At the risk of spoiling my growing reputation as a sports curmudgeon, you'd have to have a heart like a 10-minute egg not to have been a little choked up by what we saw during the Opening Day at Fenway Park this year.
For those who may have missed it, former Red Sox first baseman—and legendary World Series goat—Bill Buckner threw out the first pitch, ending, hopefully, two-plus decades of what had to be, for Buckner and his family, the emotional equivalent of waterboarding.
If you remember, Buckner was the guy who committed the unforgivable sin of letting a ground ball roll through his legs in Game Six of the 1986 World Series. That error allowed the Mets to win that game, and set the stage for New York's series-clinching win the next night.
Just like so many people who remember exactly where they were during the Kennedy assassination, I remember exactly where I was the night the roof fell in on Red Sox Nation. I was in a radio studio in Greenfield, running the game for WHAI and watching it on TV, and believe me when I tell you it took everything I had to keep from opening the studio window, diving out, and splattering my gray matter across the Main Street sidewalk.
Never in my lifetime had the Sox come that close to winning it all, only to spit the bit because some knucklehead couldn't come up with a grounder he'd fielded about a thousand times before. For a long time, I was among the legion of fans that placed the blame squarely on Buckner's shoulders. I have since mellowed, as, apparently, has Red Sox Nation, given the standing "O" Number Six received as he made the teary-eyed walk from the Green Monster to the mound on Opening Day.
The Sox' recent World Series success no doubt helped the fans forgive and forget, but my antipathy toward Buckner had subsided long before the 2004 win, in part because there are some other people who deserve to wear some goat horns for that '86 debacle.How about then-manager John McNamara, who decided to leave an obviously hobbled Buckner in the game in the late innings rather than pull him for a fresh Dave Stapleton? And what about relief pitcher Bob Stanley, who seemed unable to get anyone out in the late innings despite being one of the "go-to" guys all season?
I also began to develop a soft spot for Buckner when I began to hear about the impact that moment had on his family and his personal life. That's where I think sports fans, particularly Boston sports fans, have a tendency to cross the line. If a guy blows a play, you have the right to boo him, but you don't have a right to go take a dump on his lawn or heckle his daughter at a softball game. That's bush league nonsense, and it's especially unwarranted when you consider what Buckner did during the rest of that season.
The truth is, if Buckner isn't in the lineup, the Red Sox never even have the chance to lose Game Six. Guys like Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst get a lot of credit for that season's success, and deservedly so, but it was role-players like Buckner and Tom Seaver that made the difference that year—a fact that has somehow gotten lost during the many bar stool soliloquies about that fateful night in Queens. Perhaps now we can begin to look at the '86 season from a position of objectivity rather than emotion, a perspective that can only come from the epic clarity two World Championships in four years provides.
No matter how things turn out, whether the Sox win again this year or never again, there's one inalienable truth about life as a Boston sports figure—some days you are the dog and other days you are the hydrant. It would appear that Bill Buckner's 22-year "golden shower" has finally come to an end, and maybe now he can take his rightful place as one of the elite players in Boston sports history.
Short of his picking that grounder, it would be tough to find a happier ending than that.
