the mound, Clyde Engle lofted a harmless fly ball into right-centerfield. Snodgrass, the centerfielder, called for the ball, but dropped it. Engle wound up at second base. The error seemed to have little immediate effect on Snodgrass; he made a brilliant diving catch on the next play that robbed Harry Hooper of extra bases.56 Mathewson, on the other hand, could not settle down, and he walked Steve Yerkes on four pitches. With Tris Speaker up, Mathewson induced the Boston star to pop up into foul territory on the first pitch. Mathewson, perhaps acting on instinct or perhaps acting on mistrust for Merkle because of the 1908 blunder, called for catcher John Meyers to catch it. It instead dropped in front of Mathewson, Merkle and Meyers. Speaker took advantage and singled in Engle. Steve Yerkes later scored the winning run on a sacrifice fly from Larry Gardner, giving the Red Sox the World Series. In ancient tales featuring scapegoating rituals, the aftermath is rarely discussed, especially from the point of view of the exiled. The community carries on living, free of its sins until it must perform the ritual again, while the scapegoat is left to wander alone in the wilderness. The Fred Snodgrass situation shows the damaging effects that scapegoating rituals within Major League Baseball have on the scapegoated. Even though McGraw, like he did for Merkle, refused to cast blame on the eventual scapegoat, the New York media still crucified Snodgrass. The next season, his blunder became known as the $30,000 Muff, referring to the

55 56

Bell, op. cit., 24. Ibid., 26.

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sum that separated the winners share from the losers share.57 The next days New York Times headline read, Sox Champions on Muffed Fly. Snodgrass drops easy ball, costing his teammates $29,540.00. Boston winning 3-2.58 In the article, the paper wrote: Write in the pages of World Series baseball history the name of Snodgrass. Write it large and black. Not as a hero; truly not. Put him rather with Merkle, who was in such a hurry that he gave away a National League championship. Snodgrass was in such a hurry that he gave away a World Championship. It was because of Snodgrasss generous muff on an easy fly in the tenth inning that the decisive game in the World Series went to the Boston Red Sox this afternoon by a score of 3-2, instead to the New York Giants by a score of 2-1.59 Fans and players throughout the league also held Snodgrass blunder with them through the years, frequently reminding him of his scapegoat status with a quick, snarky blow. In 1914, Boston Braves starter George Tyler taunted Snodgrass by throwing the ball into the air and dropping it, which drew a roar of approval from the Boston fans. At the end of the 1917 season, Snodgrass got into a contract dispute, quit baseball and returned to California to start a farming career. Nonetheless, the memory of his exile still haunted him. According to an interview Christopher Bell performed for his book, one day Snodgrass was in a grocery store when he dropped an egg. Someone said, Dropped one again, Fred?60 Even seemingly positive moments of remembrance, like getting asked for an autograph, proved to be directly correlated to his mistake, and to none of his successes in baseball. Now, the concession has been made by many that Fred Snodgrass was the easiest scapegoat in this situation, that fans found him the most blamable. The question is: Why? He was unfairly saddled with total blame that should have logically been placed on other teammates, or at least on the collective unit. Mathewson should have let Merkle catch the pop foul, but he instead ordered Meyers to run after it, a foolish mistake in retrospect. Furthermore, no one seems57 58

Ibid., 28. Ibid. 59 Ibid., 28-9. 60 Ibid., 30.

