Have You Heard The New Bill Buckner Joke?

The Polo Grounds: A Calm Review of Baseball ^ | 2 August 2002 | Jeff Kallman

[BluesDuke]

Some wear the goat horns; others have them shoved up a certain part of their anatomy. It is time to let Billy Buck off the hook.

[BluesDuke]

Buckner bump...

[sleavelessinseattle]

Wow! the way this is written I almost feel like the major leaguers deserve their astronomical salaries! But I can't believe without press approbrium, one play could have such a long standing impact on a man's life...This is like the Thrill of Victory and agony of defeat ABC trailer from decades ago watching some unfortunate skier karom off a jump at the Olympics every Sunday on Wide World of Sports...
I've often wondered if the poor subject had blocked that channel from his TV or received so many royalties from the replays that he laughed all the way to the bank...Buckner
doesn't sound like he got any compensation for his momentary lapse, being reverbrated through the media for generations...What about all the other plays and pitches in the game? I agree with the author...Let the guy alone!!! SHEESH!!! Thanks BD!

[2Trievers]

BuntTTT! &;-)

[TheRedSoxWinThePennant]

billy doesnt get all the blame stanley's performance in that game was horrendous but that is often overlooked bill buckner should never have been in that situation in the first place

[MozarkDawg]

It is time to let Billy Buck off the hook.

Amen!

[BluesDuke]

I've often wondered if the poor subject had blocked that channel from his TV or received so many royalties from the replays that he laughed all the way to the bank...Buckner doesn't sound like he got any compensation for his momentary lapse, being reverbrated through the media for generations...What about all the other plays and pitches in the game? I agree with the author...Let the guy alone!!! SHEESH!!! Thanks BD!

To my knowledge, Bill Buckner only once tried a cash-in on his infamous hour: when Michael Jordan was making his attempt to play pro baseball, Nike arranged a round of television spots featuring Willie Mays, Spike Lee, Stan Musial, Jordan, and Buckner. In the spot, Jordan at one point tries and fails to field a grounder. Says Lee: "He's no Bill Buckner." Answers Buckner: "But he's trying." The spots never saw the light of say, though Buckner was paid handsomely enough for his work, because Jordan decided shortly after filming them to return to the NBA with the Chicago Bulls. After that, he returned to his out-of-spotlight life, until he finally agreed to sit for an ESPN Classic Sports Century installment on the infamous play.

[BluesDuke]

billy doesnt get all the blame stanley's performance in that game was horrendous but that is often overlooked bill buckner should never have been in that situation in the first place

You are more right about the second half of that equation (Buckner should have been out of the game - as had been the pattern throughout that postseason). But it isn't Bob Stanley who got or gets mimicked, ridiculed, dissected, redissected, and done in mime in China in the years since. Comic careers weren't made on Bob Stanley jokes (though, in fairness, they should have been hammering Rich Gedman - the wild pitch to Mookie Wilson should have been called a passed ball.) For better or worse, whatever brickbats and razzberries the other 1986 Red Sox bore were nothing compared to what Buckner did - and sometimes still does.

[BluesDuke]

Here is how I would probably call the Red Sox's next World Series win, if I were fortunate enough to be in the booth (as if!) on the final play of the Series...

Fenway Park is on its feet...Red Sox Nation is standing at attention...the Olde Towne Team is one out away from driving the ghosts back into the Phantom Zone... Here comes the pitch...and there's a grounder to shortstop. Nomar picks it up...throws it on the run...and the impossible dream is the improbable truth at long enough last!....Look down across the garden called Fenway Park in Boston, ladies and gentlemen! Enos Slaughter is out at the plate...Ellis Kinder has stayed in the game...Little Looie has crossed the plate...Tony Perez has swung on the sharp slider and missed...Jim Willoughby will bat for himself and stay in as the hot hand...Luis Tiant has stopped the Yankees...Dent reaches outside and lofts it to left center and Yastrzemski glides over to haul it in...Calvin Schiraldi throws it just beyond Gary Carter's reach for strike two...There is but joy in Hubville - the Curse of the Bambino has grounded out to short...and for the first time since 1918, the Boston Red Sox are sitting on top of the world...

While I'm at it, why don't I just wish it could happen against the Red Sox's 1918 Series opponent: the Chicago Cubs...

[2Trievers]

If wishes were fishes ... or grounders snatched up and thrown to home plate ... or whatever, Babe! &;-)

[BluesDuke]

But I can't believe without press approbrium, one play could have such a long standing impact on a man's life...

You don't know Red Sox Nation. Especially on the home turf in New England. Granted that Boston has had, historically, a particularly carnivorous sports press which some believe even more so than New York's or Philadelphia's can be (Ted Williams could tell you only too much about the cannibals in the Boston sports press in his day...), but in too many ways you could make a case that in Boston, as also in Philadelphia, you could have a completely press-less town and Bill Buckner would still have been turned overnight into Beelzebub incarnate for his mistake.

Believe it or not, though, there was a World Series goat, not of Boston, who received almost comparable treatment to Buckner that could have been so without his city's sportswriters: Ernie Lombardi, the huge, powerfully-built, tank of a catcher for the Cincinnati Reds, was made the goat of a 1939 World Series that was a complete mismatch - the Reds, winning their first pennant in exactly twenty years, were all but annihilated by a very powerful club of Yankees, but the play that received the most opprobrium was Yankee outfielder Charlie (King Kong) Keller plowing into Lombardi on a play at the plate which knocked Lombardi out cold. It was the presumed unlikelihood of that kind of knockout - Lombardi was, by standards of his era, a huge and powerful man - that heaped the abuse on Lombardi's head. "Ernie's Sit -Down Strike," "Schnozz's Snooze" were some of the milder nicknames attached.

