1. steve bartman. eight other hands went out to touch that ball and he happened to nick it. he also didn't blow a lead or force errors on the cubs' fielders.
2. bill buckner
3. don denkinger

No one. That's the great thing about sports. The rules are written down. Throw the book at all of those who would ask for forgiveness. If you ruin the Tour de France because you are a pumpkin-eating punk, you should not be forgiven. As for people who sit in the first row at baseball games and can't keep their hands to themselves, sit in the cheap seats if you can't respect the game. Keep forgiveness where it belongs, in the lunch room at work for those who ACCIDENTALLY eat their co-workers leftovers.

Fred Merkle, author of "Merkle's Boner," the play that allowed the Chicago Cubs to advance to the 1908 World Series. Why should Merkle be forgiven? I'm glad you asked:

1. Merkle failed to touch second when the game-winning run scored, thus allowing himself to be retired on the force. However, not touching the bag after a game-winning run had scored was actually common practice at the time. While Johnny Evers was certainly within his rights to call for the rule to be enforced, it's pretty rough to begin enforcing a rule in a September game between the two league-leading teams.

2. No one (certainly the umpire) has any idea whether Evers actually retrieved the game ball to retire Merkle. Evers might have just picked up any old baseball lying around. So Merkle may have committed a procedural error that then took another procedural error in order to prosecute. How is that fair?

3. He was a fine player for a long time - not a great player, but a decent one. Now no one knows anything about him except that he pulled a boner. Which leads to

4. When modern-day baseball fans hear the words "Merkle's Boner," they doubtless conjure in their sullied imaginations some sort of public-exposure scandal that got Big Freddy suspended from a crucial contest, when it's debatable whether he even made a proper mental error given the context of the times. It's time to give his boner a rest and return Fred Merkle to his proper historical status.

p.s. If you can't tell which leftovers are yours in the company fridge, maybe you should learn to cook better. How hard is it to eat only your own food? Huh?

By the way, actually finding this blog was an adventure and a half. You can poke around www.washingtonpost.com/sports for a long time without ever seeing it. Just a suggestion to the Web folks.

hello,

It's a shame my book "Everybody Fumbles" isn't yet availiabe now so everyone can benefit from my experience. It talks about the fumble and a number of aspects of athletic life. Each experience is the teacher. Forgiveness starts from within.

You were on a roll right up to the point where you got to #5. Baltimore sports fans born before 1970, maybe even later, will NEVER forgive Irsay. Don't even try to equate Modell with Irsay. Irsay packed his vans and left in the middle of the night; Modell had his discussions in the open and gave the people of Cleveland (and the state of Ohio) every chance to get him to stay (by paying his extortion demands, yes, but welcome to the world of modern sports franchises. You paying attention, Seattle Supersonics fans?) That he moved to Baltimore, which was only available because of the shenanigans of Irsay, is what is known as a cruel irony.

Yes, it was difficult to watch Cleveland go through the loss of the Browns, and I couldn't really root wholeheartedly for the Ravens for the first two years until Cleveland got a new team. But notice this - the Cleveland Browns still play in the NFL. They just took a two year hiatus. The franchise of Johnny Unitas is now in the middle of Indiana. And that ain't right. If the NFL Colts never played their home games in a city other than Baltimore and Peyton Manning was the greatest QB in the history of the Indianapolis Carburetors or Hoosierdaddies or whatever they wanted to call themselves that didn't involve a blue horseshoe on a white helmet it would have been easy enough to just say it was necessary to go without football for a dozen years to get rid of Irsay while the Colts lay dormant until the right time to come back to life, kinda like Sleeping Beauty.

Pete Rose! Hands down. Charley Hustle should be forgiven by Major League Baseball, and the fans. Yes, he made bets on games, but then he knew his Big Red Machine (Cincinnati), and how good they were, even if he didn't play, they stood an excellent chance at winning the game each time out. OK, to me, gambling is illegal, but yet the NFL brought in a legal bookie named Jimmie "The Greek" Snyder to have the entire country bet on NFL games based on his knowledge and expertise in regards to weighing pros and cons. Pete worked out a deal with the old commissioner, and was going to come clean and be excepted back into baseball, but when the commish retire and the new (current) commish was appointed, all bets were off in regards to Pete Rose because the new commission didn't make that agreement with Pete Rose. What a shame. Now Pete won't get in until he dead and gone. That happened with Shoeless and a lot of the old true negro league baseball players as well. All theses guys should be able to accept their flowers while they can yet still smell them. How are we to judge, huh?

Pete Rose and Steve Bartman.

Dude is in hiding.

*tsk tsk*

Never FORGIVE OR FORGET Michael Wilbon.
Go home to Chicago
His crime: When Sean Taylor was shot in his home. Wilbon stated that it was his past catching up to him. ALLDAY that's all he had to say like he knew Sean. He never apoligized for that when the truth came out.

Hail!!

"Baltimore sports fans born before 1970, maybe even later, will NEVER forgive Irsay."

if you're a bit older than that, you recognize that there was an "Axis of Evil" associated with the Colts that can never be forgiven.

1) Don Shula for thumbing his nose at the Colts fans to fly south to snowbird city.

2) Carroll Rosenbloom for selling the Colts to that two-bit air conditioning contractor from Skokie, because he was "P-whipped" by a Lost Wages showgirl.

3) Irsay...because of whom i will root against the colts until the last of his line is rotting in Potter's Field.

However, in the spirit of the question, i might be willing to forgive that pipsqueak quarterback that blew us off for a rocky mountain buzz....what was his name?

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