All the obituaries
led with the error. Bill Buckner, whose fielding mistake in Game Six
of the 1986 World Series cost the Boston Red Sox their first
championship since 1918, since the Curse Of The Bambino was laid on
the team after the 1919 season, when their owner sold Babe Ruth to
the New York Yankees. It is not the way any of us would care to be
remembered, and it is unfair, and I had a chance to see up close the
effect it has on a life.
In 1993, I was Vice
President for European Operations for Major League Baseball
International, and I had Buck in Britain for some coaching clinics
and a little baseball publicity. He was an affable guy, there to do a
job, and did everything he was asked to do. He turned out to be a
natural instructor, which is not always true of very talented
athletes, and smooth with the media. To a point. We staged a PR event
at Lillywhites in Piccadilly Circus, and a number of reporters from
national papers turned out. Before we started, I took them aside and
asked if they would refrain from concentrating on, or hounding Bill
about, the '86 Series. The wound was too fresh, the story too
familiar.
So of course a guy
from the biggest Sunday paper, as things are going fine, asks a
convoluted question about watching a movie where a baseball player
drops an easy fly ball and loses the most important game for his
team. Such a movie did not, to my rather extensive knowledge, exist.
But this guy wanted Buck's opinion. I don't think the question
bothered Bill as much as its transparent dishonesty did, and he gave
a perfunctory answer and visibly lost his enthusiasm for the rest of
the event.
I walked away with
him afterwards, apologized in an ineffective way, and went off with
him and the other coaches for a beer and lunch. I knew Buckner had
received death threats immediately after the World Series. I knew
he'd been abused by fans in New York. I knew the media would never
let that be forgotten (and imagine how much worse it would have been
in today's world of half-baked mockery on the internet). But this is
the story I should have told him right then and there. Because I am a
Red Sox fan, and in 1986 I was probably twice as fervent as I am
today. Which is still pretty fervent. I followed them religiously,
though from afar. But I was working for ABC Sports in 1986, and ABC
had a WATS line with New York, which meant my counterpart and friend
in New York, David Downs and I could throw in extensive Sox chat as
we discussed business daily.
On the evening of
Saturday October 25, 1986 I was in Monaco. I had spent the previous
three days with David and two of our colleagues from New York doing
business at the annual congress of AGFIS, the association of
international sports federations. The others had left for the airport
Saturday morning, leaving me to finish business with the head of the
World Weightlifting Federation over breakfast. In the afternoon, my
then-girlfriend arrived by train from Milan. We had dinner, and were
asleep in my room in the Hotel de Paris when the phone rang, sometime
after five in the morning. It was David calling from New York. “Two
outs, two strikes, bottom of the tenth: I wanted you to hear this!”
He held the phone to his TV speaker. I heard “Stanley's pitch...”
followed by a scream and a curse. And he hung up.
I grabbed the Sony
short-wave I'd always carried since my days as a journalist for
UPITN, and tried desperately to tune in Armed Forces Network, from
Germany or Italy. Cornelia was half awake in the bed, asking in
Italian what was going on. But the sun had risen in France, and I
couldn't find a signal. I waited a while and then took the immense
step of calling New York from an expensive hotel phone. The Sox had
lost, the New York Mets had tied the series at 3-3 and the deciding
game would be played Sunday night.
Let me explain
something now. The moment I heard (or didn't hear) over the phone was
a wild pitch by Bob Stanley (or passed ball by catcher Rich Gedman,
the point is still being argued) with the Sox still leading 5-4 in
the bottom of the tenth inning. It allowed the tying run to score.
Mookie Wilson, the batter, then hit the ground ball down the first
base line that skipped between Buckner's legs and allowed the winning
run to score. The Mets won the game 6-5 and tied the series 3 games
each.
Buckner had the
misfortune of making the highly visible error, the perfect photo, the
metaphor for the loss: but the win implied by Boston's scoring two
runs in the top of the tenth had already been erased before Mookie's
ground ball.
It wasn't Buckner's
fault manager John McNamara pinch hit for his starting pitcher, Roger
Clemens, in the eighth inning up 3-2 (the hitter, Mike Greenwell,
struck out). Nor that Calvin Schiraldi, the closer acquired late in
the season from the Mets, immediately allowed the tying run. It
wasn't Buck's fault that after going up 4-3 in the top of the tenth,
McNamara called allowed Schiraldi to hit for himself, nor with the
lead now 5-3 he called on Schiraldi to pitch a third inning of
relief. It's not Buck's fault that after getting two outs, Schiraldi
allowed three straight hits before McNamara pulled him. Nor that the
new pitcher, Bob Stanley, didn't see Marty Barrett calling
desperately for a throw that would pick Ray Knight off second base
for the third out. Most of all, it isn't Bill Buckner's fault that
McNamara, for the first time in the playoffs, neglected to send Dave
Stapleton, a slick fielding infielder, in as a defensive replacement
for Buckner. Johnny Mac, old school all the way, wanted Buck to be on
the field for the moment of the triumph.
