Gary Seymour, sports@wolfrivermedia.com
Before social media began whittling the English language down to a series of acronyms there was a clear understanding in the sports world of what a goat was, and that you didn’t want to be one.
However, in today’s literary sea of IDKs, NVMs and SMHs, the upper-case GOAT signifies the “greatest of all time.”
The University of Oregon’s Jordan Bell found himself on the wrong side of the goat partition last weekend when he failed to box out and rebound successive missed free throws in the last five seconds of his team’s one-point semifinal loss to eventual national champion North Carolina.
Oregon missed a chance to drive the floor for a possible game-winning bucket, and Bell, a forward who was instrumental in the Ducks’ advancing to the Final Four, was inconsolable.
“This is going to hurt forever,” he said.
That was an exaggeration, of course. It may only hurt him for another 70 years or so. But on that “forever” part, the telltale final seconds will be available viewing for the not-so-limited time of “from now on.”
Hoops fans far and wide, not to mention Bell’s descendants for generations, will be able to pull up and watch those tense moments with a touch of the keyboard.
His dilemma, and that of lower-case goats everywhere today, brings to mind the sarcastic wedding toast that ends with the wish, “May all your disgraces be private.”
Privacy in virtually every manner, though, has gone the way of the rotary phone. Where life’s most devastating misplays once dissolved into the ether, there is now the internet to trap them for posterity, in dying color. With phone cameras ever at the ready and video-sharing websites to house the clips, athletes at every level are potential targets for everlasting infamy.
No one is exempt, but due to its being the most individual of all the team sports, baseball may be the most fertile ground for an unlucky athlete’s never-ending discredit.
There is nowhere on the diamond to hide when you’ve booted a ground ball – like the star-crossed Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series – nor can you erase the botched slide into second or the fly ball bouncing off your head and over the fence.
The permanent-record internet can be devastating for anyone from T-ball age on up, but might be toughest on adolescents, many of whose every movement is made trying to avoid embarrassment.
Had the internet been a thing in the early 20th century, we would all know about Buckner’s predecessor in baseball notoriety, Fred Merkle.
Merkle, who played for a New York Giants team in a heated pennant race with the Chicago Cubs, was a base runner on first with a teammate on third and two out in the bottom of the ninth inning of a late-September tie game with the Cubs.
A base hit drove in the apparent winning run, but rather than complete his jog to touch second base, Merkle veered off and joined the celebration at home plate. A zany sequence followed, with the Cubs trying to retrieve the ball and throw it to second for a force out, one of the Giants throwing the ball into the stands to give Merkle time to touch second, and finally the Cubs getting another ball from their dugout, pretending it to be the game ball and firing it to the shortstop standing on the bag.
Merkle was called out at second, the winning run was wiped out, the game was declared a tie on account of darkness and the replayed game was won by the Cubs, who went on to edge out the Giants for the pennant by one game.
A shattered Merkle said of his mistake, “I suppose when I die, they’ll put on my tombstone ‘Here Lies Bonehead Merkle.’”
A simple HLBM would’ve saved money on the engraving. Or, to capture the drift not only of his departure but also his defining act, an even more tidy IOH (I’m outta here).