Word: game
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...best pieces of advice my father ever gave me came after Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. "Never place the burden of your life's happiness in the hands of others," he said, "especially the Red Sox." I was only eight years old and devastated by Boston's loss at the hands--or feet--of Bill Buckner. My dad, himself a diehard fan for now more than 50 years, was trying to put a brave face on things while also teaching me an important "life lesson...
...love baseball. Busy college life and an ever-shorter attention span had weakened my passion for the sport (though not for my team), and I'd taken to following college basketball and tennis more religiously than the national pastime. But Jimy Williams' Red Sox renewed my love of the game, and I became transfixed every time Pedro Martinez took the mound or even when the old warhorse Brett Saberhagen tested out his reconstructed shoulder. As Williams said in postgame interviews Monday, this is a team that the city of Boston loves, both for its flashy stars (Martinez and Nomar Garciaparra...
While the Sox have many lessons to learn from the postseason (how to turn a double play, how to bring Nomar home from third), Major League Baseball itself also has to learn that it must reform the way the game is officiated--by instituting the use of instant replay or, at the very least, requiring the conferencing of all umpires on questionable calls. Ignorance and stubborn independence are not virtues in an umpire...
Yankee owner George Steinbrenner said he no longer supported Jimy Williams for manager of the year after the Red Sox leader threw his cap in protest of the second poor call of Game 4 and got himself ejected. As far as I'm concerned, Williams' actions just tightened his lock on the award. Williams was taking the only recourse he had at that moment, declaring his frustration with an umpiring system devoid of any checks or balances...
...home. It's the old problem of apology (or, in this case, just admission) without consequence--what good does it do the Red Sox or the sport in general if the umpires can blow such obvious calls, ignore the possible help of their peers and wait until the game is over to admit their mistakes...