Ninety six years before Jack Wilson had a bad day in Texas, Napoleon Lajoie had a worse one in Boston.
On April 22, 1915, the future Hall of Famer – a recent acquisition of the Philadelphia Athletics – committed five errors during a 7-6 defeat to the Boston Red Sox. That tied an American League record, and it still stands, for fielding futility by a second baseman.
At least Wilson, whose two errors prolonged what should have been a routine inning for the Mariners, had an excuse: A shortstop throughout his big-league career, he was learning another position on the job. Lajoie brought 20 years of second base experience into his five-error game.
Lajoie’s awful performance against the Red Sox, in any case, did not diminish the legacy of – borrowing here from his Cooperstown plaque – a “great hitter and the most graceful and effective second baseman of his era.”
Failure, and the need to put it aside and push on, is the most essential of baseball themes.
“Ya Gotta Have Heart,” four players on the lowly Washington Senators sing in “Damn Yankees.” (“When your luck is battin’ zero, get your chin up off he floor. Mister you can be a hero – there’s nothin’ to it but to do it.”)
“Casey At The Bat,” might have been dismissed as 19th century drivel had mighty Casey connected on a two-strike, three-run homer for the Mudville Nine. But he takes a swing and he misses, a frustration that sets up the poem’s beautifully haunting conclusion:
“Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light
Somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout
But there is no joy in Mudville – mighty Casey has struck out.”
The real-life version of Casey, Babe Ruth, did not strike out with two out in the ninth inning of a 1926 World Series that found the Yankees trailing the Cardinals, 3-2, in Game 7. He coaxed a walk, giving the dangerous Bob Meusel a chance to be a hero. But Meusel saw only one pitch before the Cardinals clinched because Ruth was thrown out trying to steal second.
By, oh, maybe 10 feet.
Rogers Hornsby applied the tag. He later remembered that Ruth “didn’t say a word. He didn’t even look around or up at me. He just picked himself up and walked away.”
A sport capable of shaming Babe Ruth is the same sport that reduced Michael Jordan, among the greatest athletes in the history of the planet, into a minor-league grinder flustered by the unanticipated trajectory of an old-fashioned breaking ball.
For every baseball icon, there’s a corresponding tale of ineptitude.
Brooks Robinson’s ability to deliver in the clutch, showcased when the Orioles’ third baseman turned the 1970 World Series into a personal highlight film, is entrenched in postseason lore. The next season, Robinson’s name was temporarily installed in the record book for stranding 10 runners in one game.
Walter Johnson, who has been ranked by peerless baseball historian Bill James as the No. 1 pitcher of all time, took the mound in a 1909 game and walked seven batters, hit another, and threw five wild pitches.
Johnson’s contemporary, the Giants’ Christy Mathewson, once walked six men in a single inning. So talented was Mathewson that manager John McGraw wouldn’t think of replacing his obviously struggling starter.
The home-plate umpire spared McGraw the trouble, ejecting Mathewson for disputing a call.
George Sisler, former owner of the single-season hits record since broken by Ichiro Suzuki, was a competent fielder at first base. At least was reputed to be. The 21,000 fans who showed up in St. Louis for the Browns’ 1925 season opener likely had a dissenting opinion of Sisler’s defensive skills. He was charged with four errors.
In 2011, a first baseman who commits four errors in a season opener becomes a national laughing stock, king of the videoboard blooper loop.
Sisler? He’s in the Hall of Fame.
Although Willie Davis didn’t qualify for that club, the late center fielder, a three-time Gold Glove recipient who spent most of his career for the Dodgers, typically combined speed and acumen to convert potential line-drive hits into routine outs. Flummoxed by the sun during a 1966 World Series game against the Orioles – World Series games, once upon a time, were a staple of weekday October afternoons – Davis was charged with three errors.
Grilled by reporters afterward, Davis transformed reason into rhyme.
“It ain’t my wife, and it ain’t my life,” he said. “It’s just a game.”
No discussion of defensive lapses can be made without mentioning former Giants catcher Bob Brenly, who on occasion was summoned to play third base. On Sept. 14, 1986, Brenly answered the challenge by committing four errors in the fourth inning against the Braves.
Unlike Jack Wilson, who took himself out of the ballgame last week, Brenly toughed it out, atoning for his gaffes with a fifth-inning home run, a seventh-inning single that tied the game, and another homer, worth a 7-6 Giants victory, in the bottom of the ninth.
On the same afternoon Bob Brenly’s luck was battin’ zero, he made himself a hero. All it took was heart.
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