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The price of Bill Buckner's flub

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Memorable moments in sports have a way of distorting sports memories.

Friday, the baseball that rolled through the legs of first baseman Bill Buckner in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets sold for $418,250. The buyer - presumably a he, but maybe a she - wants to remain anonymous, according to an Associated Press story. The seller was Seth Swirsky, a songwriter who bought the ball for $64,000 a dozen years ago. The previous owner was Charlie Sheen, who had paid $93,000 for the ball in 1992. I have no idea why the ball lost a third of its value from 1992 to 2000, or why its value increased more than sixfold since it was last sold, but so goes the world of memorabilia, I suppose.

Anyone who watched Buckner’s error will never forget the play. “It really embodies the emotion of sports,” Chris Ivy of Heritage Auctions, the Dallas auction house that handled the sale, told The Associated Press. “That ball symbolizes both the thrill of victory for the Mets and the agony of defeat for the Red Sox fans. It really brings out a lot of emotion.”

That it does. What it doesn’t bring out, and what our memories and emotions obscure, is the reality of the game - indeed, of the entire 1986 World Series.

Before Buckner’s play the Red Sox already had lost three leads in Game 6 - a 2-0 lead in the fifth when the Mets tied things up 2-2, a 3-2 lead in the eighth when the Mets again tied the game, and a 5-3 lead three pitches before the slow-rolling grounder that cast Buckner into baseball infamy.

With two outs, pitcher Calvin Schiraldi, who played high school ball for Westlake and college ball for UT and who today coaches at St. Michael’s Catholic Academy here in Austin, gave up three straight singles by Gary Carter, Kevin Mitchell and Ray Knight that scored one run and put Mitchell on third, 90 feet away from tying the game. Red Sox manager John McNamara then pulled Schiraldi for Bob Stanley.

The next batter was Mookie Wilson. With the count 2-2 - with the Red Sox for the second time in the inning one strike away from winning their first World Series since 1918 - Stanley threw a wild pitch. Mitchell scored. Knight moved to second. The game was suddenly 5-5 with the winning run in scoring position. Buckner is neither hero or goat at this point. In fact no one is thinking of Bill Buckner right now. The goat in this moment is Bob Stanley.

Wilson fouls off the next two pitches. Then he hits, as Vin Scully called it, a “little roller up along first.” Buckner moves to field it and send the game to the 11th inning, where Boston might win, might not. Instead, the ball goes through his legs. Knight scores. New York wins 6-5. Schiraldi gets the loss (though who remembers that?), Stanley catches a break, Buckner catches lifelong hell.

There was still a Game 7 to play, still a chance for Boston to win the Series and for Buckner’s error to become a footnote. Instead, the Red Sox blew a 3-0 lead in the sixth and went on to lose 8-5. Schiraldi was also the Game 7 loser. But Game 7 might as well not exist as far as our memories of the 1986 World Series go. Or Calvin Schiraldi. Or Bob Stanley.

How often does Buckner dream of that slow grounder headed his way? Bend over, scoop it up, tag the bag, inning’s over. On to the next one. But his glove holds nothing. He turns to see the ball rolling behind him, forever behind him, forever rolling away.

A ball that will haunt the player blamed for Boston’s World Series loss. A ball that will cause us to forget everything that made that loss possible, both before Wilson’s hit and in the game after. A ball that will sell almost 26 years later for a ridiculous sum.


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