It was just a mention in the Baseball News. I was glancing without much interest when I came upon an article that mentioned the birthday of Tillie Merkle-Brown. So what? I thought. But it was the name Merkle that made me read the column. It only said that she was the daughter of Fred Merkle the New York Giants ball player who was only remembered for the famous Merkle's Boner. Most baseball aficionados over the age of 50 might remember the story, but it happened in 1908 and only because the column in the Chicago Tribune the next day that simply read "The Merkle Boner Saves Cubs." So only the real die-hard Cubs fans would remember the story of the Merkle Boner.

Tillie Merkle lived in a nursing home in Boca Raton Florida. It was her 90th birthday and she loved to send and receive e-mail. I wrote down the e-mail address and went to the computer to see if I remembered the Merkel's Boner or was it just the stuff of legend that starts out to be an innocent enough story of a cut finger and by the time the press gets it somehow it turns into a mass murder.

But what happened on a warm day in September at the old Polo Grounds where the New York Giants used to play baseball was just an unfortunate mistake on the part of a young 19 year old Fred Merkle that was thrown into the 1908 World Series by accident and would forever be seared into the baseball history books... but not in a positive way.

I sent an e-mail to Tillie Merkle Brown and received a reply the next day. In my e-mail I told her I knew she probably was inundated with requests for interviews about her father Fred Merkle and that I wouldn't bother her for a long interview but forget that I was a columnist and just from the years of being a loyal Cubs fan I had to endure the bonehead plays of an entire baseball team, and that she only had to endure one bonehead play of one man almost one hundred years ago. With that I wanted to let her know that as a Cubs fan almost 100 years later I thought Fred Merkle got a bum rap and tha

It was the one play that changed Cubs history forever and most loyal Cubs fans are forever split on the outcome of "The Call" and that it may have given the Cubs the World Series win but it was a curse that would haunt the Chicago Cubs and their fans for 97 years, never to see the World Series again. She said in her e-mail that when she heard this she had to reply. I received an e-mail from her the next day…"Dear Mr. Pearlman, I was so excited to receive your e-mail. Over the years I have done interviews about my father and the only thing they care to talk about is the infamous "Merkle's Boner" the play that destroyed my fathers life. I have received only three requests for a statement about my father's rather unfortunate error in the 1908 World Series. Of course I wasn't born when it happened and my father kept the kids from knowing the whole story, but my father in his later years finally explained to the family what had occurred on September 23rd at the Polo Grounds along with a rather startling discovery. (Here she included a file) He assured us that he did the only thing that was reasonable at the time since the fans were more like a mob and since the game was clearly over he did what anyone would have done in that case, he ran for his life! Please, if you're going to tell the story, tell it accurately. Please don't tarnish my father's name."

So for you Tillie Merkle-Brown, here's the real story about the Merkel's Boner…

It was 1908, the Cubs greatest year to date. With the trio of Tinker to Evers to Chance to date one of the greatest three infielders to ever grace the diamond. (All three are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.) The two teams were in a virtual tie with the Giants ahead by .006 And a playoff game was needed to determine the winner of the division. The Cubs were favored to win the game. They headed back to the Polo Grounds for the playoff game.

Fred Teney, the great Giant regular second baseman twisted his ankle while sliding into home plate the day before and a 19 year old Fred Merkle was called upon to fill the position. He was a rookie but a good defensive player. Christy Matthewson, the Hall of Fame pitcher was on the mound for the Giants. Jack Pfister, one of the best pitchers of 1908 winning 26 games and only losing 3, was on the mound for the Cubs.

But back in 1908 at the old Polo Grounds the outfield was just a mound of grass that was roped off where the fans would stand to watch the games for 25 cents. But the outfield fans were drunk and rowdy and shook Pfister so much as he warmed up in the Bull pen right next to the drunken crowd that he walked the first four batters making the game 1-0 when the Cubs manager put Mordechai "Three Fingers" Brown in, called that after a farming accident cut the pinky and the pointing finger from his right hand leaving him with a wicked curve ball when almost no other pitchers in the league even knew how to throw a curve ball. (This was the father of the man Tillie Merkle was to marry an arrangement by both fathers that turned into a 63 year love affair)

He was the best pitcher the Cubs had in reserve and in those days and struck out the rest of the side and pitched a shut-out game. But the Cubs only scored once in the 6th and at the end of nine innings it was a 1-1 tie. With two outs and a runner on third and Fred Merkle on first when Al Birdwell hit a ball over the Johnny Evers head. Moose McCormick who was the runner on third base ran home as the fans in the outfield ran onto the field thinking the Giants had won, and had Fred Merkle just touched second base safely they would have, but Merkle, seeing the fans running at him and seeing McCormick tag home plate thought the game was over anyway and turned and ran into the dugout. Johnny Evers seeing Merkle didn't touch second ran for the ball but first base coach Joe McGintry for the Giants ran after the ball and threw it into the stands, but fortune would have a man in a boulder hat that was a Cubs fan threw the ball back to Evers. Johnny Evers threw the ball to Joe Tinker on second base and the umpire who had watched the whole play, knowing that even though the runner on third crossed the plate safely, until the runner on first runs to second base safely leaving first base open to the runner that hit the ball safely, the run doesn't score, and if the runner is thrown out at second the run also doesn't count, so when Tinker stepped on second the umpire called him out and had to go into the Giants clubhouse to let the team know they not only hadn't won, but the game would end in a tie to be played off in Chicago which the Cubs won 4-2 and went on to win the 1908 World Series thanks to a rookie error.

