Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville

by Stephen Jay Gould

  Thus, I strongly suspect that if Bowie had not become too ill to lead, some honorable solution would eventually have emerged through private negotiations, if only because Santa Anna and Bowie, as seasoned veterans, maintained high mutual regard beneath their strong personal dislike—whereas I can only imagine what Santa Anna thought of the upstart and self-aggrandizing Travis. In this alternate and unrealized scenario, most of the brothers would have remained both valiant and alive. What resolution fits best with our common sensibilities of morality and human decency: more than four hundred men slaughtered in a battle with an inevitable result, thus providing an American prototype for a claptrap canonical story about empty valor over honorable living; or an utterly nonheroic, tough-minded, and practical solution that would have erased a great story from our books, but restored hundreds of young men to the possibilities of a full life, complete with war stories told directly to grandchildren?

  Finally, one prominent Alamo fact, though rarely mentioned in this context, provides strong support for the supposition that wise military leaders usually reach private agreements to avoid senseless slaughter. Just three months earlier, in December 1835, General Cos had made his last stand against Texian forces at exactly the same site—within the Alamo! But Cos, as a professional soldier, raised a white flag and agreed to terms with the Texian conquerors: he would surrender, disarm, withdraw his men, retreat southwestward over the Rio Grande, and not fight again. Cos obeyed the terms of his bargain, but when he had crossed the Rio Grande to safety, Santa Anna demanded his return to active duty. Thus, the same General Cos—alive, kicking, and fighting—led one of the companies that recaptured the Alamo on March 6. Travis would have cut such a dashing figure at San Jacinto!

  Bill Buckner’s Legs

  How the canonical story of “but for this” has driven facts that we can all easily recall into a false version dictated by the needs of narrative.

  Any fan of the Boston Red Sox can recite chapter and verse of a woeful tale, a canonical story in the land of the bean and the cod, called “the curse of the Bambino.” The Sox established one of major league baseball’s most successful franchises of the early twentieth century. But the Sox won their last World Series way back in 1918. A particular feature of all subsequent losses has convinced Boston fans that their team labors under an infamous curse, initiated in January 1920, when Boston owner Harry Frazee simply and cynically sold the team’s greatest player—the best left-handed pitcher in baseball, but soon to make his truly indelible mark on the opposite path of power hitting—for straight cash needed to finance a flutter on a Broadway show, and not for any advantages or compensation in traded players. Moreover, Frazee sold Boston’s hero to the hated enemy, the New York Yankees. This man, of course, soon acquired the title of Sultan of Swat, the Bambino, George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

  The Red Sox have played in four World Series (1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986) and several playoff series since then, and they have always lost in the most heartbreaking manner—by coming within an inch of the finish line and then self-destructing. Enos Slaughter of the rival St. Louis Cardinals scored from first on a single in the decisive game of the 1946 World Series. In 1975, the Sox lost game seven after a miraculous victory in game six, capped by Bernie Carbo’s three-run homer to tie the score and won, in extra innings, by Carlton Fisk, when he managed to overcome the laws of physics by body English, and cause a ball that he had clearly hit out of bounds to curve into the left-field foul pole for a home run.

  And so the litany goes. But all fans will tell you that the worst moment of utter incredibility—the defeat that defies all belief in natural causality, and must therefore record the operation of a true curse—terminated game six in the 1986 World Series. (Look, I’m not even a Sox fan, but I still don’t allow anyone to mention this event in my presence; the pain remains too great!) The Sox, leading the Series three games to two and requiring only this victory for their first Ring since 1918, entered the last inning with a comfortable two-run lead. Their pitcher quickly got the first two outs. The Sox staff had peeled the foil off the champagne bottles (but, remembering the curse, had not yet popped the corks). The Mets management had already, and graciously, flashed “congratulations Red Sox” in neon on their scoreboard. But the faithful multitude of fans, known as “Red Sox Nation,” remained glued to their television sets in exquisite fear and trembling.

  And the curse unfolded, with an intensity and cruelty heretofore not even imagined. In a series of scratch hits, bad pitches, and terrible judgments, the Mets managed to score a run. (I mean, even a batting-practice pitcher, even you or I, could have gotten someone out for the final victory!) Reliever Bob Stanley, a good man dogged by bad luck, came in and threw a wild pitch to bring the tying run home. (Some, including yours truly, would have scored the pitch as a passed ball, but let’s leave such contentious irrelevancies aside for the moment.) And now, with two outs, a man on second and the score tied, Mookie Wilson steps to the plate.

  Bill Buckner, the Sox’s gallant first baseman, and a veteran with a long and truly distinguished career, should not even have been playing in the field. For weeks, manager John McNamara had been benching Buckner for defensive purposes during the last few innings of games with substantial Red Sox leads—for, after a long and hard season, Buckner’s legs were shot, and his stride gimpy. In fact, he could hardly bend down. But the sentimental McNamara wanted his regular players on the field when the great, and seemingly inevitable, moment arrived—so Buckner stood at first base.

