Bill Buckner: Did His Booted Ground Ball Cost the Red Sox a World Series?
Each year, as the Major League Baseball season begins and the Boston Red Sox start playing, my mind turns to Bill Buckner.
Buckner was born in Vallejo, California in 1949. An outfielder and later a first baseman with bushy brown eyebrows and a mustache, he starred for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs and played the game with a smile. In 1984, near the end of his career, he came to Boston, and played four years for the Red Sox.
Buckner was a strong-willed, feisty man, as many of the best baseball players are. He could be a little reckless in his comments. Shortly before the 1974 World Series between Buckner’s Dodgers and the Oakland A’s, Buckner said publicly that only a few A’s could make the Dodgers roster. The A’s then had three future Hall of Famers and 14 different players whose career included at least one All-Star game. They beat the Dodgers in the 1974 World Series and afterwards many of them mentioned Buckner’s comments as one of the reasons why.
Buckner played in four different decades, had 2,715 hits in his career, was a solid fielder, three times hit over .300, made an All-Star team, and won a batting title.
He is remembered in Boston, though, mostly for the slow roller that squirted through his legs in Game Six of the 1986 World Series, in a game which could have won the Red Sox the World Series. “The Curse of the Bambino” never seemed stronger than on that night, at that moment.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
First, the Red Sox: they are one of the nation’s great sports franchises. Their lovely, quirky ballpark, Fenway Park, was built in 1912 and has hosted college and pro football games, NHL hockey games, musicians from John Philip Sousa to Ray Charles, and the last public speech President Franklin Roosevelt ever made. The left field wall (“The Green Monster”) is just 310 feet from home plate, but 37 feet high, with strange effects on both hitters and fielders, and an old-fashioned, hand-operated scoreboard.
The Red Sox have a colorful history and knowledgeable fans who feel quite personally about the players. (When Lee Smith, a dominating closer, joined the Red Sox near the end of his career, as he was leaving the Fenway bullpen for his first save attempt, a seven-year-old boy leaned over the rail and instructed him: “Lee, stay within yourself.”)
With Harvard intellectuals like John Updike writing about the team for the New Yorker magazine and thousands of working-class fans with tenacious loyalties and the conviction that life will break your heart, it’s a demanding fan base.
Many Major Leaguers prefer to play their home games in a more laid back city, or a more polite one where booing is rare. Red Sox players can count on getting booed at Fenway if they boot a ground ball or strike out in a big spot.
The worst booted ball of all time, the epic failure of Red Sox history, came on January 3rd, 1920, when the cash-strapped owner of the Red Sox sold the great Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees.
As the Yankees won pennant after pennant and World Series after World Series, some Red Sox fans wondered if there was a curse on their franchise. “The Curse of the Bambino,” it came to be called.
The Red Sox also have a tendency to have big moments in Game Six of a seven-game series. The famous Carlton Fisk home run in the 1975 World Series; the classic Curt Schilling “bloody sock” game in 2004; the 2013 World Series title-clinching game, the first title won at Fenway in 95 years — all of those came in Game Six.
And so did Bill Buckner’s blunder.
Red Sox fans disagree on how skillfully Red Sox manager John McNamara handled the 1986 team. Negativity hovered over the Red Sox when McNamara was managing, especially late in his tenure. He was good at managing the match-ups in a game but his players didn’t like him much and respected baseball writer Bill Ballou of the Worcester Telegram called McNamara “the most unpleasant person I have ever covered in my life.”
The Sox won 95 games in the regular season and came within one strike of winning the World Series but they lost — and what was worse, they lost to a New York team, the Mets.
In the 10th inning of Game Six of the 1986 World Series, played in New York, the Red Sox scored two runs, went up 5–3, and seemed about to win the Series. John McNamara let Bill Buckner hit in the 10th, though he’d often replaced him with with a nimbler fielder when the Sox had a late-inning lead. Buckner was hit in the hip with with a pitch and hobbled down to first.
In the bottom of the ninth, the first two Mets went down easily, and the Red Sox were just one out away from their first World Series triumph since 1918.
But then Gary Carter, Kevin Mitchell and Ray Knight all singled and a run came in. Bob Stanley threw a wild pitch and a second run came in to tie the score. Marty Barrett, playing second base, was sure they could have picked Ray Knight off at second, but by now Shea Stadium was a madhouse and on the mound Bob Stanley couldn’t hear his second baseman.
The pressure built and built. On Stanley’s 10th pitch to Mookie Wilson, a hard swing by Wilson produced a little roller to Buckner at first base. Wilson was a fast runner, known for hustling hard down the line. Perhaps distracted by Wilson’s speed, knowing he might have to rush to make the play, Buckner let the ball go right through his legs.
That was the truly CURSED aspect of it; had it been another Major League team, the ball that got by would have been hit hard to the first baseman’s right or left. But this was an easy ball to field, hit to a fielder reliable within his narrow range — and it rolled through his legs and into short right field. The Met won the game 6–5.
