I’m so pleased that Bill Buckner was recently recognized before a Red Sox game and given a long ovation by the local fans.
It has troubled me for years that one play from his career, his late inning error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, has been the one mark on his career that is constantly brought up.
In my memory, Buckner was the kind of player who could be on my team any day. Tough, he played with and through injuries. A lifetime batting average close to .300. Played hard and well for many years.
Unlike many of the ballplayers of the last 15 years, he was not, to anyone’s knowledge, a cheater by any standard.
Yet, he made one “error” in a game that Sox were not necessarily going to win anyway, and he was—and is—vilified by arm chair observers.
He and his family suffered through the aftermath. I quote at length from a recent Associated Press story:
The former first baseman knew the same old questions would crop up about that play 22 years ago that has been replayed on television hundreds of times. At first, he turned down the team's request. A few days later he agreed to return to Fenway Park for the first time since 1997 when he was batting coach with the Chicago White Sox.
"I really had to forgive," he said after collecting himself, "not the fans of Boston per se, but I would have to say, in my heart, I had to forgive the media..."
Another pause, this one for 10 seconds, before he continued, "...for what they put me and my family through. So I've done that. I'm over that. And I'm just happy that I just try to think of the positive. The happy things."
And not about the night of Oct. 25 in Shea Stadium when Mookie Wilson's ground ball rolled through his legs in the 10th inning. It capped a three-run rally and drove in the winning run in the New York Mets 6-5 win that forced a seventh game.
The Mets won the final game 8-5 and Boston's streak of no championships since 1918 continued. That drought ended in 2004, and then the Red Sox made it two championships in four years.
Buckner, a .289 hitter in 22 years with more than 100 RBIs in two of his three full seasons with Boston, wasn't the only Red Sox player who failed in the last two games of the 1986 Series. To focus on just one play is "the ugly part of sports," he said.
"I don't think that in society in general that's the way we should operate. What are you teaching kids? Not to try because if you don't succeed then you're going to buried [sic], so don't try?"
The Mets already had tied the game at 5 in the 10th against Calvin Schiraldi and Bob Stanley before Wilson hit the ball to Buckner. And the Red Sox led 3-0 after 5 1/3 innings of Game 7 before the Mets tied it against Bruce Hurst in the bottom of the sixth and nicked Schiraldi for three runs in the seventh.
"You can look at that series and point fingers in a whole bunch of different directions," Buckner said. "We did the best we could to win there and it just didn't happen and I didn't feel like I deserved" so much blame."
"If I felt like it was my fault, I'd step up to the plate and say, 'hey, if I wasn't here the Red Sox would have won this thing,' but I really can't do that so I think some of it is unjustly directed my way," he said. "I'm pretty tough mentally, but the hardest part was with my family and my kids and I'm still dealing with it."
Since I work with a lot of young athletes, I want to focus in particular on one of Buckner more poignant comments:
"I don't think that in society in general that's the way we should operate. What are you teaching kids? Not to try because if you don't succeed then you're going to buried, so don't try?"
Amen.
Here was a guy, good enough to be starting and playing in the World Series, who had a near Hall-of-Fame career, who simply made an error on a ball that didn’t quite bounce the way he expected it to bounce.
It is so easy when you’ve never played the game at a high level to criticize someone when they make a mistake at a “key moment” in a game. I’ve done it myself, for sure.
But the reaction to Buckner and his error in the ’86 World Series was so unfounded, so unfair, that it is heartwarming to see that he has been able to speak so eloquently about it, years later.
The media and its need to criticize in cases like this should not be easily forgiven. But apparently Buckner has, and he is a better person for having done so than those who have put him down over the years.
Maybe the rest of us can learn something. Or if it’s too late for us, at least maybe our kids can distinguish between what’s truly important, and what’s not, in sports, and in life.
Buckner and the ’86 Red Sox did not win the World Series. But for me, he is a champion.
