6.07.00
Liddle Big Man

5.25.00
McCain Steams On

5.19.00
One Team's Solidarity with Castro

5.11.00
Rise of The SUV Nation

5.04.00
The Russian Bear: All Bark, No Bite

4.26.00
Elian's "Healing"

4.24.00
Why They Stand For Rocker

4.11.00
A Stinker of a Pulitzer

3.16.00
Spinning the Dark Side of Success

3.10.00
A Country for McCain:
Thailand

ournalism, said Chesterton, often involves announcing the death of Lord Jones to a public that has never heard of Lord Jones. So please be advised of the death, in Mount Carmel, Illinois, of Don Liddle at age 75. He merited a pretty substantial — 19 paragraphs; many statesmen get less — obituary in the New York Times because of a mistake he made 46 years ago, a mistake that resulted in one of baseball's most memorable moments.

Game One of the 1954 World Series was supposed to be the first of only four games that year, so heavily favored were the Cleveland Indians in their matchup against the New York Giants, the Indians having won 111 regular-season games, an American League record set when teams played just 154 games, and an AL record that stood until the New York Yankees won 114 in 1998 — when teams played 162 games.

In the top of the eighth inning, with the score tied 2-2, no one out and Indian runners on first and second, Giants manager Leo Durocher decided to remove his starting pitcher, Sal Maglie, a righthander, and bring in Liddle, a lefty, to pitch to the next Indian batter, the lefthanded Vic Wertz. Liddle threw one pitch. Wertz hit it about as far as you could hit a ball in a major-league park and have it stay out of the seats: He hit it to dead center in the old Polo Grounds, where the centerfield wall was 483 feet from home plate. The Giants centerfielder was the only man on the planet at the time who could have caught it. That was Willie Mays, and his over-the-shoulder catch 460 feet into deep centerfield has ever after been known simply as The Catch.

Durocher then brought in a righthanded pitcher. Liddle walked into the Giants dugout, flipped his glove onto the bench, and said laconically, "Well, I got my man."

Liddle won just 28 games (and lost 18) in his undistinguished career. But ask yourself: What have you — or, for that matter, most statesmen — done that will be remembered 46 years from now?

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