"The Bill Buckner Game"

As many of you have no doubt been doing during these months of no live sports, I was twirling through the TV remote one night a week or so ago and saw that NBCSN was rerunning Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Mets vs. Red Sox, or, as it has come to be known, "The Bill Buckner Game."   First off, the biggest shock to me was the realization that this game took place THIRTY-FOUR YEARS AGO.   That is half a lifetime ago for me.  Egads!

I tuned in during the eighth inning inning.  The Mets scored in that inning to tie the game 3-3 on a Gary Carter sacrifice fly.  As I watched the game unfold, I realized that some of my memories of that game had shifted over the years, and perhaps yours have as well, so here is how it all played out.

Neither team scored in the ninth, so the game went into extra innings. 

Faulty Memory # 1:  I thought the game ended in the bottom of the ninth.

The Red Sox scored twice in the top of the tenth on a Dave Henderson solo home run and a Marty Barrett single that scored Wade Boggs. 

Red Sox up 5-3 and only three outs away from winning their first World Series in sixty-eight years.

Bottom of the tenth, Calvin Schiraldi pitching for Boston.

• Wally Backman flies to left, Keith Hernandez flies to center.  Two outs in the blink of an eye. Davey Johnson wildly paces the Mets dugout, and they're getting ready to pop champagne in the Sox locker room.  Then......
• Gary Carter singles.
• Kevin Mitchell singles.
• Ray Knight singles, Carter scores, Mitchell to third, 5-4 Sox.
• Schiraldi yanked, Bob Stanley come in to face Mookie Wilson.
• Stanley throws wild pitch.  Mitchell scores, Knight to second.  Game tied 5-5.

We all know what happened next.

Wilson hits grounder to first, it goes through Buckner's legs, Knight scores, Mets win 6-5, setting up a Game Seven.

Now we come to some of the beliefs that have sprung up around that game over the last thirty-four years.

1. If Buckner fields the ball and retires Wilson, the Red Sox win the game and the World Series.  WRONG.  The game was tied at the time, and it would have forced an 11th inning.  Maybe the Sox recover and win the game and the Series, or maybe the Mets win and force a seventh game anyway.  We'll never know.
2. The Mets won the World Series on Buckner's error.  WRONG.  They had to play a seventh game.
3. The Red Sox lost the game because of Buckner's error.  MAYBE.  The Sox pitcher's could have  retired either Carter, Mitchell, or Knight, and Stanley could have not thrown that wild pitch, and Wilson would have never had the chance to hit that ground ball, but they didn't do any of those things.
4. The Red Sox lost the World Series because of Buckner's error.  WRONG.  They could have beaten the Mets in Game 7, but they didn't.

Anyway, it was mucho fun watching that game, and then listening to the commentary of Ron Darling in the studio with the NBCSN talking head.

Bill Buckner died in 2019 at the age of only 69. By any standard, he had a great career:  22 years, over 2,700 hits, 1,200 RBI, and 1,000 runs scored and a batting championship in 1980, but the first paragraph in all of his obituaries only mentioned that error in Game Six in 1986.  When I wrote an Absent Friends Post to him last May, this is part of what I wrote (you will note that I made some of the aforementioned errors at that time):

Yep, his error in the ninth inning (it was the bottom of the tenth) of Game Six of the 1986 World Series that allowed the Mets to tie (the game was already tied) and then win that game and then win the World Series in Game Seven the next night (I even got that wrong; due to bad weather, the game was played two days later).  Buckner came to terms with that error, and accepted it  as a sort of "shit happens" moment that can happen to any major league player.  He even teamed up with Mookie Wilson, the Met who hit that ground ball, in later years by selling signed copies of photos of that fateful play at card and memorabilia shows.  For sure he accepted it more readily than the Red Sox fans, who , in a classless manner typical of sports fans everywhere, excoriated him for years for that play.  

I can remember that when the Red Sox finally won a World Series in 2004, someone asked Buckner if he thought that Boston fans would now forgive him for that play in 1986.  I don't have the exact quote but Buckner said, in effect, "Forgive ME?  I never did anything that deserves forgiveness.  That's baseball."  As I said, not an exact quote, but you get the gist.  In the end, Bill Buckner was a classy guy.