But that wasn't the end of the Fred Merkle story. Fred Merkle played for the Chicago White Sox from 1915 until his retirement in 1919. He had become good friends with most of the infielders as they all hung out and ate, slept, and drank together when on the road. He was enthralled with Shoeless Joe Jackson's hitting style. (Reggie Jackson said he watched films of Joe Jackson and saw something in his swing that Reggie began to copy and said he picked up another .050 on his hitting average and improved his homerun output, something he had never seen in Ruth's or Cobb's swings.) Merkle said Jackson was the purest hitter he'd ever seen, that the only one that came close was Ty Cobb. Not even Babe Ruth could compare to the fluid motion of Jackson's swing and that it was only his pure strength that got Ruth the batting titles. What she sent in the file was the copy of a page from Fred Merkle's diary he kept while in the major leagues.

These to the best of my knowledge, are Fred Merkle's own words written in the 1920 about Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black Sox scandal of 1919 when New York mob leader Abe Rothstein paid off eight White Sox players to throw the World Series. Each player was to be paid $5,000 up front and another $5,000 after the series was over. However Joe Jackson found out from a conversation overheard by his lawyer that Rothstein only allocated $40,000 total available and that was almost all given out before the series. It was Rothstein's greed after he made untold wealth as Rothstein was the major bookie for the New York area. As Merkle wrote in his diary after spending six years with the Chicago White Sox, retiring in 1918 and working as a coach for the 1919 season; "It was horrible what they said about the boys. I can't imagine any of them capable of defiling our game of baseball by taking a bribe to throw the series. But I know Joe the best and even roomed with him on the last road trip before I quit this business of baseball. It's no longer a game but just that, a business and none of us ever got rich by playing for these cheap owners. They say he played bad in some of the games but his .375 average for the series speaks for itself when he said he decided not to join in and I believe him. But it seems they're going to execute him by kicking him out of baseball. It's the only thing Joe Jackson knows how to do." Fred Merkle May 21st 1920.

I was stunned to say the least. Everyone knows about the Black Sox scandal in 1919 when six White Sox players were banned forever from baseball for taking bribes to throw the World Series. Here was another voice, one dead for over fifty years, to agree with what Shoeless Joe Jackson claimed until his death that he changed his mind and was going to return the money and in that game he went 4 for 5 with a home run and two RBI's and finished the series with a .375 average, the highest in the series.

But Jackson took his punishment very hard. He joined a farm league under an assumed name but got caught a few months later when a fan recognized not him as he was sporting a full beard by then to try to disguise himself, but his infamous swing and remarked "nobody could swing like that and still hit the ball a mile except for Shoeless Joe."

It wasn't until 1987 when Joan Matthewson, the wife of Christy Matthewson, left to be read after her death that Christy Matthewson, the "Christian Gentleman" of baseball who passed away suddenly in 1927 admitted it was he that uncovered the payoffs when he overheard a conversation in the bedroom of a teammate he was rooming with about the payoffs, $5,000 now, and $5,000 after the series was over, but there was only $40,000 available and the truth was there were more unhappy players willing to take even a couple of hundred for dropping a crucial ball or missing a crucial tag. The White Sox management had treated their players so shabbily that even though they had made it to the World Series they often went without enough rooms and some had to sleep on the floor. On train trips they had to bring their own food since none was supplied to them by the team. "It was no wonder those poor boys didn't starve before they won the World Series." Said Matthewson. "They even took their living and traveling expenses out of their World Series pay."

In the following years not much was heard from the Black Sox. Joe Jackson returned to Missouri and to a farming life. He said in the years before his death that although he did receive a small amount of money, when he heard that one of the other players not only didn't get paid in full, but was to receive all the money upfront and when the money wasn't paid, Jackson said all bets were off and as it was said he played his best and still almost won the series alone for the White Sox, after all there were eight players involved and 17 more on the bench that weren't involved and even John McGraw the Giants manager admitted that they made it look so bad that ground balls weren't bent over to pick up, fly balls were dropped on purpose. It was so clear by the fourth inning that players could have been substituted at any time.

It was John McGraw the Giants manager in 1908 that even gave Fred Merkle a break when he was quoted after the game as saying "it would be easy to blame Fred Merkle and pin the loss of the pennant on him. He didn't lose it, we were robbed of it and you certainly can't blame Fred Merkle for that." But the public did blame him and he played for 14 more years with the White Sox through the jeers.

It would be seventy years before people would even forget the name Fred Merkle, only because they now replace it with the name Bill Buckner who was once a great Cubs player before being traded to the Boston Red Sox, now known for the Buckner Boot. The great 1st baseman of the Boston Red Sox that let one ground ball get through his legs and with that play lost the 1986 World Series once again blamed for the one play that everyone now calls the Buckner Boner.

Sadly last year when Boston won the World Series the Boston Red Sox asked Bill Buckner to return to Boston for the parade, that a vote by fans had overwhelmingly voted for Buckner to be in the parade as forgiveness for the pain they caused him for 18 years, but in an interview with ESPN, Buckner said he wouldn't even consider coming to the state of Massachusetts let alone the city of Boston after the way they treated him and his family after the "Boot." Now we know what Fred Merkle must have lived with. As well as how Joe Jackson must have felt.

And now 97 years later people still entertain the idea that it was clear that Joe Jackson not only didn't throw the 1918 World Series, but with the numbers he amassed in his years of playing not only made him eligible for the Hall of Fame, but some of his records still stand to this day and some were only surpassed in recent years. And so every year the Hall of Fame board meets the name of Shoeless Joe Jackson pops up. But the name Fred Merkle will forever be remembered only for the one mistake he made in a baseball game so very long ago and would live and die with that one mistake, no human being should be held so accountable for such an innocent error made on a dirt baseball field almost one hundred years ago… I told Tillie when I e-mailed her last with this column, her reply was two words long, I share it with you only because I know she would want us all to know her feelings… the two words…"Bless You" Which was also my last reply to Tillie Merkle-Brown.

-Ken Pearlman