Hero or Goat?(Interview)

In pressure situations, a baseball player can be labeled a success or failure from a single performance

IN 1997, ON A MUGGY OCTOBER evening in Miami, a little-known rookie second baseman was about to come of age with the planet watching. Craig Counsell of the Florida Marlins stood at his position in one of the most tense, nail-biting World Series in history.

Game 7. Series tied 3-3. Bottom of the ninth. Cleveland leads 2-1.

Sometime in the next 30 minutes or so, someone would be a goat or a hero before 67,204 screaming fans and a worldwide audience. Counsell, who spent the first half of the season playing in front of a couple of thousand fans in Colorado Springs, came to a sudden realization. He batted fourth next inning.

"If I was going to get up that inning, I had a chance to tie the game," Counsell said. "I didn't think of failure. Afterward, I think I thought about it. Hey, I could've hit a home run to win the World Series. But then, what if I hit into a double play? I thought about that, too." Turns out, Counsell hit a sacrifice fly to score the tying run, then reached on second baseman Tony Fernandez's error in the 11th, eventually scoring the Series-winning run on Edgar Renteria's single up the middle. In baseball, that's fate. Fernandez wound up in Toronto and finally disappeared in Japan.

Counsell, even though he couldn't start in Florida, will forever go down as a World Series hero.

"That's all people want to know," Counsell said, now with Arizona, his third team in two years. "How'd you feel when you crossed home plate? It's almost impossible to put into words."