Are Your Mistakes On Display?

I don’t watch a lot of baseball. But when the World Series comes around, I watch a game or two. That way when people are talking about it in the line at Starbucks, I can say something like, “How ‘bout them Mets?”

My hope is they don’t try to engage in conversation about it and talk about stats or something.

Photo Credit: Marques Stewart, Creative Commons

So when I was watching a game a few weeks ago, for some reason, they showed a clip from the 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and the Mets. In the clip, a ball was hit down the first base line, and a routine catch went through the legs of Bill Buckner.

A costly error that resulted in an immediate Mets World Series win.

I’m not sure why they showed the film from almost thirty years ago, but I was irritated when I saw it, and flipped the channel to yet another CNN interview with Donald Trump.

I was angry because I’d seen an interview with Bill Buckner earlier this year. He recalled the incident, the shame he felt, and the intense and unending ridicule from the press and from fans for years following the incident.

Tears came to his eyes as the interviewer pressed in. He still can’t watch much baseball, because his error is shown over and over again.

The guy made a mistake.

It was an error repeated time after time in baseball. Errors are a part of the game. Heck, they’re a part of everyday life. But that day, his error became more. Everyone needed someone on whom to pour out their frustrations.

And Bill Buckner was that man.

There was another guy who made a mistake a few years ago.

This one was a fan. I’m not going to name him because I want to give the guy a break. He and about six other people reached up for a foul ball at the same time a Cubs outfielder reached for it.

Apparently, they foiled the catch and the game went downhill from there.

For some reason, the cameras and the crowd focused in on the young man in a ball cap. You probably remember the image. Fans threw beer at him and spit on him as he sat there in stunned silence. Police escorted him out, fearing for his safety.

Meanwhile the other folks who tried to get the ball walked free, as did the fellow who caught it and sold it for $125,000 a few years later.

I watched an ESPN documentary on this incident.

It was called “Catching Hell” and in it they described how the guy was vilified by the media and the fans. Ten years later, he still remains basically invisible, refusing offers of hundreds of thousands of dollars for an interview.

He was a good guy who made a mistake and still pays dearly for it, blamed for a World Series loss that was not his fault.

In the Old Testament, on the Day of Atonement, the priest would confess all of the sins of the people over the head of a goat, and drive the goat into the wilderness, symbolically taking their sins and shame out of their sight.

It seems that we often assume the role of the priest.

We find someone who makes a mistake (or who is caught in a public sin) and focus our outrage on him or her, and figuratively or literally, drive them away. Somehow it’s easier to make someone else carry the weight of our own failures and insecurities.

I wonder what would happen if we practiced more grace.

What if we recognized our need to find a scapegoat, and instead offered understanding and a “there but for the grace of God, go I” mentality.

In 2008, the Red Sox organization, after winning a World Series, invited Bill Buckner back to throw out the first pitch of a new season. It was a long overdue olive branch.

He wept as he threw the pitch, as did many of the players and fans. Mercy descended over the stadium that night.

Sometimes scapegoats wander back into the city. Maybe next time, grace won’t take twenty years to welcome him home.