Game 6 at Shea

As you may already know if you watched any of the (admittedly somewhat muted) hype over tonight's Cards/Mets game, this marks the first time a Game 6 has been played at Shea Stadium since the Game 6. If you're sports-agnostic, and haven't seen (or heard of) the motion picture from last year called Game 6, here's a tiny little bit of sports trivia that's practically become part of pop culture:

In 1986, the long-suffering Boston Red Sox were playing the New York Mets in the World Series, with the Red Sox having not won since 1918 (you know, when World War I ended and it was still considered the War to End Wars). So, needless to say, the Sox, and their fans, were desperate for a world championship, and things looked bright indeed: Sox up 3 games to 2, leading in Game 6 by a score of 5-4, in the bottom of the 9th, with 2 outs, Mets runners on 2nd and 3rd, and Mookie Wilson at the plate. Wilson hits a slow roller down the 1st base line, looking like an easy play for Bill Buckner at 1st place, just grab the ball and tag the base for the win. But Fate intervened (or Buckner choked) and the easy out rolled through his legs, allowing 2 runners to score to pull off possibly the most stunning victory of all time, 6-5! (The Sox would go on to lose Game 7, and prolong their misery, and that of their fans, until finally ending it in 2004, which held its own unmatched drama when the Sox came back from 3 games to 0 down to the Yankees.) To this day, most sports fans will know what you mean if you say you "pulled a Buckner", much to the chagrin of a couple generations of Bill's family, I'm sure!

So we'll have to see if anything happens tonight to compare to the Game 6, though it'd clearly have to be pretty amazing!