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to remember that Snodgrass made a tremendous catch on the ensuing play; had he not done that, the game would have ended even earlier. Longtime baseball writer Fred Lieb wrote, The muff by Snodgrass was only one link in a chain of strange events. Mechanical errors such as his are part of the game and happen to the greatest players. McGraw, knowing this, gave the outfielder a raise in salary for 1913.61 At least partial fault rests with the media. Both Merkle and Snodgrass played in New York, the countrys biggest media market. The nine scapegoats profiled in Christopher Bells book played in the following cities: New York, New York, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Boston, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Boston and Philadelphia. Consolidated, four are located in New York, two in Boston, two in Southern California and one in Philadelphia, cities ranked first, second, fourth and fifth on the list of top media markets in the United States. This is no coincidence; scapegoats have simply never arisen in smaller media markets, most likely because of the mass exposure sure to ensue following any mistake, especially one that cost a team in this big media market a crucial game. There are a few other things to keep in mind about Merkle and Snodgrass. Both played in the early 1900s, when baseball existed as Americas sole National Pastime. Professional football, the most popular sport today, had not yet been born.62 Neither had NASCAR or professional basketball, two other sports that battle baseball for viewership. Thus, when something went wrong in baseball, it instantly vaulted into the nations focus. Furthermore, news was consumed exclusively through newspapers, which created a pool of opinions watered-down from what we experience today. Television was far away, and the first radio broadcast would not occur until 1921. When Merkle and Snodgrass committed their now-infamous mistakes, the public read61

George Vass, Some Players Undeserving of `Goat' Label - when reporters blame crucial losses on a single player, Baseball Digest (2001). 62 Sean Leahy, Poll: NFL beats baseball again as Americas most popular sport, USA Today, accessed December 20, 2011, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/thehuddle/post/2011/01/poll-nfl-beats-baseball-again-asamericas-most-popular-sport/1

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about it from sensationalistic journalists looking to make a national splash with a juicy scoop, one that often involved casting blame on someone. There were no bloggers or talk-show hosts or SportsCenter anchors to shed an opposing light on the situation. Once sportswriters placed the blame, it was there to stay.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE BALL GETS BY BUCKNERThe Red Sox went on to win the 1912 World Series after Snodgrass gaffe, and again in 1915, 1916 and 1918. Boston fans then suffered eighty-six years until the 2004 squad finally broke the Curse of the Bambino. And along the way, in 1986, the Red Sox returned to the sports biggest stage, poised to rid the franchise of years of disappointment. Then one error turned Bill Buckner into historys most famous scapegoat in an event that at once reinforced the Bostonian notion of a curse and absolved the rest of the team of all guilt. It is a classic example of the scapegoat mechanism brought into our sporting culture. Bill Buckner was a stable force in his generation, a perennial .300 hitter who was traded to the Boston Red Sox in 1982, a move that failed to deter his consistency. But ever since Buckner twisted his ankle in 1976, his days began and ended as he soaked his ankles in a bucket of ice water for an hour. If needed he would inject himself with painful cortisone shots to ease 28

the sore, swollen muscles he bore throughout the years he played baseball.63 In the 1986 ALCS against the Angels, Buckner injured his Achilles tendon during Game 7 while running towards first. However, he always played in spite of the pain, determined to help the Red Sox break the infamous Curse of the Bambino and play in the World Series. Boston would play the New York Mets, heroes in the Big Apple even before a pitch had been thrown in the World Series. The Red Sox entered Game 6 on the brink of history, one victory away from clinching the clubs first title since 1918. With ace Roger Clemens starting, things looked even more promising. Game 6 remained knotted at 2-2 until the top of the seventh, when Boston went up 3-2. Clemens was removed from the game in the top of the eighth after developing a blister in the fifth that rendered him unable to throw his patented slider.64 New York tied things up in the bottom of the eighth, but came up empty in the final frame, moving into extra innings. In the top of the tenth, Dave Henderson homered to give the Red Sox the lead, and Marty Barrett singled in Wade Boggs to bring the score to 5-3. Boston retired Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez to start the bottom of the tenth, bringing the Red Sox one out from a World Series victory. Even the scoreboard in right-centerfield flashed, Congratulations, Boston Red Sox, 1986 World Champions.65 For a fan base traditionally marred by curses and ill will, this proved a bad omen for the immediate future. The Ball Gets By Buckner Bill Bucker will forever be associated with a fielding error, but he was ironically one of his generations top fielders during the earlier part of his career, ranking first in the National League in field percentage in 1973, second in 1978 and third in 1979. Furthermore, his range factor per game, a sabermetric measuring a fielders range capabilities, ranked first in the NL in63 64

Ibid., 121. Ibid., 129 65 Alex Gibney, Catching Hell, 2011.

