By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/11/03/7051no-apology-necessary-really/It’s bad enough that the goat business isn’t really going out of business in sports. Now the goat has to
apologise on broadcast camera?
A TMZ reporter caught up with Yu Darvish this weekend. With camera. Asking Darvish how he was feeling,
two or three days after the Astros made an inning-and-two-thirds pinata out of him for the second time
in two World Series starts.
And Darvish continued owning it, from the moment the TMZ reporter asked how he was doing. “Personally,
I’m good, but I still feel bad about Game Seven,” Darvish replied, not as red-eyed as he looked at the
postgame press conference, otherwise looking like a neighbourhood guy in a casual blue plaid shirt and
under a casual black ball cap.
“It was a tough loss, it was a tough loss,” said the reporter, sympathetically, before asking Darvish if he
had something to say to Dodger fans. Darvish flinched facially for one moment, looked both ways as he
turned the corner where he was walking, grimaced a fleeting second, then replied.
“For the Dodger fans, I still feel bad about it. They expect we won the World Series. I couldn’t do it. I still
feel sorry, but I did my hundred percent.”
Nobody knows whether the now-free agent Darvish will return to the Dodgers, or whether the Dodgers
want him back. The TMZ reporter did nothing more than a good reporter does, but he should have dropped
his jaw when Darvish still felt the compulsion to apologise.
Somebody needs to have a sit-down with Darvish and tell him what few dare to do with those branded as
sports goats, but which Thomas Boswell once put forward: “The reason we don’t forgive you is because
there’s nothing to forgive. You tried your best and failed.”
The flip side of which, of course, is that there come times, even in the life of Hall of Famers, when the
other guy is better than you in one terribly terrific, terrifically terrible moment. Luis Gonzalez was better
than Mariano Rivera ending the 2001 World Series, but nobody among even the least entitled-feeling of
Yankee fans asked The Mariano to grovel.
Are we supposed to demand apologies from Fred Merkle, Freddie Lindstrom, Ernie Lombardi, Johnny
Pesky, Ralph Branca, Gene Mauch, Willie Davis, Curt Flood, Tom Niedenfeuer, Don Denkinger, Donnie
Moore, Bill Buckner, Calvin Schiraldi, John McNamara, Mitch Williams, Grady Little, the ’64 Phillies, the
’78 Red Sox, the ’06 Mets, this year’s Nationals, every Cub between the Great Depression and the end
of 2015, and every Indian between Hurricane Hazel and the present?
Right now, forgiving Darvish over Game Seven will be two things for too many Dodger fans: difficult,
and impossible. But how about forgiving the Dodger brain trusters who didn’t catch him tipping his
pitches—their job descriptions include catching onto such things, you know—and fix it before the Astros
could do any more damage than they’d done in the top of the first?
How about forgiving the Dodger hitters who looked Lance McCullers, Jr.’s gift horse in the mouth, had
two or more on against him in the first few innings including the bases loaded in the bottom of the
first, but swung like Little Leaguers trying to hit six-run homers on every pitch and left those baserunners
with grounds to charge desertion?
Video closeups caught Darvish’s glove giving just a slight wiggle while he prepared to grip his breaking
stuff, but keeping still when preparing to grip his fastball. The Astros went down in the first inning of
Game Three despite Springer’s leadoff double. They plated four in the second and drove Darvish out.
You tell me if they weren’t paying attention on the bench in that first. If no Dodger coach, teammate, or
even pitching coach Rick Honeycutt caught on as quickly as the Astros did, while the Astros destroyed
him from the outset in Game Seven, then Lucy, a few people got some splainin’ to do.
Pitch tipping is usually inadvertent. Opponents usually catch on before the hapless pitcher does. That’s
gamesmanship. It’s not the same as, say, stealing signs with an elaborate telescope-and-underground-
buzzer rig. In the hands of the ’51 Giants, it was grand theft pennant race comeback. The Mugging at
Coogan’s Bluff.
To the day he died Ralph Branca couldn’t really be sure whether Bobby Thomson—who became his friend
years after the Shot Heard Round the World—looked for the bullpen signal that the fastball was coming:
“He still had to hit the pitch.”
And except for the late Monte Irvin (who actually refused to take the scope-and-buzz sign) and Thomson
(who always seemed ambivalent about it), the ’51 Giants still don’t seem to be inclined to apologise. They
should have counted themselves lucky that Branca, as Vin Scully said upon his death, “carried the cross
of the Thomson home run with dignity and grace.”
Leo Durocher hatched the scope-and-buzz scheme with a little help from a coach and a reserve. He managed
the ’51 Giants and the ’69 Cubs, whose stretch collapse was largely his doing. Years later he met and
apologised to a group of re-convened ’69 Cubs (as did Gene Mauch years later to his ’64 Phillies), but he
never apologised for the ’51 Giants. As a goat he felt compelled to apologise, albeit decades after the fact.
As a master thief, well . . .
For all its joy over their World Series triumph, Astroworld isn’t yet sure whether to forgive Ken Giles for
surrendering the Game Four tiebreaker in the top of the ninth. All he did was throw Cody Bellinger a nasty
fastball a little off the plate, and Bellinger lined it into the left center field gap for a double.
All Joe Musgrove did two hitters later was serve up a sacrifice fly and—on a fastball that rode up and in to
Joc Pederson—a three-run homer. Without those, Alex Bregman’s excuse-me solo homer in the bottom of
the ninth would have tied the game. But Giles took the loss, the loss of his closer’s role, the loss of even
a quick subsequent Series appearance, and the indignation.
Nobody’s compelled Giles to a public apology yet, and Giles owned Bellinger’s double as firmly as Darvish
has owned his Game Seven catastrophe. And they don’t owe us a damn thing. Because—the failures of
Darvish’s mates and coaches to spot his little flaw notwithstanding—sometimes, and often at the worst
of times, someone else is just a little bit better.
Someone needs to tell that to Darvish. Before he ends up apologising to death. And before anyone compels
Ken Giles (or even Joe Musgrove) to apologise some time, some place, someone should tell their would-be
Astroworld executioners,
You won! Get over it! ------------------------------------
@Polly Ticks @Machiavelli @Bigun @catfish1957 @dfwgator @DCPatriot @Freya @musiclady @Mom MD @TomSea @truth_seeker @Slip18 @Cyber Liberty @flowers @corbe @Right_in_Virginia @GrouchoTex 
