Orion’s Constellation of Cringe

baseball, sports 1 Minute

Orion Kerkering’s horrendous blunder in the final game of the Dodgers/Phillies National League Division Series was one of the worst baseball plays I have ever seen. I really feel bad for the guy, and it was a tough night for Phillies’ fans. My guest blogger Bruce Solomon put it all in perspective.

I spotted this headline in the NY Post after the game last week: 

Phillies’ season ends on reliever’s boneheaded error in extra innings

That led me to consider that Richard Orion Kerkering could find notoriety, if not infamy for the ages amongst baseball aficionados for season-ending miscues placed squarely, if unfairly, on one player’s shoulders, as in Merkle’s Boner in 1908 and Snodgrass’ $30,000 Muff in 1912.

To provide some historical heft for Bonehead Orion’s Star-Crossed Muff, here are the tales of Merkle’s Boner and Snodgrass’ Muff:

The Merkle Boner: The Story Of Fred Merkle

https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/fred-snodgrass-october-16-1912-cbcb6d2db26b

After watching the play, I suggested to wife that the most charitable thing Phillies’ management could do would be to trade Orion to a galaxy far, far away from the enduring wrath of the baseball fans of the City of Brotherly Love.

As balm for the pain of Orion’s moment of ignominy, I share a taste of what cracker jack sports writing was like in the bygone days of 1912 with this recounting of the eighth and final game of the 1912 World Series by one of the finest scribes of the day, Hugh Fullerton:

https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/snodgrass-muffs-one-2f74b9d200cf

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Published by Steven A. Falco

I have been a writer all my life and recently started blogging. I have published two books. My latest book is a coming-of-age novel entitled Mickey Mantle's Last Home Run which follows the exploits of a fifteen-year-old playing baseball back in 1968. It is a book about the friendship of a black kid and a white kid trying to navigate teenage life in that tumultuous time when our country seemed to be coming apart. My first book, Grandpa Gordy’s Greatest World Series Games, is geared to middle-grade readers. In it, Grandpa Gordy, a retired sportswriter, relates his versions of the great games of our national pastime in a hilarious and entertaining fashion. My love of baseball shows through in my books as I try to convey many of life’s lessons in an enjoyable lighthearted way. I grew up writing and playing baseball in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City. I majored in English at Montclair State University where I studied Steinbeck, Dylan, and Berra.

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