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1973 and 1978, and in the top 10 in seven other seasons. No stranger to irony, Buckner was ultimately done in by a lack of range due to his rickety ankles in the World Series. When Boston was ahead in the late innings during those playoffs, manager John McNamara would replace Buckner with Dave Stapleton, but people have speculated that McNamara wanted Buckner to be on the field when the Red Sox won the World Series. His desire to honor his gritty veteran ultimately did both Boston and Buckner in; Buckners ankles were so bad that his body moved back and forth each time he went to field a ball or ran down to first.66 After Backman and Hernandez were retired, Vin Scully began reading off the names of the NBC staff, and Bob Costas was sent to the Red Sox locker room. Plastic covering was applied to all of the lockers to prevent champagne from splattering.67 A podium was set up to present the World Series trophy to Jean Yawkey, the widow of longtime Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, and the media chose Bruce Hurst as the World Series MVP and Marty Barrett as the player of the game.68 It was all too premature to last. Gary Carter singled into left field on a 2-1 pitch. Kevin Mitchell, who was so sure that the Mets would lose that he was making travel arrangements to fly home to California, was sent to pitch hit against Calvin Schiraldi, his former teammate in triple A with Tidewater. He poked a single, moving Carter to second base. Ray Knight punched a single into center, scoring Carter and moving the Mets within one run. Bob Stanley came in to replace Schiraldi and faced Mookie Wilson. With the count 2-2, the Red Sox one strike away from the World Series title, Rich Gedman was unable to handle an errant pitch and it sailed to the backstop, scoring Mitchell and evening the score at 5-5. In the ninth pitch of the at bat, Wilson rolled the ball towards Buckner down the first base line. As Scully said, So the winning run is at second base, with two outs,66 67

Bell, op. cit., 132. Gibney, op. cit. 68 Bell, op. cit., 133.

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three and two to Mookie Wilson. Little roller up along firstbehind the bag! It gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it!69 New York had lived to fight another day, and went on to win the World Series the following night in Game 7 after a one-day rainout. But that loss happened gradually; the Mets clawed back from a 3-0 deficit, ultimately winning 8-5. Buckners error was a moment that Boston fans could directly point to as the turning point; once that error happened, Game 7 was over in their minds. The error was tangible. It made Bill Buckner the scapegoat.

The Aftermath There were no nicknames, no calling Buckner Bonehead or referring to his $30,000 Muff. Instead, the incident is known merely by the surname: Buckner. Television replays and mass media took over, unequivocally reinforcing blame upon the Boston first baseman for losing the game. That much is certain. Following Game 6, John Fenstein of the Washington Post wrote, In a game that will be remembered as one of the strangest in World Series history, Stanley and Buckner wrote themselves into the legacy of New Englands disasters forever. If the Boston Red Sox recuperate and win Game 7 from the New York Mets, all will be forgiven. 70 Of course, few have forgiven Buckner, even to this day. He ranks right up there with Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone as the most loathed players in Red Sox history, except he played for the team. But should he have even been playing first base in that fateful inning? He had a damaged Achilles tendon and Dave Stapleton was fresh. But Buckner did not throw the passed ball, and Buckner can hardly be blamed for losing Game 7. So what makes him such a poignant scapegoat, even though

69 70

Ibid., 134. Ibid., 135.