Soon they won the 7th game and the World Series, and Buckner’s smile was a distant memory.
Baseball is a beautiful game to watch, with its manicured green fields and its pre-industrial rhythms, its downplaying of clocks, and of time. But it’s a cruel game, too, forcing players to react one at a time, and in “big games” focusing an intense spotlight on each player, and making their biggest failures into lore that never dies.
Buckner had always played the game hard and his body paid a price for it. By 1986, he was slowed by knee and ankle injuries. Why didn’t McNamara have the slick-fielding first baseman Dave Stapleton out there instead of a wounded Bill Buckner? For 37 years Stapleton has been peeved that he never had the chance to field that ground ball. Stapleton said publicly that McNamara screwed up bigtime, and that McNamara knows it.
McNamara at first seemed to blame himself for Buckner’s being out there, citing his desire to reward Buckner for a great year by having him out on the field for the final out. But Stapleton’s public criticism stung McNamara and he struck back, telling Bob Costas that Stapleton’s nickname was “Shaky” and that he didn’t trust Stapleton to play solid defense under pressure.
After Game Six, Buckner could have dressed quickly and ducked all the questions. Instead, he stood gamely at his locker and patiently answered every one, even though they were really the same few questions asked again and again. ‘What happened on the Wilson roller?’ ‘Why did you let it go through your legs?’ And ‘How do you feel now?’
Buckner expected a lot of questions about the bungled ground ball that night after the game, or maybe for a week afterwards…. But for months, for years? People threatening him, cursing him, cursing his family? The press hounding him again and again to explain what happened? Harassing Buckner’s children? It seemed to him perverse, and disgusting.
The intensity and persistence of the fans’ anger shocked Buckner. ‘Have you ever made a mistake?’ he felt like asking these fans. Do total strangers come up to you in public and berate you for it?
Maybe that was the crux of the problem; these people were strangers to him, but he wasn’t a stranger to THEM. He was Uncle Billy, he was Billy Bucks, the solid veteran who was supposed to help the Red Sox get over the hump and finally win a World Series —
— and then he’d gone and made this gruesome error at a catastrophic moment.
Buckner moved away from Boston, saying he had his three children to consider, two daughters and a son who were still taking abuse. His son was verbally bullied at school, and Buckner was angry and guilty that he couldn’t protect him.
By then a “buckner” had become an informal term in baseball for a booted ground ball.
While Buckner was deeply frustrated that his notoriety for a single mistake was enduring, ESPN was making a three-hour documentary about Buckner’s fielding lapse called “Once Upon a Time in Queens.” Of course, the documentary delved into many areas related to the Red Sox and the Mets in 1986 but, to Buckner, the show felt like it was all about his error.
In 2002, when the Red Sox hired Theo Epstein to be the team’s General Manager, Epstein assured reporters he was a native of Red Sox Nation, a kid from Brookline, Massachusetts raised as a Red Sox fanatic. To establish his credentials, Theo volunteered that when the ball rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs Theo and his twin brother Paul had “writhed on the living room floor.”
In 2004, when the Red Sox finally “reversed the curse” and won the World Series, reporters went to Buckner again, suggesting by their questions that, with this victory, all should be well. This puzzled Buckner; he told reporters he was happy for the Red Sox, he’d been rooting for them to win, but no, it didn’t ease the pain of 1986.
“I lost my World Series,” he said.
In 2008, the Red Sox invited Buckner to throw out the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day. Introducing Buckner to the crowd, Fenway public address announcer Carl Beane called Buckner “one of the greatest to ever wear the Red Sox uniform,” which was a stretch, and added that the Red Sox would never have won the 1986 pennant without Buckner, which was debatable.
Beane urged the crowd, ‘Let’s let him know that he is welcome ALWAYS!’ As Buckner walked to the mound wearing a Red Sox jersey, the Fenway crowd gave him a long and hearty ovation. Buckner saluted the crowd and wiped tears.
He decided to forgive the fans who had harassed his children. Though it was harder for him, he decided also to forgive the media who put him and his family through hell in 1986, and after.
But when he saw a sign in the stands from a fan saying ‘BUCKNER— WE FORGIVE YOU,’ it angered him all over again. THEY were the ones in need of forgiveness, not him. As Buckner saw it, the fans and the guys from the Globe and the Herald and the Post and the Daily News and the tabloid TV shows should be apologizing for what they’d done to his family.
Game Six of the 1986 World Series remains one of the celebrated games in baseball history and in 2012, the ball that squirted through Buckner’s legs was auctioned off for $418,250.
Buckner retired to Boise, Idaho, one of the thousands who have moved to Idaho to be left alone. His body continued to betray him, and in 2019 he died of Lewy body dementia, at the age of 69.