  I shudder as I describe the outcome that every baseball fan knows so well. Stanley, a great sinkerball pitcher, did exactly what he had been brought in to accomplish. He threw a wicked sinker that Wilson could only tap on the ground toward first base for an easy out to cap the damage and end the inning with the score still tied, thus granting the Sox hitters an opportunity to achieve a comeback and victory. But the ball bounced right through Buckner’s legs into the outfield as Ray Knight hurried home with the winning run. Not to the side of his legs, and not under his lunging glove as he dived to the right or left for a difficult chance—but right through his legs! The seventh and concluding game hardly mattered. Despite brave rhetoric, no fan expected the Sox to win (hopes against hope to be sure, but no real thoughts of victory). They lost.

  Mookie Wilson’s ground ball bounces between Bill Buckner’s legs. Credit: Republished with permission of Globe Newspaper Company, Inc.

  This narration may drip with my feelings, but I have presented the straight facts. The narrative may be good and poignant enough in this accurate version, but this factual tale cannot satisfy the lust of the relevant canonical story for an evident reason. The canonical story of Buckner’s travail must follow a scenario that might be called “but for this.” In numerous versions of “but for this,” a large and hugely desired result fails to materialize—and the absolutely opposite resolution, both factually and morally, unfolds instead—because one tiny and apparently inconsequential piece of the story fails to fall into place, usually by human error or malfeasance. “But for this” can brook no nuancing, no complexity, no departure from the central meaning and poignant tragedy that an entire baleful outcome flows absolutely and entirely from one tiny accident of history.

  “But for this” must therefore drive the tale of Bill Buckner’s legs into the only version that can validate the canonical story. In short, poor Bill must become the one and only cause and focus of ultimate defeat or victory. That is, if Buckner fields the ball properly, the Sox win their first World Series since 1918 and eradicate the curse of the Bambino. But if Buckner bobbles the ball, the Mets win the Series instead, and the curse continues in an even more intense and painful way. For Buckner’s miscue marks the unkindest bounce of all, the most improbable, trivial little error sustained by a good and admired man. What hath God wrought?

  Except that Buckner’s error did not determine the outcome of the World Series for one little reason, detailed above but all too easily forgotten. When Wilson�
�s grounder bounced between Buckner’s legs, the score was already tied! (Not to mention that this game was the sixth and, at worst for the Sox, the penultimate game of the Series, not the seventh and necessarily final contest. The Sox could always have won game seven and the entire Series, no matter how the negotiations of God and Satan had proceeded over Bill Buckner as the modern incarnation of Job in game six.) If Buckner had fielded the ball cleanly, the Sox would not have won the Series at that moment. They would only have secured the opportunity to do so, if their hitters came through in extra innings.

  We can easily excuse any patriotic American who is not a professional historian, or any casual visitor for that matter, for buying into the canonical story of the Alamo—all the brothers were valiant—and not learning that a healthy and practical Bowie might have negotiated an honorable surrender at no great cost to the Texian cause. After all, the last potential eyewitness has been underground for well over a century. We have no records beyond the written reports, and historians cannot trust the account of any eyewitness, for the supposed observations fall into a mire of contradiction, recrimination, self-interest, aggrandizement, and that quintessentially human propensity for spinning a tall tale.

  But any baseball fan with the legal right to sit in a bar and argue the issues over a mug of the house product should be able to recall the uncomplicated and truly indisputable facts of Bill Buckner’s case with no trouble at all, and often with the force of eyewitness memory, either exulting in impossibly fortuitous joy, or groaning in the agony of despair and utter disbelief, before a television set. (To fess up, I should have been at a fancy dinner in Washington, but I “got sick” instead and stayed in my hotel room. In retrospect, I should not have stood in bed.)

  The subject attracted my strong interest because, within a year after the actual event, I began to note a pattern in the endless commentaries that have hardly abated, even fifteen years later—for Buckner’s tale can be made relevant by analogy to almost any misfortune under a writer’s current examination, and Lord only knows we experience no shortage of available sources for pain. Many stories reported, and continue to report, the events accurately—and why not, for the actual tale packs sufficient punch, and any fan should be able to extract the correct account directly from living and active memory. But I began to note that a substantial percentage of reports had subtly, and quite unconsciously I’m sure, driven the actual events into a particular false version—the pure “end member” of ultimate tragedy demanded by the canonical story “but for this.”

  I keep a growing file of false reports, all driven by requirements of the canonical story—the claim that, but for Buckner’s legs, the Sox would have won the Series, forgetting the inconvenient complexity of a tied score at Buckner’s ignominious moment, and sometimes even forgetting that the Series still had another game to run. This misconstruction appears promiscuously, both in hurried daily journalism and in rarefied books by the motley crew of poets and other assorted intellectuals who love to treat baseball as a metaphor for anything else of importance in human life or the history of the universe. (I have written to several folks who made this error, and they have all responded honorably with a statement like: “Omigod, what a jerk I am! Of course the score was tied. Jeez [sometimes bolstered by an invocation of Mary and Joseph as well], I just forgot!”)