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he went on to enjoy a respectable career for years later, accumulating more hits than 70 percent of all Hall-of-Famers?71 In Catching Hell, part of the critically acclaimed ESPN 30-for-30 documentary series, director Alex Gibney briefly profiles Buckner, the man who has suffered through 25 years of replays and comparisons, and the plight of the scapegoat. Though the film is about Steve Bartman, the subject of this essays penultimate chapter, Gibney spends time drawing parallels between the modern eras two greatest scapegoats. A lifelong Red Sox fan, Gibney felt a connection to the Buckner case. For years, I would freeze the moment before the ball got to Buckners glove, Gibney says over the films narration. I wanted the dream, not the nightmare. He is referring to a retrospectively prophetic statement made by Buckner to the media twelve days before the World Series, when he stated, The dreams are that youre going to have a great Series and win, and the nightmares are that youre going to let the winning run score on a ground ball through your legs. Still, there were plenty of other people to blame. The wild pitch that brought home the tying run was an egregious error right on par with Buckners boot. But fans only remember the error that explicitly resulted in the Red Sox losing; their ephemeral memories excommunicated the events that preceded. Years later, I wondered why no one made more of that moment, Gibney said. Until Stanleys wild pitch, a terrible mistake, the Sox were ahead. Why did no one focus on that moment?72 The Mets were down to their final strike four times in that final inning, but only the final at bat has lingered throughout history, and Buckner has become the lone symbol of Red Sox futility. Gibney explores the potential reasons behind why only Buckner became the scapegoat, positing that it was perhaps the cruel image of an empty outfield that

71 72

Ibid., 139. Gibney, op. cit.

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made the scene so memorable. The media immediately focused on the Buckner boot, quickly moving past Stanley wild pitch. At his locker, Stanley seemed happy to cast the blame elsewhere, stating, It was just a sinker on the ground to first base. He didnt make the play.73 In the clubhouse, Dwight Evans and the rest of the Red Sox felt as though Buckner was not at fault. But as Costas said, The Buckner moment ended the game, so it has the feeling of finality. And Buckner gets not just a disproportionate amount of the blame, he gets all the blame.74 The next day, the media asked Buckner how he would deal with the burden of losing Boston the game for the rest of his life, a question that confused Buckner, especially given that the Red Sox had one more game to play. In truth, the Series was tied at three games apiece, and Buckners saga was just beginning. In a talking-head interview during the documentary, longtime Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan pinpointed the reason why Red Sox fans made Buckner the scapegoat. As he said, When the ball went through Bill Buckners legs, it was personal. It was different than it would have been in any other city and with any other franchise. People said to themselves, That guy let me down. Not the team, not the franchise, not the city. Me. Earlier definitions of the scapegoat pointed to a community sense of anger, but Ryan touches on another aspect: a feeling of personal harm. A community is only as strong as its individual pieces, and when the collective sentiment is directed towards one person, it is only natural that said person be cast out as an exile from the community. Such was the case with Buckner and the Red Sox fans, who felt like something was personally taken away from them. The team did not lose. Buckner lost. But one lingering question still remains, according to Gibney: Why did the town need a scapegoat in the first place? Girard would point to the innate human desire for violence, but

73 74

Ibid. Ibid.

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Gibney feels that it goes deeper. In Boston, he says, all of lifes disappointments are wholly confirmed when the Red Sox lose. Buckner, then, was there to take the heat for the rest of the city, to alleviate the burden of lifes troubles. Newspaper headlines read Bouncing Ball Haunts Buckner, Bucks Day of Despair and Error Will Overshadow All Buckner Achievements.75 Buckner had a battle title and more hits than Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. The error haunted a legacy, and in 1993 Buckner moved away from Boston for good, unable to handle the constant criticism and blame.76 For years, said Gibney, Buckner became the poster boy for the disappointment that haunted New England, the ultimate scapegoat for an event that was not entirely his fault.

75 76

Ibid. Ibid.

