Lessons Learned from One of Baseball's Biggest Blunders

Lessons Learned from One of Baseball's Biggest Blunders

"Take time for all things, great haste makes great waste." - Benjamin Franklin

When I created this blog, my initial goal was to help others. The other goal was to combine leadership and life lessons through baseball, while also applying them to coaches, educators, and anyone in a leadership role. And while I am at it, anyone who can speak is a leader. But I digress.

Today I will tell a story that combines baseball and leadership. As many of you that know me well, will know that I love history. But what got me into liking the subject of history so much was baseball. More importantly it was Ken Burn's documentary "Baseball," that made me into a history nerd. While watching that documentary, a certain story was told that I thought was very intriguing. That story is called Merkel's Blunder. The story is a simple one but at the same time, this story is still a big deal to this day because of poor scoring and all of the confusion that ensued after the game happened. 

So this is the story, the date is September 23rd, 1908. The teams that were playing were the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants. The game was tied 1-1 in the bottom of the 9th with the Giants up to bat. With runners on 1st and 3rd the Giants had Al Bridwell coming up to hit. Bridwell then hit the first pitch he saw and scored the runner from 3rd base to win the game. Or so it seemed. The runner on first was a 19 year old rookie named Fred Merkel. Merkel was a substitution in the game for Fred Tenney because Tenney was playing through lower back pain. Merkel himself had health issues as well. Merkel almost had his foot amputated due to a blood infection he had earlier in the year. Despite this, Merkel, at the time, was the youngest player in the National League. 

So you may be asking, well what in the world did Merkel do to cause one of the biggest blunders in all of baseball? Well Merkel simply didn't touch 2nd base. As soon as the ball was hit, Merkel went halfway between 1st and 2nd base and went directly to the clubhouse. For a run to score, all runners must advance to the next base. The Giant's fans then stormed the field in celebration because their team won the game. Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers recognized that Merkel didn't touch second base. Evers shouted to the Cubs centerfielder Solly Hofman to retrieve the ball because Merkel didn't touch second base. The issue with retrieving the ball was that the Giant's pitcher Joe McGinnity threw the ball into the crowd of rabid fans in celebration after the Giants "won" the game. Evers retrieved the ball,  but it was believed that the ball that Evers found was thrown to him by one of the Cub's players from their dugout so he could touch second base to get Merkel out. 

Despite all of this madness, the umpires came together and agreed that Merkel was out. The umpires were unable to clear the field due to the fans, so they ruled the game a tie due to darkness. At the end of the season, both the Giants and Cubs were tied for first place in the standings. So both teams had to play a one game playoff to determine who would go to the World Series. In this game though there was no controversy. The Cubs won this game 4-2, thus letting the Cubs go to the World Series. And in this year, the Cubs would go on to win the 1908 World Series. Of course this was the last world championship the Cubs would win until 2016. 

Merkel would go on to play for different teams and play in many World Series games, but those teams would never win the World Series. Merkel would also earn the nickname of "Bonehead," after the play that cost the Giants a chance to play and possibly win the World Series.

So what is the moral of this story? The moral of this story is to simply, do things a step at a time. Success is slow. There is no cheating the process of success. Success happens when you do the right things correctly over a long period of time. It takes a lot of focus and a 100 percent effort on doing things the right way. If Merkel would have been focused and given his all to make sure he reached 2nd base, then perhaps this event would have never happened. Perhaps he would have been a World Series champion. But these are all what ifs, and thus his bonehead play lives on for the ages.