This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 27, 2011 - In 1985, Oct. 16 fell on a Wednesday. You may not remember the date, but if you're a Cardinals fan who was old enough to follow baseball at that time, you'll never forget the game the team played that day.
It was the sixth and what turned out to be the final game of the National League Championship Series. It was also the first time that a sixth game had been played in the NLCS.
Previously, the league championship had been decided in a five-game series. Under that format, the Cards would have clinched a World Series berth in Game 5 at old Busch Stadium when Ozzie Smith slammed his dramatic walk-off home run and Jack Buck's iconic "Go crazy, folks!" would have served as valediction for the visiting Dodgers.
Alas, starting that year, the penultimate series was expanded to a best-of-seven affair. The LA squad was thus offered another bite at the apple as play returned to the west coast for the deciding game(s).
Apparently glad to be home, the Dodgers jumped out to 4-1 advantage, which the Cards eventually tied. LA then retook the lead by virtue of a solo home run. With two out in the top of the ninth, the score stood at 5-4 and Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda had a decision to make.
Cardinal runners stood at second and third as Jack Clark stepped to the plate. The logical move was to walk the punishing slugger and pitch to the on-deck hitter, Andy Van Slyke. That maneuver would neutralize Clark's legendary power, set up a play at any base and pressure Van Slyke, who'd been struggling at bat. On the other hand, the Dodger reliever, Tom Niedenfuer, had struck out Clark in the seventh so Lasorda decided to pitch to him.
Clark returned the favor by launching Niedenfuer's first fastball on a 450 feet journey into the left field stands, giving the Cards a 7-5 lead that would prove to be the game's final score.
Years later, I heard Lasorda interviewed regarding his fateful decision. Amazingly, he defended it as the right call and claimed he would do it again if given the chance.
Skipper, what's the worst thing Van Slyke could have done? Hit a home run? You now know that Clark did just that, and you lose the game as a result. The decision might have seemed to make sense before you saw the result, but afterward? To stand on principle is admirable; to deny observable fact is psychotic. Some people, I suppose, are just constitutionally unable to admit a mistake ...
Lasorda's bizarre defense of the indefensible came to mind last week when Joe Lieberman announced he would not seek re-election to the Senate. The senior senator from Connecticut, whose nasal whine has been a staple on the Sunday morning talk show circuit, assured his audience that he'd never back down from a fight.
His unpopular support for the war in Iraq was thus not a factor in his decision to retire. He then went on to quote the Bible, Pete Seeger or some combination of both to the effect that there is season to all things under heaven. It seems that Joe feels there is no longer a place in American politics for guys like him and JFK.
You and who? JFK was a bona fide war hero whose signature military achievement as president was the exercise of restraint to avoid going to war over the Cuban Missile Crisis. You, on the other hand, beat the draft with two student deferments. By the time you got out of law school in 1967 -- at the height of the Vietnam conflict -- your wife was pregnant, and you thus received an exemption from service for family reasons. Like your chicken-hawk cohort, Dick Cheney, your resume was somewhat combat-averse until you got to D.C. Once you could send other people to fight your battles, you never met a war you didn't like.
Later, Lieberman had his Lasorda moment when he told an interviewer that had he known that Saddam Hussein did not possess WMDs, he would have still voted to invade and now feels the venture was successful. Really?
According to the Brookings Institute, the Iraq War had taken the lives of 4,433 U.S. troops through November of last year. An additional 32,006 were wounded -- about 20 percent of whom sustained serious brain or spinal cord injuries. And 30 percent of returning GI's develop significant psychological disorders within three to four months of arriving stateside. Iraqi deaths are conservatively estimated at 100,000 civilians and 55,000 insurgents. All this killing has set the Treasury back about $900 billion.
For this investiture of blood and treasure, we managed to depose a tin-horn dictator from control of a fourth-rate military power. In doing so, we destroyed a regional bulwark against Iranian suzerainty while the beneficiaries of our largesse -- the legendary "Iraqi people" -- teeter on the brink of full-blown civil war.
As the old Senate warrior prepares to ride off into the sunset, I borrow from the late Jimi Hendrix to pose one final question: Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
M.W. Guzy is a retired St. Louis cop who currently works for the city Sheriff's Department. His column appears weekly in the Beacon.