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CHAPTER SIX: STEVE BARTMAN AND THE OUTSIDERIn winning the 2004 World Series, the Boston Red Sox at once ended 86 years of futility and expunged Buckner of his transgressions in 1986. The Chicago Cubs, Buckners former team, have not been nearly as lucky. The Loveable Losers have not won a World Series title since 1908 and last won an NL pennant in 1945. Like with the Red Sox, Cubs fans are notorious for believing in curses, a notion that dates back to 1945, when Billy Goat Tavern owner Billy Sianis declared, Them Cubs, they arent gonna win no more after the Wrigley Field staff refused to allow his pet goat into the stadium. Chicago, like Boston, is a town with a history of baseball disappointment, and the pain of losing was presumed personal. But a loaded roster in 2003 promised hope. Dusty Baker had come to the Windy City after leading San Francisco to the World Series the year prior. The lineup included the dynamic pitching duo of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, not to mention an outfield featuring the powerful Sammy Sosa in right and Moises Alou in left, as well a solid defensive middle, anchored by sure-handed shortstop Alex Gonzalez. After beating the Braves in the divisional round, the Cubs entered National League Championship Series against the upstart Florida Marlins. Chicago went up 3-2 in the series, and held a 3-0 lead in the eighth inning of Game 6 at Wrigley Field on Oct. 14, 2003. Only five more 35

outs after Mike Mordecai flew out to left, and the Cubs would go to the World Series. For fans, this would end all of the suffering and the ill will. Like Red Sox devotees, Chicago fans also look for harbingers of doom. One came in the seventh inning, when comedian Bernie Mac sang Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Instead of singing, Lets root, root, root for the home team, Mac sang, Lets root, root, root, for the champs, champs.77 Then in the eighth inning, Luis Castillo curled a foul ball down the left-field line. Alou sprinted towards the stands, and multiple fans leapt to grab a piece of history. Its the natural reaction for a fan to want to catch a foul ball, Gibney says in the documentary. Among those in the stands who reached for the foul ball was Steve Bartman, a youth baseball coach who was wearing a navy sweatshirt, a green turtleneck, a Cubs baseball cap and Sony Walkman headphones. He and others around him in got in Alous way, and the ball fell harmlessly into the stands. In response, Alou threw a tantrum on the field, slamming his glove and glaring up at Bartman. This could be huge, FOX analyst Steve Lyons said on the broadcast. Indeed, it proved a turning point in the game, but even more so for Steve Bartman. A wild pitch advanced Juan Pierre, who was on second base when the incident happened, to third. Ivan Rodriguez singled to left, scoring Pierre and cutting the lead down to 3-1. Miguel Cabrera then hit a ground ball to the normally sure-handed Alex Gonzalez, who misplayed a surefire double play. All runners were safe and the bases were loaded. Derrek Lee then doubled, chasing Prior from the game, and Florida went up 4-3 when Jeff Conine hit a sacrifice fly. On that play, Sosa missed the cutoff man, allowing Mike Lowell, who was intentionally walked, to move up to second base. A bases-clearing double from Mordecai gave the Marlins a 7-3 lead, a margin which was upped to 8-3 when Pierre singled.

77

Ibid.

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The Man With The Headphones As AP sports columnist Jim Litke said, When Alou goes, I could have had it, I could have had it, everybody in the ballpark went, Yeah, we could have had it.78 First baseman Eric Karros described the Wrigley Field atmosphere as deflated following Alous missed opportunity.79 But the blame fell squarely on Bartman, even though, like with Buckner, there was another game to be played in the series. The next night at Wrigley Field, Florida overcame a 5-3 deficit to capture the pennant, 9-6, and went on to win the World Series over the New York Yankees. Cub fans were left to wallow in self-pity yet again, and looked for someone to blame for the newest bout of sorrow. There were so many other things that went wrong, especially Gonzalezs boot at shortstop, but few can recall the events after Bartman interfered with Alou. Were the players choking, or did Bartman invoke the Cubs curse? Rather than blame their beloved players, fans seemed content with showering hatred onto the defenseless man sitting in the front row, on the innocent soul who simply wanted what every other fan arrives at the ballpark hoping for: a foul ball. As a television producer said, The human element took over.80 Indeed, the human tendency to scapegoat took center stage in the Wrigley Field stands; fans seemed to forget that there was a game going on, directing the innate desire for violence described by Girard onto Bartman. Even though there was no JumboTron or instant replay inside the archaic Friendly Confines, fans positioned outside the stadium were listening to radios. One was even standing with a television on his head; fans could thus see replays of the Bartman incident, which incited a chant of, Ahole. Ahole that spread like wildfire into the bleachers. The anger, along with the chant, built. People started pointing at him

78 79

Ibid. Ibid. 80 Ibid.

