Maybe the most unfairly maligned player in baseball history, Fred Merkle was known as "Boner" or "Bonehead" for nearly all of his major league career.

Despite a very solid 16 year career in which he played in five World Series, Merkle will always be remembered for a baserunning error during his rookie season of 1908. He was a backup first baseman with the NY Giants that season. On the play that should have provided the Giants with the game winning run to clinch the 1908 pennant (over the Cubs), Merkle was the runner on first base. In a move that will haunt him for the rest of his life, he tried to escape the rioting Polo Grounds mob storming the field instead of touching second base (as he was technically required to do in those days). The Cubs noticed he didn't touch the base, got the ball back somehow, and fighting their way through New York's rowdiest and drunkest fans, touched second base. Merkle was called out, the game was declared a tie, and it was ordered to be replayed at the end of the season by the president of the National League. The Cubs won the replayed game, and the pennant. Merkle was blamed by the NY fans for the rest of his life.

His last name actually became a synonym for "a dumb mistake."

Good ol' Bonehead later played four seasons with the Cubs (1917-1920) and was the starting first baseman for the 1918 pennant winners. Though he played in five World Series for three different teams, his team never won.