It turned out that the play and its result had a logical root: It was almost suffocatingly hot in Cincinnati that day and Lombardi subsequently revealed he'd been feeling a little dizziness as the inning in question began. Bulldog that he was, he stayed the course until Charlie Keller's train smashed into his platform. It is also forgotten that, though nothing close to Lombardi's physical bulk, Charlie Keller didn't earn the nickname King Kong because he was a wisp of a man. Lombardi took so much abuse over the play that, in later years, the combination of that abuse plus a possibility of guilt over backup catcher Will Hershberger's suicide the same season may have prodded Lombardi himself to attempt suicide.

[BluesDuke]

Snatched up and thrown home? If you're referring to the Buckner/Wilson play, there wouldn't have been a throw home. Ray Knight was running from second base when Wilson whacked the grounder; kept in the infield (Buckner, remember, was in position to keep the ball in front of him, had it not skipped below his glove, and Wilson had covering pitcher Bob Stanley beaten to first base by a foot), Knight wouldn't have been able to score. It was only because the ball got past Buckner that Knight could score the run, since right fielder Dwight Evans was back too far to be able to try a peg home if he'd gotten to the ball. The best case scenario, I repeat, would have been Knight on third, Wilson on first, and Howard Johnson coming up to hit.

[BluesDuke]

P.S. I admit, I'm cheating: I'm watching the game now on videotape (I have Games Six and Seven on tape)...and I just saw the play on tape...

[2Trievers]

There are OTHER ways to get home ya' know ... haha &;-)

[BluesDuke]

Now, there's a thought - the Motorcycle Series! (Which it could have been called last year, if Derek Jeter hadn't played sweeper and made that shovel pass home to bag Jeremy Giambi, since the A's had sort of an image as being part bikers...)

[NYCVirago]

This is your best article yet; I've forwarded it to several friends. One question -- wasn't Buckner in the game that late only because the manager wanted to give him the honor of being on the field when the Red Sox won the World Series? If I remember correctly, he normally would have been taken out in late innings for a defensive replacement.

[xp38]

In the aftermath Toronto welcomed them both. Mookie during his time here (89-91)was a joy. Buckner became a minor league hitting instructor in the Blue Jays system and I'm pretty sure got a World Series ring when the Jays won it all. Not as a player mind you but it's the thought that counts. :)

[BluesDuke]

One question -- wasn't Buckner in the game that late only because the manager wanted to give him the honor of being on the field when the Red Sox won the World Series? If I remember correctly, he normally would have been taken out in late innings for a defensive replacement.

Normally? Bill Buckner, throughout the League Championship Series and the World Series to that point, was always taken out late in the game for defence. He had also been handled that way during the stretch drive in August and September. John McNamara did want to have Buckner on the field when the Series got nailed down, almost solely because he appreciated Buckner's gutsy play that season (105 RBIs, playing in pain). His heart was in the right place, but his brains had gone to bed in that hour, even if you allow that Buckner's error was actually the next best thing to a freak occurrence. (He could have let Buckner hit his turn, pinch hit Don Baylor for relief pitcher Calvin Schiraldi instead, and still sent Dave Stapleton (an impossibly weak hitter whose only legitimate major league ability was playing defence) to spell Buckner. For listening to his heart rather than trying to win the baseball game for dead last certain, John McNamara merely secured his reputation as a manager who couldn't get out of his own way, and who would prefer to resent the hell out of anyone who pointed it out than make any attempt to correct it - or to own up to his mistakes, rather than try blaming the victim of his mistake...as he tried to Roger Clemens, claiming Clemens had told him he couldn't go any more, a remark for which Clemens had to be restrained from taking him apart...)

Buckner's flaw as a fielder actually wasn't his hands so much as it was his badly limited range, after all those years of leg injuries. If you watch the play closely enough, you see the ball take a tiny weird skip on the infield dirt (Mookie Wilson had hit a chopping grounder pretty much up the first base line; Buckner was playing him back near the edge of the outfield grass, the proper way to defence a free-swinger with running speed whom you're trying to get to hit it on the ground), maybe hitting a small chunk enough to cause the weird skip; tiny and weird enough that Buckner actually had his glove down in proper position to pick it off on a scoop-up, or to block the ball in front of him should it have taken an odd hop upward, but he could only watch helplessly as that skip on the infield dirt slipped the ball under his glove like a limbo rocker. He looked as stunned as anyone else in the park that the ball had gotten through his legs; that told me he was prepared and expecting to have the ball in his glove and, at worst (since Wilson had pitcher Stanley beaten on the play), keep Wilson to an infield hit and the Mets to first and third with two outs.

[BluesDuke]

P.S. Thank you for the lovely compliment. I hope your friends enjoy the piece, too.

[BluesDuke]

I remember Wilson finishing his playing career with the Jays. I don't recall, though, whether Buckner as a Jays instructor was still with the team for their World Series triumphs - he worked similarly for the Chicago White Sox for a time after the Blue Jays, and I don't remember, honestly, when Buckner left the Jays and went with the White Sox. He would probably make a very good batting instructor; he was an intelligent hitter in hand with his good swing and ability to watch the whole field to hit. As I remember his batting style, he was very good at making quick adjustments at the plate until his leg troubles finally got to be too much and he had to learn to bat locked. (He must have done something right in that way, since he did drive in 105 runs in 1986.) And whenever I heard him talk about hitting, he did it in a way that was as instructive as revelatory, telling me he would probably have been very good at teaching hitters how to adjust spontaneously as the pitch is delivered.