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and made Bartman the scapegoat. It got to, as Gibney described, a fever pitch.81 Home videos taken during the game show fans screaming things like, Rot in Hell, Were going to kill you and Everyone in Chicago hates you.82 One young adult was getting bombarded by an entire city. A mob mentality developed, reminiscent of an entire city casting its sins on a helpless goat in Leviticus. As one talking head described, it went from a Mardi Gras atmosphere to a funeral.83 Fans began pelting Bartman with beers, hurling obscenities as he sat stone-faced, only looking ahead at the field. When security finally escorted Bartman and his two friends out of Wrigley Field, people started booing, jumping down from their seats to point and scream at the newfound scapegoat. Ive been covering sports for 30-some-odd years, and Ive been to English football matches, World Cup matches, drunken NFL, final two minutes where guys are really aggravated, and this kid was taking a lot of abuse, Litke said. Like the goat was ritualistically led out of the city in Biblical times, so too was Bartman literally led out of Wrigley Field, trailed by a crowd exhibiting a lynch-mob mentality. In his postgame press conference, Baker refuted the notion of curses, instead saying that it was about the fan interference. Even though he later mentioned Gonzalezs error, Bartman came first on the managers list of goats. Governor Rod Blagojevich said, If anyone convicts that guy of a crime, hell never get a pardon out of this governor. A lifelong Cubs fan, ESPN writer Wayne Drehs later asked, What are we going to do, take him out to the center of town and throw snowballs at him? Its a sickening feeling. Yet in antiquity, thrown snowballs would likely be the least of the scapegoats problems. A postgame radio show on WGN received a call saying that Bartmans address had been found, and a mob was going to go kill him. In Catching81 82

Ibid. Ibid. 83 Ibid.

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Hell, host David Kaplan said, I was on the air, a) as a therapist, trying to talk people off the ledge, and b) trying to calm people down, saying, It is not Steve Bartmans fault that this team gave up eight runs.84 No real violence was ever inflicted against Bartman, but his life has clearly changed forever. He not publically surfaced since the incident, refusing requests for autographs and trade show appearances, even when offered hundreds of thousands of dollars to show his face. In a very real way, Steve Bartman was kicked out of the community and had the town gates shut behind him. A Story About The Fans Can we pinpoint a reason as to why Bartman was scapegoated and not, for instance, Alex Gonzalez? Bartmans subservient demeanor and geeky wardrobe may have contributed, but he was fundamentally an outsider from the moment he stepped into that stadium. Steve Bartman was a fan. Ever since Bill Buckner, scapegoating players has faded out of common practice. Managers and, in Bartmans case, fans, seem more likely to get blamed than the players actually playing the game. But there have been other cases of fan interference, most notably with Jeffrey Maier, when the then-12-year-old deflected a batted ball into the stands during Game 1 of the 1996 ALCS between the Yankees and the Orioles. Maier never received any criticism, and was even hailed as a hero in New York. As stated earlier, scapegoats often arise in major media markets, but the Yankees came out on the winning end of that game, and the game was played in New York. Had the situation been reversed, had Maier interfered with a Yankees right-fielder and cost New York the game, he almost certainly would have been vilified as a scapegoat just like Bartman. Like with Buckner, partial blame rests with the media. The replay was shown constantly in the hours following the game. The popular ESPN show, Pardon the Interruption, had a84

Ibid.

