One thing to really like about Americans: While we take our sports seriously, we don't take them too seriously.
As badly as Don Denkinger blew that call 29 years ago, as important in Game 6's outcome as it was, and as passionate as many thousands of Cardinals fans were (and are) ... Denkinger was able to continue his career and enjoy his retirement with hardly a real hitch. From Sean Gregory's Time.com story:
The ump remembers one death threat. A few years later, Denkinger says, someone wrote him a letter threatening to “point their .357 Magnum at me and blow me away.” Denkinger, who continued to umpire until retiring in 1998, reported the letter to MLB security. “The postcard itself was never stamped, so we didn’t know where it came from,” says Denkinger. The FBI came to Denkinger’s house to look through a stack of other mail: the feds noticed that the perp misspelled the word restaurant — Denkinger owned one in Waterloo at the time — in the exact same way as a man who had previously written Denkinger. That prior letter had a St. Louis address on it. The authorities told the guy he’d be prosecuted if he ever corresponded with Denkinger again.
Don't get me wrong! One death threat is one too many. But I believe it's been a long, long time since an official in big-time American sports had good reason to fear for his life because of an error in judgment.
