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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.

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.

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