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segment the next day where hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon ranked the people who should receive the blame on a Food Chain. People to be ranked included Gonzalez, Prior, Mac, Baker and the Billy Goat. But Wilbon put the Headset Man atop his list. Everyone began wondering as to Bartmans identity, and the truth finally came out for Chicagos Most Wanted.85 The Chicago Sun-Times eventually broke the news, publishing Bartmans name, hometown and place of employment. Police surrounded his house to keep him safe and to keep others away. Lyons recognized that the media has to replay the clip over and over again, but must share in the blame. The consensus among those on the television production side interviewed for Catching Hell was that they had a job to do, but from a humanist perspective they were unhappy with how everything turned out for Bartman. But as one caller to WGN said, I think the big factor was the crowds reaction. Everyone that was there just was clenching, and I think if the fans had let it go and just continue to be behind the Cubs and support them, I think it would have been a totally different outcome.86 To label Bartman as a scapegoat means that Chicago fans needed him to play a certain role. Reverend Kathleen Rolenz, a Unitarian minister in Rocky River, Ohio, devoted an entire sermon to the Steve Bartman incident.87 Citing Leviticus as the basis of her sermon, Rolenz said in the documentary, The goat is innocent. The whole idea of the scapegoat is you take an innocent thing and you put your sins upon it. Scapegoats are solitary and vulnerable, so in that sense, he was the perfect scapegoat.88 Bartman appeared about as solitary and vulnerable as a person in his situation could appear. Though he attended the game with two friends, he said only a few words after the incident occurred. His wardrobe caused him to stand out, and he looked a little bit dorky. Unlike Merkle, Snodgrass and Buckner, Bartman is a true scapegoat in that he85 86

Ibid. Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid.

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was a true outsider. He had no ties to the Chicago Cubs other than a lifelong love for the organization, so fans found it easy to blame him. After all, they needed someone on whom to cast blame, lest they fault their beloved Cubs, a notion absolutely out of the question. Also unlike the aforementioned three case studies, Bartman was not a public figure. He did not live a life constantly hounded by the media. Baseball players accept the scrutiny and criticism inherent with their job, especially when associated with mistakes they make in critical situations. Bartman wanted none of that. He was a reclusive soul made a scapegoat by a city desperate to cast blame elsewhere. Shortly after the incident, Bartman asked for forgiveness, issuing a short apology statement. Scapegoats, however, do not get the opportunity to apologize. Their role is simple: to take on the ill will and the sins of a nation and walk silently into the abyss. Still in hiding, Steve Bartman has done just that.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: RESOLUTIONS AND CATHARTIC HOMECOMINGSThe inherent nature of the scapegoat involves permanent exile. Leviticus explicitly states that the communitys gates closed on the goat, leaving it to wander alone in the wilderness with societys sins, never to return them to their origins. Interestingly, both Merkle and Buckner defied this clause, experiencing cathartic homecomings of sorts that allowed them forgiveness, which lends beacons of light to otherwise dim situations. Can a resolution be reached? Can humanity realize the errors of its scapegoating ways and forgive the scapegoat for unfairly passing blame onto him? In the case of Merkle and Buckner, the answer is unequivocally yes. Merkle experienced such a catharsis in 1950. The year prior, members of the 1916 Giants team were invited to the first game of the World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees. Everyone attended except Merkle, who told Dodger announcer Red Barber that he still felt hurt by the innumerable people who referred to him as Bonehead. Barber later wrote a column that informed readers that Merkle wasnt at fault for costing the Giants the pennant in 1908.89 In 1950, at the Giants Old-Timers game, Merkle was received well by the 35,073 Giants fans attending the park that day.90Despite a couple of jeers, Merkle reportedly said, It makes a man feel good to hear such cheers after all these years. I dont think Ill forget. I expected so much worse.91 This event effectively ended Merkles seclusion from the game he

89 90

Bell, op. cit., 18. Ibid. 91 Christen, op. cit., 50.

