Red Sox Rumsfeld

Bill Buckner was not as much a "poor-fielding" first baseman at that time as Wilde would have us believe. Buckner played a lot of that 1986 season on two bad ankles such that he couldn't stay down on the fateful ground ball, hence his being replaced by Dave Stapleton for defense late in games in which the Red Sox had leads. Look at any picture of Buckner's 10th-inning-of-Game-6 error and notice the high-top spikes that he was wearing, all the better to support his ankles more than ordinary low-top baseball shoes would have. That aside, Billy Buck got a bad rap for the (mis)play; his gaffe was the culmination of too much that went bad for the Red Sox in that inning. To wit: the pitcher who started the inning, Schiraldi, losing his nerve once he got the first two Mets hitters in the inning and Gedman not handling or, at the least, blocking Stanley's inside "wild pitch" to Wilson. It may have been scored a wild pitch by the official scorer but it has always, then as now when I see it on replays, appeared to me to have been a passed ball on Gedman (the pitch didn't even hit the dirt); that allowed the Mets' tying run to score right before Buckner's error. And even if Buckner HAD fielded Wilson's dribbler cleanly, Buckner was so far behind first base at the time the ball got to him that he still might not have beaten Wilson to the bag for the putout.......

Is'nt the truth of 9/11 tragic enough without telling lies about it? Who's side is ABC really on? What is your political agenda? Is your agenda so vile that lies are your only tools to advance that agenda? Tell the truth about your self. No more lies from right wing extremists.

please donot change 9/11 tv show,,

If you'll forgive the impending pun, all of this blather in the Senate involving tortuous baseball analogies just shows that each senator is, ahem, way out of his league.

A few thoughts:

Despite Wade's comments, Gregg's history is pretty accurate, as basic history. Buckner, Dent, and Frazee are all part of Red Sox lore, no doubt. Apparently, Gregg was trying to say that Kerry has the benefit of hindsight, which Rumsfeld didn't have at the time he made various (now known to be disastrous) decisions. Here's where Gregg's analogy to Red Sox history fails. And Wade missed a real opportunity to call him on it.

Gregg's error is that two of the three Red Sox decisions he points to were known to be misguided AT THE TIME THEY WERE MADE. No hindsight needed. In this respect, Gregg undermined his own argument.

First, Red Sox Manager John McNamara left Bill Buckner in through the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, despite the fact that he had routinely removed him late in games--for defensive purposes--before Game 6. Apparently, McNamara wanted Buckner to be on the field to celebrate the World Series win.

Second, when Babe Ruth was traded by Red Sox owner Harry Frazee to the Yankees, no one thought it was a good baseball move and, indeed, all acknowledged that it would greatly help the Yankees and hurt the Red Sox. Ruth, at that time, had already established himself as one of the top pitchers and, more recently, as the top slugger, in all of baseball. The season before he was traded to the Yankees, Ruth hit 29 homers, then a Major League record.

So Gregg's history is OK in the most general sense, but to compare Rumsfeld's performance to those of McNamara and Frazee in order to suggest that all three made decisions that seem wrong only with the benefit of hindsight is ridiculous, since McNamara and Frazee made desicions that were obviously wrong at the time they were made.

Now that I think about it, maybe Gregg was correct to analogize between Rumsfeld and the other two, but for exactly the opposite reason than he suggests: All three made decisions that were obviously wrong at the time they made them.

As concerns Dick Wilde's explanation, I'm sure he was just being off-handed, but Bill Buckner certainly did not "cost the Red Sox the '86 World Series." The Mets had already staged an improbable 10th inning comeback and tied Game 6 before Wilson's grounder went through Buckner's legs, allowing the winning run to score. The Red Sox might have lost further along in extra innings anyway. What's more, that was only Game 6. Had the Red Sox won Game 7 (which they led 3-0 as late as the 6th inning) they still would have won the World Series.

As concerns Dent, Wilde is just confused. Dent did not hit a solo homer (it was a 3 run shot) and it did not end the Red Sox' season (the homer was hit in the 7th inning). In fact, Dent's homer made the score 3-2, a lead the Yanks extended to 5-2 in the 7th, only to have the Sox put 2 up in the 8th to make the score 5-4. That set up a dramatic 9th inning, in which Rick Burleson made it all the way to third before Carl Yastrzemski popped up to end the game 5-4.