Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (39 page)

And of course it’s Hollywood, so with all that notoriety comes myth and the occasional truth. Here are some of the most incredible legends about the legend:

“I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.”

Play-Doh

The story of Play-Doh is quintessentially American, from invention to patent to market success. When her husband Cleo died in 1949, Irma McVicker hired son Joseph to run his company, Kutol Products, which specialized in the manufacture of soap and wallpaper cleaner. On May 17, 1960, a patent was granted to Noah McVicker (a relative and company manager) and Joseph McVicker for a “plastic modeling composition of a soft, playable working consistency.” They got the patent, but they hadn’t been searching for modeling clay at all. Joseph was investigating wallpaper cleaner and stumbled onto an alternate use for the substance.

Joseph’s sister-in-law Kay was a teacher in New Jersey. After seeing an article in a magazine about making Christmas tree ornaments out of wallpaper cleaner, she drove to the nearest hardware store and bought their only can (which happened to be Kutol’s . . . small world). Her nursery class had a great time playing with the “dough.”

When word about the success of the cleaner with the school children reached Joseph, he and Noah proceeded to test the product in numerous nursery and elementary schools around the country. Once its properties as a toy had been established (it was clean, easy to model, and could be reused), Noah and Joseph founded Rainbow Crafts to start manufacturing the new product. Play-Doh made its official debut in 1956 at the Woodward & Lothrop department store in Washington, D.C. The white compound came
in a 1½-pound cardboard can. By 1965, Joseph and Noah McVicker were millionaires.

For nearly 20 years, Play-Doh came in just four colors: white, red, yellow, and blue. White, of course, was introduced in 1956, and the three primary colors—red, blue, and yellow—appeared a year later. It wasn’t until 1983 that four more colors were introduced. Now the kiddie modeling compound is available in 50 colors (including gold and silver), and more than 900 million pounds have been sold in the past 50 years. Factories produce about 95 million cans of Play-Doh annually for 6,000 U.S. stores and 75 different countries.

No one has ever revealed Play-Doh’s exact formula, but Hasbro (the company that now manufactures it) does let people know that the dough contains water, salt, and flour—and no peanuts, peanut oil, or milk, all well-known allergens. (It does contain wheat, though.) According to its current patent, the stuff also is made with water, a starch-based binder, retrogradation inhibitor, salt, lubricant, surfactant, preservative, hardener, humectant, fragrance, and color. Not exactly a wholesome snack—but ultimately harmless.

Bill Buckner’s Error in Game 6

The setting:
Game 6 of the World Series, October 25, 1986.

The location:
Shea Stadium, New York City.

The opponents:
The New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox, long thought to be suffering under the dreaded “Curse of the Bambino.

Back in 1919, the Boston Red Sox were a force to be reckoned with in baseball. They had won the first World Series in 1903 (when they were called the Americans) and they did it again in 1912, ’15, ’16, and ’18—that last one due in large part to their star player, Babe Ruth.

Ruth was, and remains, the ultimate baseball player. He started with the Red Sox as a pitcher in 1914 but moved on to play first base and the outfield. Over his career, he hit a total of 714 home runs. Despite Ruth’s accomplishments, the Red Sox’s owner, Harry Frazee, sold him to the New York Yankees on January 2, 1920. (Frazee needed the money to finance a play his girlfriend was writing.) Things would never be the same again for the Red Sox. The smashing successes they’d enjoyed all those years came to an end, and the team didn’t win another World Series until 2004—eighty-six years later!

Fans started calling the event the “Curse of the Bambino” because the losing streak started with Ruth’s departure, and the
Great Bambino was one of his nicknames. Whether or not the curse was real, the Red Sox did make it to the World Series four times, losing each time. But on October 25, 1986, the outcome could have been very different. But unbeknownst to Red Sox fans, their team was battling not only their own bad luck but that of the Chicago Cubs. That’s right—if you’re a superstitious sports fan (and is there any other kind?), Game 6 was the night of the double curse.

After a tough but triumphant season, the 1986 Red Sox were back in the World Series. Their opponents were the New York Mets. Spirits in Boston were riding high, and they only got higher when the team won the first two games of the seven-game series. Boston’s hopes diminished when the Mets won the following two games. But a Red Sox win in Game 5 put the team back on track. Just one more victory was all they needed to banish the curse forever.

