It says a lot about Bill Buckner’s character that he became friends with Mookie Wilson, whose slow-rolling grounder went through Buckner’s legs and altered the narrative of a stellar major-league career.
Buckner’s error, the one that handed the Mets an extra-inning victory over the Red Sox in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, was the first thing most of us thought about upon learning of his death Monday from Lewy body dementia.
“We developed a relationship that lasted well over 30 years,” Wilson said in a statement released by the Mets. “I felt badly for some of the things he went through. Bill was a great, great baseball player whose legacy should not be defined by one play.”
That one play didn’t define Buckner, and he was able to get some closure in Boston when he returned to Fenway Park 22 years later and received a standing ovation.
But it still haunted him most of the rest of his post-Game 6 life, a fate Buckner seemed to understand when he met with reporters late on the night of Game 6. Tribune columnist Bob Verdi wrote “nobody felt lower — but put up a braver front — than Buckner.”
“I’ll have to live with this,” Buckner told the awaiting writers. “I was having a lot of fun until that. Great game tonight. I haven’t let many get through me like that. Can’t remember the last game I lost that way. I wish it hadn’t been a World Series game. At least it was only the sixth game, not the seventh. We can still get them tomorrow.”
Tribune baseball writer Jerome Holtzman didn’t blame Buckner for the Red Sox’s Game 6 collapse. In his report on deadline from Shea Stadium on the night of the Game 6 gaffe, Holtzman noted Buckner was traded by the Cubs to make way for Leon Durham, who let a ball go through his legs in the decisive loss to the Padres in the 1984 National League Championship Series.
“A repeat of that play — no, this was a tougher play — occurred in the 10th inning Saturday night in Game 6 of the World Series,” Holtzman wrote. “Mookie Wilson`s tricky grounder went through the wicket of Buckner’s bowed and battered legs for an error that enabled the Mets to score the winning run in a 6-5 victory that kept them alive and forced Game 7, now scheduled for Monday night.
“Because Buckner was charged with the error, the Ex-Cub Factor resurfaced, further evidence of this fatal syndrome. The charge is unfair. Several of Buckner’s teammates — catcher Rich Gedman and relief pitchers Calvin Schiraldi and Bob Stanley — were guilty of considerably larger blunders during the Mets’ decisive rally. … Had the ball been hit sharply, Buckner could have charged and made the putout unassisted. Instead, he laid back, probably waiting to see if the ball would carom off the bag. It didn’t and instead rolled through his legs. (Ray) Knight scored from second, and the game was over.”
Buckner’s error fed into the handy narrative that the Red Sox, who had not won a World Series since 1918, were cursed. The next spring training, Buckner blamed the media for having “blown it out of proportion.” But it only got worse. Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy made it a central part of a book on Red Sox history titled “The Curse of the Bambino,” referring to it as an “unspeakable error (that) capped the most devastating loss in Red Sox history and set the table for a Game 7 that all Sox fans knew the team could not win.”
The media continued to pound on Buckner. He was released by the Red Sox on July 23, 1987, saying “everybody in this town, including the Red Sox holds that (error) against me. I don’t think I lost the World Series.”
After years of stewing over his treatment, and after the Red Sox ended the “curse” with two World Series championships in 2004 and ’07, Buckner accepted the Red Sox’s invitation to throw out the first pitch in the Fenway Park opener in 2008.
“In my heart, I had to forgive the media for what they put me and my family through,” he said. “I’ve done that. I’m over that. I just try to think of the positives, the happy things, the friendships.”
Buckner’s friendship with Wilson showed he had accepted his place in baseball history. He even had a sense of humor about the gaffe. When Buckner was named White Sox hitting coach before the 1996 season, I asked him if returning to Fenway Park that season was going to be difficult to experience.
“A lot of good things happened in my career,” he said. “A lot of people think about the World Series thing. I look at it this way: I don’t have to worry about that. I’m not a fielding coach. I’m a hitting coach.”
Buckner refused to let the worst moment in his career define him.
That’s a legacy anyone would be proud of.
Twitter @PWSullivan
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