Josh Paul looked elated, and why not? After years of scuffling just to make the opening-day rosters of the White Sox and Cubs, he was in the playoffs as the Angels’ third-string catcher. Born in Evanston, and still a Naperville resident in the off-season, Paul was all smiles as he took batting practice at White Sox Park before the first game of the American League Championship Series. When a Chicago reporter asked him about the hair sprouting on his face, he said, “Playoff beard, just like the NHL guys–grow until you’re done.”
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Paul, as all fans know by now, played an unfortunate role in the pivotal play of the series. The Sox had lost the opener 4-3 and were lying prone at the feet of the Angels’ bullpen when A.J. Pierzynski struck out to send the second game into extra innings knotted at 1-1. Paul rolled the ball back to the mound, the way all good catchers do, and Pierzynski turned and broke for first base as if the third strike had been dropped. Had it? Paul’s actions made that possibility look unthinkable, and it looked like home-plate ump Doug Eddings had made both a strike call and an out call. But Pierzynski flummoxed the umps into seeing it his way, and once he got to first base he stayed there–over manager Mike Scioscia’s fierce protest–until Sox manager Ozzie Guillen sent in Pablo Ozuna to pinch-run. Ozuna stole second, and then Joe Crede jumped all over a hanging split-finger fastball from Kelvim Escobar–who’d struck out five previous hitters, including Pierzynski, on splitters that had dived like a falcon after prey–and lined it into the left-field corner to win the game.
Baseball has a long, rich history, and many fans and analysts drew parallels with previous immortal gaffes. To my mind, however, the Pierzynski-Paul phantom trapped third strike most resembled the infamous “Merkle boner” of 1908. Fred Merkle was a teenager with the New York Giants, who were locked in a fierce pennant race with the Cubs late in September, and he was on first base when Al Bridwell delivered what appeared to be a game-winning single with two out in the ninth. Except that Merkle, a scrub accustomed to running from the dugout to the center-field clubhouse after games at the Polo Grounds, took off for the clubhouse without touching second. The Cubs’ Johnny Evers tracked down the ball in the crowd swirling onto the field and headed for second to force Merkle and end the inning without the run counting. But third-base coach “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity seized the ball from him and threw it into the stands. Evers apparently touched second with another ball, at which point Chicago manager Frank Chance dragged out the umpires and argued that Merkle should be out and the game ruled a 1-1 tie. They sided with him. The game would be replayed, if necessary, and after the Giants dropped five key games down the stretch it was. The Cubs won and went on to what remains their last world championship.
This is not apocryphal. It’s a fact: Pitcher Mark Redman turned to the others in the Marlins’ dugout after Bartman’s blunder and said, “All right, now let’s make that kid famous.” And they did.
Great teams find ways to make other teams feel cursed, in the process sometimes removing long-standing curses of their own. Poor Josh Paul–the longer the Angels go without another championship, the darker his lapse will loom. In Chicago let’s agree to call it A.J. Pierzynski’s stealing first, the play that sent the White Sox to the city’s first World Series in 46 years.
