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Didja ever notice??

So I was sitting at work on Monday night, getting things done, when one of my colleagues at his desk flipped on ESPN Classic. The program that was on was "5 Reasons You Can't Blame Bill Buckner for Losing the 1986 World Series" (I must admit, that's rather catchy).

This colleague, a Red Sox fan, watched rather intently, and I peered over his shoulder for a little while. A shot of Dave Henderson's go-ahead home run in the 10th inning of Game 6 appeared on the screen, with a quick cut to Roger Clemens giving high-fives to his teammates in the Mets bullpen. I pointed out to my colleague, that just behind Clemens, there was some grafitti on the bullpen wall. In big red letters, were the spray-painted initials "R.C."

I casually mentioned that it was good to see that Roger Clemens was such a class act back then that he (or some other vandal) felt the need to leave his signature at Shea. That, of course, created the bad karma that caused the Red Sox to lose that game in historic fashion.

"You know, I never noticed that before," said the Boston fan.

It occurs to me that that is one of a bunch of neat things worth mentioning about Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, many of which people have either failed to catch, or forgotten completely. I would estimate that I've watched or listened to portions of that game 1,986 times, and read about it countless others, so I'm familiar with the material. Every so often, I'll pop in at random times with a "didja ever notice??" anecdote or two about the most famous walk-off game in Mets history. If you have an odd nugget to share from October 25, 1986, feel free to send it along, or post a comment.

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