Infamy's curse

Posterity does not play fair, sometimes. These things you learn when it's October and the light goes all burnished and slanting, and pumpkin spice emerges like a super-virus to ravage everything but oil additives and jock-itch powder.

Which brings us, kinda-sorta, to an unfortunate young man named Trent Grisham.

You may not be familiar with the name just yet, but posterity will ensure you'll never forget it from now until pumpkin spice causes the earth to cease turning. Posterity owns him now, see, and not in a good way. It owns him  in the way it owns Bill Buckner, and Alex Gonzalez, and Leon "Wickets" Durham, and -- reaching way back -- Fred Snodgrass and Fred Merkle.

An astute baseball observer will recognize all of them as men who had the colossal misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, in less time than it takes to flick an eyelid, did the wrong thing. And forever after, no matter what heroics they went on to perform, posterity will forever be rolling through their legs or under their glove or dropping untouched in the outfield meadow.

This happened to Grisham, a promising rookie with the Milwaukee Brewers, just the other night. The Sudsies were cruising along, leading the home-standing Nationals 3-1 in the bottom of the eighth in the National League wild-card game. But then their closer, Josh Hader, failed to fulfill his job description, allowing two Nats to reach base with two outs. And then ...

Well. And then, Juan Soto drove a Hader offering into right field, where Grisham was waiting. In that eye-flicker of a moment, he decided to charge the ball in an attempt to throw out the tying run at the plate.

Alas, in the next eye-flicker, the ball juked to the right. Grisham missed it clean, and all three runners scored, turning the Brewers' 3-1 lead into a 4-3 deficit and, eventually, a 4-3 loss.

This being baseball's dopey postseason setup, the Brewers' season was over. They battled for six months and 162 games to get into the playoffs, and it was over in a matter of nine innings and a few hours.

And Trent Grisham?

Posterity kicked the unoffending young man right in the grapes. He didn't even get a chance in Game 2 or Game 3 to redeem himself, because there isn't a Game 2 or Game 3. Which there ought to be because baseball isn't the NFL or the NCAA basketball tournament, something you'd think the people running baseball ought to realize but don't.

And so, for Grisham, posterity had this to say:

Welcome to Club Dread, kid. You're gonna love it here. We'll get Gonzalez and the two Freds to show you around. Merkle can tell you how much he hates that phrase "Merkle's Boner." Gonzalez can tell you how grateful he is to poor Steve Bartman, who took all the heat for the epic 2003 Cubs choke Gonzy started with that booted double-play ball. Snodgrass can drop his favorite joke on you, which is, "At least I'm not that other Fred."

Pisses off Merkle something fierce. Every damn time.

Yeesh.