Have You Heard The New Bill Buckner Joke?

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

[SamAdams76]

Excellent article. I can remember that tragic October night as clear as a bell. I was at my fiance's house (soon to be my wife) with a group of friends. We were so sure of the win that we started popping champagne corks. In fact, they were popping champagne corks in the Red Sox clubhouse too. We were ecstatic and some of my friends were making long distance calls.

Then the grounder between the legs. It was devastating, I tell you! On the way home that night, some kids through a rock through my car window at a stoplight. They were pissed too. It was an ugly night in Boston. And we just knew that they weren't going to win in Game 7. In fact, I don't even remember watching that game. I'm sure I did but I don't remember anything about it.

It was a horrible feeling that night. The only other time I had that feeling was on a November night just a year and a half ago. That was the night that George Bush was declared the winner of the presidential election. I woke my son up and we opened a bottle of champagne. No sooner than I took the first sip then the networks switched to Al Gore taking back his concession. It was the '86 Sox all over again! Fortunately, Bush was able to win "Game 7."

Bill Buckner: I forgive you dude!

[BluesDuke]

We were so sure of the win that we started popping champagne corks. In fact, they were popping champagne corks in the Red Sox clubhouse too. We were ecstatic and some of my friends were making long distance calls.

I have a videotape of Games Six and Seven by way of ESPN Classic. (The network edited out a few too many things but left most of the guts of the games intact.) In between are some comments from various players in the drama, including Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan saying that people had actually gone to the nurseries in the tenth inning to hold up their infants in front of the set "so that they could say, their parents could say, 'You saw the Red Sox break the curse of the Bambino and win the 1986 World Series.' People did this, people really did this, this is Boston, you won't find that anywhere else in the world," Ryan said.

Trivia unknown until now: The champagne in the Red Sox clubhouse in the tenth inning of Game Six was actually the Mets' champagne - the Red Sox equipment managers had forgotten to pack the Red Sox's champagne before leaving for the final rounds in New York!

[xp38]

I checked my media guides...Buckner began as a minor league hitting instructor for the Jays in 1992 and is listed through to the 1995 guide so he would've probably gotten both the 92 and 93 rings. That's a nice thought given all the grief he has gone through.

[BluesDuke]

I agree. He was a good ballplayer, hard nosed without careening over the line to recklessness, and was actually one of the better clutch hitters of the first half of the 1980s. (The only man in baseball to hit for a higher average with men on base or in scoring position, or both, than Bill Buckner hit from 1980-86: Eddie Murray. Both men also hit higher in those situations than they did all around; Buckner's batting averages with men on base/in scoring position was always higher than his standard batting averages.) He seems also a nice, unpretentious man.

I wonder, now, if people remember that when Henry Aaron finally whacked his 715th career homer, in old Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, the Dodger left fielder with an idea of trying to climb the bullpen fence to catch the ball was Bill Buckner...

[hobbes1]

Given the pace of the Mutts Season this year Billy Buck is one of MY all time Heroes..lol

[BluesDuke]

Given the pace of the Mutts Season this year Billy Buck is one of MY all time Heroes..lol

*sigh* The Mets have been disappointing me as often as endearing me since the day they were born, alas.

I watched the aforesaid Sports Century profile of Buckner and the ESPN Classic replays of Games Six and Seven, which were interspersed with comments from various Mets and Red Sox. Those Mets who were asked - outfielder/reserve Lee Mazzilli, outfielder Len Dysktra, infielder Wally Backman, outfielder Mookie Wilson - said they were stunned to see Buckner still in the field as the bottom of the tenth started. In another interview, Backman has said that to a man the Mets expected Buckner to be out of the game for the bottom of the tenth. "Are you expecting Buckner to be out there?" Mazzilli commented. "Because I know I'm not."

They also expected manager John McNamara to make another move and bring in his only lefthanded relief pitcher, Sammy Stewart - who never showed up in the Series. The Mets didn't know that Stewart was a victim of McNamara's propensity to both play favourite and hold grudges: Stewart was two minutes late boarding the team bus after saying goodbye to his family before a long road trip, and he'd been with pitcher Bruce Hurst and his family. Stewart squawked at the club traveling secretary over it (both Stewart and Hurst were known to be strong family men) and got fined for the outburst, and McNamara held it against him...all season long, even though Stewart had a lifetime 0.00 ERA in twelve postseason appearances prior to 1986 and even though the 1986 Mets' only real weakness was that they didn't do well against lefthanded pitching compared to righthanded pitching. As the years have gone by, no matter the jokes and gags about Bill Buckner, I notice that John McNamara looks more and more and more to have been part and parcel of the Red Sox's real (and saddest) tradition: bonehead decisionmaking.

[hobbes1]

You are quite the font of knowledge..BD....

Another point illustrated by your pointing out of those facts, is the intellectual laziness of what passes for sports journalism these days. How come, for instance I am only hearing of this...Now....lol

[hobbes1]

In another interview, Backman has said that to a man the Mets expected Buckner to be out of the game for the bottom of the tenth.

That part I did know. I don't recall Bucks age, but didn't he have some sort of ankle ailment...

[BluesDuke]

Buckner had had trouble with his legs for several seasons prior to 1986, but near the end of the 1986 regular season he injured an Achilles tendon.

[BluesDuke]

Another point illustrated by your pointing out of those facts, is the intellectual laziness of what passes for sports journalism these days. How come, for instance I am only hearing of this...Now....lol

Probably because you may not have read some of the books I have read which address the 1986 World Series - like The Curse of the Bambino and At Fenway: Dispatches from Red Sox Nation, by Dan Shaughnessy, who has covered the Red Sox for the Boston Globe for about seventeen years or thereabout; like Sports Illustrated: Baseball, an anthology which includes Peter Gammons's excellent review (it appeared in the magazine in February 1987) of Games Six and Seven; like Fenway: An Unexpurgated History of the Boston Red Sox, by Peter Golenbock (he who has done lovely oral histories of the 1949-64 Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs, and, most recently, the Mets); like The Heart of the Order, Thomas Boswell's third anthology of his baseball columns and features, which includes a section of columns from his Washington Post coverage of the 1986 postseason called "1986: Ultimate Red Sox", and, like Roger Angell's Season Ticket, which includes his original New Yorker article, "Not So, Boston," about the 1986 pennant races and postseason. These books are well enough within the reach of those who want to know.

On my tombstone it is going to read: CAUSE OF DEATH - BOSTON RED SOX. - Ray Goulding (Bob and Ray)