I knew all the
back-stories: how Schiraldi's ex Met teammates knew how he was likely
to pitch to him. How McNamara claimed Clemens had 'begged' to be
taken out, which the pitcher vehemently denied. How Stanley,
lumbering over to cover first, might not have beaten Mookie to the
bad even had Buckner made the play. The basic point was: you lose as
a team, and there was more than enough blame to go around.
And of course, the
Series was still there to be won; Game Seven was supposed to be
played the next night. I was still in Monaco, but it rained Sunday in
New York, so the game was played Monday Night (opposite it, the
lowest-rated Monday Night Football game in history) and, back in
London, I listened on AFN from Wiesbaden.
The delay allowed
McNamara to give the start to lefty Bruce Hurst, albeit on three days
rest rather than four. Hurst had two wins already and had been the
Sox best player in the series so far. But here Johnny Mac made his
biggest mistake. The pitcher on Sunday would have been Dennis 'Oil
Can' Boyd. Boyd was told he wasn't starting Monday. But instead of
the manager saying something like “look, Can, Bruce has been our
best. But he'll get tired, and when he does, I want you ready to go.
Not pacing yourself, just giving us your best innings. It's not who
starts the game, it's who finishes it, and we need you to finish it.
OK?” Mac just told him and walked away. He was the skipper and his
word was law. As it was, Can went to the clubhouse and started
drinking beer (that's where his 'Oil Can' nickname came from) and by
the time pitching coach Bill Fischer found him he was angry and
drunk. Or drunk and angry. He supposedly spent the whole game in the
manager's office.
The Sox led 3-0
going into the bottom of the sixth, when Hurst tired and allowed
three runs, which would have been more had not Dewey Evans thrown out
Keith Hernandez on the bases. Now tied 3-3, the seventh would have
been the moment for Boyd. Instead, McNamara had to call on Schiraldi
who gave up a home run to the first batter and allowed two more runs
before giving way to two walks from Joe Sambito and finally the third
out from Stanley.
The Sox got two back
in the top of the eighth, a rally started by Buckner's single. But
Jesse Orosco came in and shut the rally down. It was now 6-5 Mets,
and McNamara replaced Stanley, who'd faced only one batter, with Al
Nipper, in order to make a 'double switch' to get Ed Romero into the
lineup where his bat could be a factor. Like Schiraldi, Nipper gave
up a leadoff home run (to Darryl Strawberry), then another run.
Orosco closed down the Sox in the top of the ninth and the Mets won
the game 8-5 and the Series 4 games to 3: since selling Babe Ruth the
Sox had lost three World Series, in 1975, 1967, and 1946—all by 4-3
in seven games, all to arguably the decade's best National League
team.
I would have told
Buck that I blamed David, who had tickets to Game Seven but didn't
go. All kidding and superstition aside, I blamed McNamara more than
anyone. But I didn't mention that. I could have said the 'Curse Of
The Bambino' thing was a modern construct, born of the nostalgia boom
of the 80s and the Sox resurgence post 1975. But I was also stymied
by my own evaluation of Buck's overall disappointment in the Series:
only six hits, and no production with runners on base. Which was
something I pondered as I watched him teach.
Buckner had 22 years
in the majors. He was an amazing contact hitter: he didn't walk much,
but he didn't strike out very often either. He wasn't a power hitter,
but in his best home-run year, in Boston, he hit 18 and struck out
only 25 times. For his career, his 162 games average season showed 29
walks, 29 strike outs. His career batting average was .289, lowered
by a severe decline in his last three years. But he was also helped
by playing much of his career in great hitting parks, Wrigley Field
and Fenway. He came up with the Dodgers along with Bobby Valentine and Steve Garvey (see photo of them with Tommy Lasorda at rookie-league Ogden in 1968). Valentine was
a similar kind of player whose career also wound up being limited by
injury. Valentine was already a legendary high-school athlete when I
was a kid in Connecticut, and they were both players with intense
natural talent that matured early. Buck was a quick outfielder,
contact hitter, without a great arm (career-wise, he's a pretty good
match for Al Oliver). He was playing left field for the Dodgers when
Hank Aaron hit a home run over his head to break Babe Ruth's career
record, which makes another odd link between Buckner and the Babe. But the Dodgers produced a lot of talent in those days—they
were constantly moving players out of the outfield, Bill Russell to
short, Pedro Guerrero to third. With the ankle injury and infection
limiting his mobility, they tried moving Buck to first but of course Garvey was there at the same time. Interestingly, Garvey is
the third-closest comparison to Buckner's career, after Oliver and
Mickey Vernon, though Vernon's a different type of player with an
odd career pattern. Eventually they traded Buckner to the Cubs for
Rick Monday, who proved integral to post-season success.
