Remembered At Our Worst

What if the only thing you were remembered for was your worst moment?

Although Fred Merkle broke into the major leagues with the New York Giants in 1907, he was still practically (and technically) a rookie in the fall of 1908 when the Giants were locked in a tight pennant race with their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs.

On September 23, the Giants hosted the Cubs at the Polo Grounds in New York. The game was just like the whole season had been: a tense, hard-fought struggle between two teams of equal calibre.

With the score tied 1-1 with two outs in the 9th inning, Merkle singled, advancing Moose McCormick from first base to third. The next batter, Al Bridwell, also singled, which allowed McCormick to score and seemed to seal the crucial victory for the Giants.

Jubilant New York fans stormed through the center field exit and onto the field in celebration.

Fred Merkle, seeing the rush of oncoming fans and convinced that the game was over, headed to the dugout without touching second base.

This was noticed by Johnny Evers, the Cubs’ crafty second baseman, who alerted umpire Hank O’Day and went after the ball. Evers fought through fans, claimed the ball, and relayed it to Chicago shortstop Joe Tinker at second base.

According to baseball rules, since Merkle had not touched second base and Tinker touched the base while holding the ball, Merkle was out on a force play, and Moose McCormick’s game-winning run was nullified.

Merkle’s base-running error would cost the Giants the game, which was ruled a tie, to be replayed at the end of the season only if the two teams were tied in the standings.

Of course, they were, and when the game was replayed, Chicago won, and the 19 year-old Merkle was blamed for losing the pennant.

The Cubs went on to win the World Series that year, although they haven’t managed to win another in the 98 seasons since.

Fred Merkle would go on to have a respectable year major league career that would span 18 seasons, one which produced 1,580 hits, 290 doubles and a .273 batting average (statistics more impressive when you consider that the majority of his career was played in the dead ball era), but he would never live down the “Merkle Boner,” as his 1908 mistake came to be known. In fact, it’s really the only thing he is known for today.

Sometimes, history can be pretty unforgiving like that—a lot of people are remembered only for their worst or most inept moments.

That is one advantage of not being famous: we don’t have thousands or millions of people scrutinizing our every move and waiting to jump all over us when we mess up.

Of course, even if we aren’t famous, we can make some mistakes that have serious and far-reaching consequences.

But that is one of the most comforting aspects of Christianity; we may still make mistakes, but those are not what God remembers about us. In 2 Corinthians 5.17, the Apostle Paul says,

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

I’ve always felt sorry for Fred Merkle, and have thought that it isn’t fair that he is remembered only at his worst, for a mistake that he made as a 19 year-old kid.

But his story reminds me of this: thanks to the blood of Christ, we don’t have to be remembered for our worst moments; they can be wiped away.


The 1909-1911 T-206 Fred Merkle tobacco card pictured above was one of my favorite Christmas gifts this year. Thanks Jared!

Sources for the statistics and historical dates and names used in this article include Baseball Reference and Wikipedia.

We Interrupt Our Regularly-Scheduled Blogging…

Yesterday, we were getting ready to watch the Arkansas-Kentucky basketball game at the Dockery house when we got a call that someone had driven their car into the printing room of the church building where my dad works.

When we got there, we were pretty shocked to see only 2-3 feet of the truck sticking out of the building. There was a large metal support pole inside that was torn down and snapped almost in half.

Fortunately, the driver of the truck wasn’t hurt. She was actually the new mail lady, and was dropping of a registered letter, but was driving a (new) truck that she wasn’t familiar with and accidentally hit the gas instead of the brakes (she was sitting on the right side to deliver the mail and was hitting the pedals with her left foot) and drove right through the doors.

The hole in the building is temporarily patched up, but it will be a while before its completely fixed. Hopefully, it won’t slow down the printing operations too much, and things can get back to normal as soon as possible.

It was really pretty exciting, in a destructive/shocking/problematic sort of way.

Then we went home and watched the Razorbacks blow a big lead and lose their seventh consecutive game against the Wildcats. Let’s not talk about that.

Double Meaning

“Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Isaiah 40. 28-31

Home Sweet Home Alabama

My wife’s great-grandmother passed away earlier this week, so Thursday morning, Caroline and I drove 10 hours to Huntsville, Alabama for the funeral.

With both Alabama and Arkansas being southern states and also located fairly close to each other, many people, especially over-generalizing Yankees*, would probably think that they were very similar. I am sure there are many similarities, but there are also some glaring differences, and I’m going to briefly mention a few I noticed over the past few days.

1. There are way more southern accents in Alabama. Now, Fayetteville might be somewhat of a high-brow locale compared to much of the rest of Arkansas, but I’ve also lived in more rural Searcy, Arkansas, and there is still no comparison: the southern twang is much more prevalent in Alabama.

2. Apparently, there are Old School, non-Supercenter Wal-Marts in Alabama. In my part of Arkansas at least, this is not the case.

3. Funerals are way different. Not only was the funeral at a local funeral home instead of the church that Caroline’s great-grandmother attended, but the family also sat up on a stage off to the side, out of sight of everyone else. Once the funeral was over, a curtain closed over the stage; I guess so the family could have privacy while looking at the casket. Different.

4. The Alabama/Auburn rivalry is way intense. Being from Arkansas, where the Razorbacks get top-billing in everything, this is completely foreign to me. I think it’s neat having the vast majority of the state unified in support of a team, but coming from a state with no real rival, the intense rivalry thing seems pretty cool too.

5. According to a sign we passed, in Alabama, coon dogs are apparently a very, very big deal. At least, more so than they are here.


*Yes, the ironic word choice was intentional.