Twice in the past few weeks I’ve seen/heard references to an infamous play which screwed the Cardinals and gave the World Series to the Royals. First was Jack Buck, Cardinals announcer, mentioning it when the Cards played the Royals a few weeks back, and then this thread, where bailer mentions it to.
Neither reference mentioned what exactly took place. So, in a word, what happened?
TIA
Game 6. Cardinals lead series, 3 games to 2. Royals batting in the bottom of the ninth, down 1-0.
First batter is pinch-hitter Jorge Orta. He hits the ball to the first baseman, Jack Clark, who flips it to the pitcher, Todd Worrell, covering the bag. It definitely seems like the throw beat Orta by a step, but unpire Don Denkinger called Orta safe. That’s the big controversial call.
Eventually, Orta as a baserunner was erased in a force-out at third base. However, one supposes that if he had been called out to begin with, the Royals wouldn’t have had enough life to score the 2 runs they needed in order to eventually force Game 7.
And I should state up front that I’m probably the biggest Royals fan who doesn’t live within a 1000-mile radius of Kansas City.
According to CBS SportsLine’s chronology, it went something like this:
The Royals come back in game 7 to win 11-0.
Missing in between is a failed sacrifice attempt by Jim Sundberg. That’s when Orta was forced out at third. Sundberg eventually scored the winning run.
The Cardinals suffered a meltdown in Game 7. John Tudor was bombed and Joaquin Andujar and Whitey Herzog eventually got kicked out of the game. By the same Mr. Denkinger.
I believe Denkinger admitted that when he saw the replay that he realized he was in error, but he didn’t think so when he first saw the play and those are just the breaks.
If the Cardinals did win that series, it would have been a Gore-Bush situation. The Royals had outscored the Cardinals 17-10 prior to the 9th inning of Game 6 and had only produced 40 hits in those 6 games.
Growing up in St. Louis, you could say “Don Denkinger” and get an instant reaction from anyone, anywhere. Hell, here I am sitting here, fuming about it, 16 years later. But I never think about Clark missing Balboni’s pop foul.
Hell, I live in St. Louis and you can STILL say “Denkinger” and get an instant reaction.
And to top it off, in 1986 the Cardinals’ (then) arch-rivals, the hated New York Mets, were on the verge of losing to the Red Sox when we heard the immortal call “Right through Buckner’s legs!!!”
“From the moment Dekinger blew the call, the Cardinals did nothing to make anyone think they deserved to be World Series champions”,(or words to that effect) wrote Bill James in the following year’s “Baseball Abstract”. James is a Royals’ fan but I agree with his analysis.