  For example, a front-page story in USA Today for October 25, 1993, discussed Mitch Williams’s antics in the 1993 Series in largely unfair comparison with the hapless and blameless Bill Buckner:

  Williams may bump Bill Buckner from atop the goat list, at least for now. Buckner endured his nightmare Oct. 25,1986. His Boston Red Sox were one out away from their first World Series title since 1918 when he let Mookie Wilson’s grounder slip through his legs.

  Or this from a list of Sox misfortunes, published in the New York Post on October 13, 1999, just before the Sox met the Yanks (and lost of course) in their first full series of postseason play:

  Mookie Wilson’s grounder that rolled through the legs of Bill Buckner in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. That happened after the Red Sox were just one out away from winning the World Series.

  For a more poetic view between hard covers, consider the very last line of a lovely essay written by a true poet and devoted fan to introduce a beautifully illustrated new edition of the classic poem about failure in baseball, Casey at the Bat:

  Triumph’s pleasures are intense but brief; failure remains with us forever, a mothering nurturing common humanity. With Casey we all strike out. Although Bill Buckner won a thousand games with his line drives and brilliant fielding, he will endure in our memories in the ninth inning of the sixth game of a World Series, one out to go, as the ball inexplicably, ineluctably, and eternally rolls between his legs.1

  But the nasty little destroyer of lovely canonical stories then pipes up in his less mellifluous tones: “But I don’t know how many outs would have followed, or who would have won. The Sox had already lost the lead; the score was tied.” Factuality embodies its own form of eloquence; and gritty complexity often presents an even more interesting narrative than the pure and archetypal “end member” version of our canonical stories. But something deep within us drives accurate messiness into the channels of canonical stories, the primary impositions of our minds upon the world.

  To any reader who now raises the legitimate issue of why a scientist should write an essay about two stories in American history that bear no evident relevance to any overtly scientific question, I simply restate my opening and general argument: human beings are pattern-seeking, story-telling creatures. These mental propensities generally serve us well enough, but they also, and often, derail our thinking about all kinds of temporal sequences—in the natural world of geological change and the evolution of organisms, as well as in human history—by leading us to cram the real and messy complexity of life into simplistic channels of the few preferred ways that human stories “go.” I call these biased pathways “canonical stories”—and I argue that our preferences for tales about directionality (to explain patterns), generated by motivations of valor (to explain the causal basis of these patterns) have distorted our understanding of a complex reality where different kinds of patterns and different sources of order often predominate.

  I chose my two stories on purpose—Bowie’s letter and Buckner’s legs—to illustrate two distinct ways that canonical stories distort our reading of actual patterns: first, in the tale of Jim Bowie’s letter, by relegating important facts to virtual invisibility when they cannot be made to fit the canonical story, even though we do not hide the inconvenient facts themselves, and may even place them on open display (as in Bowie’s letter at the Alamo), and second, in the tale of Bill Buckner’s legs, where we misstate easily remembered and ascertainable facts in predictable ways because these facts did not unfold as the relevant canonical stories dictate.

  These common styles of error—hidden in plain sight, and misstated to fit canonical stories—arise as frequently in scientific study as in historical inquiry. To cite, in closing, the obvious examples from our standard misreadings of the history of life, we hide most of nature’s diversity in plain sight when we spin our usual tales about increasing complexity as the central theme and organizing principle of both evolutionary theory and the actual history of life. In so doing, we unfairly privilege the one recent and transient species that has evolved the admittedly remarkable invention of mental power sufficient to ruminate upon such questions.

  This silly and parochial bias leaves the dominant and most successful products of evolution hidden in plain sight—the indestructible bacteria that have represented life’s mode (most common design) for all 3.5 billion years of the fossil record (while Homo sapiens hasn’t yet endured for even half a million years—and remember that it takes a thousand million to make a single billion). Not to mention that if we confine our attention to multicellular animal life, insects represent about 80 percent of all species, while only a fool would put money on us, ra
ther than them, as probable survivors a billion years hence.

  For the second imposition of canonical stories upon different and more complex patterns in the history of life—predictable distortion to validate preferred tales about valor—need I proceed any further than the conventional tales of vertebrate evolution that we all have read since childhood, and that follow our Arthurian mythology about knights of old and men so bold? I almost wince when I find the first appearance of vertebrates on land, or of insects in the air, described as a “conquest,” although this adjective retains pride of place in our popular literature.

  And we still seem unable to shuck the image of dinosaurs as born losers vanquished by superior mammals, even though we know that dinosaurs prevailed over mammals for more than 130 million years, starting from day one of mammalian origins. Mammals gained their massively delayed opportunity only when a major extinction, triggered by extraterrestrial impact, removed the dinosaurs—for reasons that we do not fully understand, but that probably bear no sensible relation to any human concept of valor or lack thereof. This cosmic fortuity gave mammals their chance, not because any intrinsic superiority (the natural analog of valor) helped them to weather this cosmic storm, but largely, perhaps, because their small size, a side-consequence of failure to compete with dinosaurs in environments suited for large creatures, gave mammals a lucky break in the form of ecological hiding room to hunker down.