Game 6 was a hard-fought battle that saw the teams tied at the end of nine innings. In the top of the tenth, Boston scored two runs, taking the lead at 5–3. When the Mets stepped to the plate in the bottom of the tenth and recorded two outs relatively quickly, millions of baseball fans were already preparing for a Red Sox victory.

But that third out would prove elusive. Three consecutive hits produced one run. Then Mets’ left fielder Mookie Wilson took his turn—an at-bat that would live on in baseball history forever. First came a toss from pitcher Bob Stanley that went wild, passed catcher Rich Gedman, and allowed one more Met to score. The game was now tied, and a runner was in scoring position.

The scene was intense: More pitches were thrown. The count was full. Then came the pitch that Wilson connected with—an easy grounder to Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner, 36 years old and an 18-year Major League veteran. Inexplicably, Buckner, who had made easy plays like this thousands of times, missed the ball. It rolled into the outfield. The Mets scored and history was made—the hearts of millions of Red Sox fans were broken.

It was 17 years before anyone noticed an oddity about Buckner during the infamous play. While the play itself had been dissected
more times than anyone could count, 12-year-old Kevin Mahon, the son of a sports reporter for the
Philadelphia Daily News
, noticed what no one else had. Buckner was wearing a Chicago Cubs batting glove. Mahon’s father wrote about the astonishing discovery in his October 2003 sports column.

Buckner had formerly played for the Chicago Cubs, so it’s not shocking that he had one of their batting gloves. What’s shocking is that he would wear it at such a pivotal moment in baseball history. Sports fans know that the Cubs have their own curse to contend with. According to legend, Chicago tavern owner William “Billy Goat” Sianis tried to bring his pet goat to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series, when the Cubs were playing the Detroit Tigers. Attendants stopped Sianis and the goat before they could enter Wrigley Field, saying the man could come in, but the goat wasn’t welcome because “he stinks!” Angry and offended, Sianis cursed Wrigley Field (and the Cubs) with the infamous Billy Goat Curse. The Cubs haven’t been back to the World Series since.

To make matters even worse for Buckner, he wasn’t wearing the Cubs batting glove earlier in the evening. Pictures of his at-bats show dark batting gloves. He put the Cubs batting glove on later.

The Curse of the Bambino combined with the Billy Goat Curse? For superstitious sports fans, the pairing was just too much.

Now hear this: On October 7, 1986, just two weeks prior to Game 6, Buckner gave an interview to a local Boston news program and provided what can only be described as a strange and sadly prophetic quote:

Speculation as to why Buckner missed the ball ranges from Buckner having bad ankles and arthritis in his knees (preventing him from easily bending over to scoop the ball) to the chilly weather of that late autumn evening. But speculation aside, Buckner later said the slip was simply the result of a bad bounce the ball took. Even if Bucker had managed to scoop the ball, there was still the chance that Wilson could have made it to first before
Buckner. And the score was already tied due to two errors from right fielder Dwight Evans and catcher Gedman. But the lasting legacy of Game 6 is still Buckner’s mistake.

The next season, the Red Sox released Buckner. He went on to play with the California Angels and the Kansas City Royals before returning to Boston for a final year in 1990. After that, he retired to Idaho, where he didn’t have to deal with irate Red Sox fans anymore.

Despite having 2,715 career hits, Buckner is still best (and maybe only) remembered for the infamous error that helped keep the Curse of the Bambino alive until 2004, when the Red Sox finally won another World Series.

For years, Buckner refused to sign anything related to Game 6, but that outlook has changed: Interested sports collectors can now own a picture of the infamous event signed by both Buckner and Mookie Wilson. And in 1992, actor Charlie Sheen scooped up the historic ball for the price of $93,000. He auctioned it off, along with his other baseball memorabilia, in 2000. The ball now resides with songwriter Seth Swirsky.

The memory of Buckner’s great mistake still resides in the minds of Red Sox fans. All may have been forgiven when the team won the 2004 World Series, but the fateful night of October 25, 1986, has definitely not been forgotten. It stands as a lesson that one curse might be broken, but when you put two together, you just don’t have a chance.