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once loved; he began to attend other baseball games in the Florida State League and later became an instructor. After his first day teaching young children about baseball, he cried.92 A similar event unfolded for Bill Buckner, shown in Catching Hell. The 2004 World Series victory ended the suffering, removing the pain of past defeats and with it Buckners pain. Boston reached out to Buckner during a reunion for the 1986 club, but Buckner declined. After the Red Sox won for a second time in 2007, they reached out once more to forgive Buckner. But should it have even come to this? Thats an unfortunate way to put it, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy says in the film. But the idea that hes off the hook is true, because hes part of the story that was the weight and the baggage that they were carrying around, that theyre not carrying around anymore. In 2008, Buckner returned to Fenway to throw out the first pitch of the season. During a press conference, Buckner addressed the media about the moment with tears in his eyes: Its probably about as emotional as it can get I really had to forgive, not the fans of Boston, per say, but I would have to say in my heart I had to forgive the media, for what they put me and my family through Im over that I accept you guys back into the family.93 After he addressed the media in that way, Buckner said, he could finally return to Fenway Park. Interestingly, it was not the fans that needed to forgive Buckner, but the other way around. The scapegoat returned to the city from which he was exiled, and the community had to beg forgiveness of the blamed. But Bill Buckner was once part of the Red Sox family, and his accomplishments for the organization are tangible. Steve Bartman, on the other hand, will likely never return, even if the Cubs win the World Series. It is hard to envision a situation in which the fans forgive him, because he gave them nothing other than heartbreak. In that way, he is the twenty-first century embodiment of a ritual scapegoat.92 93

Bell, op. cit., 19. Ibid.

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Towards the end of Catching Hell, Rolenz states, We need to look at what damage the idea of scapegoat does. And not only to the person who becomes the scapegoat, but to those people that are jeering and berating the scapegoat. It diminishes our humanity. The minister is onto something, but she unfortunately has it backwards. Scapegoating does not diminish our humanity. It is our humanity. When Fred Merkle, Fred Snodgrass, Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman were exiled out of the baseball community by fans and the media, they were only pawns in a ritualistic practice that dates back centuries. Scapegoating is not exclusive to baseball, or even exclusive to sport. Scapegoating is human nature, and always will be so long as our need to deflect blame away from ourselves persists.

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BIBLIOGRAPHYBarber, Red. "Merkle incident that cost Giants a pennant recalled 79 years later." Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 1987: 18. Bell, Christopher. Scapegoats. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2002. Brewer, E.C. Dictionary of Phase and Fable. London: Book Club Associates, 1978. Carmichael, Calum. "The Origin of the Scapegoat Ritual." Vetus Testamentum, 2000: 167-182. Douglas, Tom. Scapegoats: Transferring Blame. London: Routledge, 1995. Gamson, Williams A., and Norman A. Scotch. "Scapegoating in Baseball." American Journal of Sociology, 1964: 69-72. Catching Hell. Directed by Alex Gibney. 2011. Heller, Dick. "Merkle's Boner killed Giants in '08 pennant race." The Washington Times, September 19, 2005: C03. McDonald, David. "History churns out heroes and goats; focus on: World Series Fall classic creates legends that stick with players long after the dust has settled on what really happened." Ottawa Citizen, October 19, 2011: B17. Olson, Carl. Theory and Method in the Study of Religion. Canada: Wadsworth, 2003. Ritter, Lawrence S. The Glory of Their Times. New York: William Morrow, 1966. Schofield, Michael. The Strange Case of Pot. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971. Sherman, Ed. Sadly, one play defined Merkle's career, life. September 23, 2008. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=3604289&type=story (accessed November 24, 2011). Shorts, Sports. "Buckner can't handle bobble jokes." The Financial Post, July 15, 1993: 45. Vass, George. "Some Players Undeserving of `Goat' Label - when reporters blame crucial losses on a single player"." Baseball Digest, 2001. Vickery, John B., and J'nan M. Sellery, . The Scapegoat: Ritual and Literature. USA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972.

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