The Cubs were the
only team in baseball with a longer history of futility than the Red
Sox. In fact, there was an equation known as the Cub Factor which
could be used to determine the outcome of nay post-season series: the
team with fewer ex-Cubs would win. With the Cubs Buckner would win a
batting title in 1980, the first of three straight years hitting over
.300, including 105 RBIs in 1982. But in '82, a young outfielder
named Leon Durham would make the All-Star team, and by '84 he'd been
moved to first base, and Buckner was sidelined. He demanded a trade
and was shipped to the Sox for pitchers Dennis Eckerlsey and Mike
Gorman.
Here's where it gets
weird. In the 1984 National League playoffs, the Cubs were on the
verge of eliminating the San Diego Padres, a game where Durham's
homer had staked them to a 3-0 lead. But with the margin cut to 3-2,
and two runners on base, Durham allowed an easy ground ball by Tim
Flannery through his legs, and the tying run scored. Another error by
Ryne Sandberg would seal the Cubs' fate; it turned out Durham's glove
was soaking wet because Sandberg had accidentally overturned a
Gatorade barrell onto it. The play was an
eerie foreshadowing of what would happen to Buckner two years later.
As a footnote,
Eckersley, whose career as a starter was fading, would be reborn in
Oakland as a closer, but he is perhaps best remembered now for the
backdoor slider he threw with two strikes to a hobbled Kirk Gibson,
which Gibson blasted for a home run on the way to a Dodgers' win and
championship in 1988. Eck, of course, represented the Cub Factor in
that game.
In '85, Buck had his
best year with the Sox: .299 16 HR 110 RBI and even 18 stolen bases
with only 4 caught stealings. He'd slipped a bit in '86, but still
was over 100 rbis in a lineup loaded with players who got on base
(Wade Boggs, Evans, Don Baylor) batting ahead of him. He was much
less effective in '87, and the Sox traded him to the Angels, where
he had a decent half-season, but after that his career was
effectively over, though he hung on for three more years, retiring at
age 40. He lived in Boise, made good real estate investments, and
later returned to baseball as a coach of an independent minor league
team outside Boston.
But in 1993 Buckner
responded to being admired by young baseball players and respected by
British coaches as only someone with major league credentials can be.
There was no false modesty just as there was little defensiveness
about '86, he knew what he had and hadn't accomplished in his career.
As I said, I wished I'd expressed a little bit more of this at the
time, but I too was more concerned with showing him the respect he
was due, and helping him do his best for the clinics at which his
talent was visible and his effort in teaching admirable.
The Red Sox finally
broke the Curse of the Bambino, if such a thing existed in 2004,
rallying back from three games down to the Yankees in the American
League Championship, and sweeping the Cardinals, their nemesis in
both 1946 and 1967.
In 2008, after a
second World Series win in 2007, Buckner returned back to
Fenway to throw out the first ball on opening day. The Fenway Park
crowd rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation that lasted
minutes. Buckner visibly wiped away tears a couple of times, but
otherwise stood awkwardly, one hand in his pockets, without a hat to
tip to acknowledge the fans. When the applause died down he threw a
perfect 12 to 6 curve ball to Dewey Evans at the plate, and the two
embraced as the crowd applauded again. Afterwards, Buckner said he
had never carried animosity toward the fans when he was criticised,
but he did have some for the media. Imagine again what that would
have been like today. But the moment was a ceremonial and symbolic
burying of that moment of surrender to a curse, and a reclamation of
Bill Buckner as a player.
He died at the end
of May in Boise, of Lewy Body Dementia. He was only 69. Had he lived
another six years, he and Mookie Wilson would probably have gone on
tour, like Gibson and Eckersley did, putting that moment of the past
into historical, legendary, perspective. I could not help but wonder
how his memory was affected by the dementia, and whether he would
blessed to recall the cheers of 2008, the high points of his career,
and of course the blessings of his life. There is one photo of him, with the Red Sox, that I think captures the joy we all get to feel with life, when it seems it will go one forever, that we will enjoy being part of it, that all our problems will be insignificant, or if not, will be overcome. Ironically, I'm writing
about that one moment which will always be attached to his name, but
I am grateful that I had the chance to put a real person ahead of
that moment in my own memory. RIP Buck.
