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Won't you come home, Bill Buckner?
By adamg on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 11:42pm
Collateral Damage: I had tears in my eyes listening to the ovation he received from the fans.
Don loved it:
... Billy threw the ceremonial pitch to Dewey Evans. Dewey Evans! The tens of thousands of fans at Fenway applauded so long and so hard that Billy broke down and cried. The man cried. Years of scorn were finally lifted. All has been forgiven. All is right with the universe.
I love the Sox, and I fucking love the game of baseball overall. Tradition, camaraderie, history, protagonists, antagonists, individual achievements, teams overcoming adversity and against all odds ... there is simply no other game on the face of the planet which compares. ...
Jimmy: It was just a nice little moment:
If there's a guy who has been unjustifiably shit upon by the collective ass of New England, it's Bill.
He deserves his day.
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Comments
Forgiven?
For what? He did nothing wrong in the first place.
If we forgave Buckner...
its only because we stopped blaming him.
Or, more specifically, it's
Or, more specifically, it's only because we've finally won. There's no way this would have happened before 2004. That doesn't actually make me proud of the fans.
Guilty as charged
I must admit -- in the midst of all this Buckner good cheer -- that the mention of his name or (horrors!) the sight of that clip has sent chills down my spine and a pain in my gut and head ever since that sad crumble. Of course, I've also laid lots of blame equally on Stanley and Gedman, and I've NEVER understood sending death threats to Buckner.
I'm glad that this can finally be put behind him. I do wonder though how many of us are being completely truthful regarding our feelings around Bill Buckner now that we're in this era of "good feelings."
Still remember exactly where I was that night
Specifically, I watched the end of that awful Game 6 at the Harvard Gardens bar, on Cambridge Street in Beacon Hill. (And the following Game 7 at some Harvard Square bar that's no longer there, but used to be behind the Brattle Theatre on Mt Auburn St.)
I could hear it from my window
I lived on Bay State Road, on the 4th floor, with a window facing toward Fenway. We could tell what was going on with the game by the shifts and changes in the crowd noises.
Which Crowd?
The game took place at Shea Stadium. Was there a crowd at Fenway also?
I remember videotaping the game from Henderson's home run on. I erased it 10 minutes after Buckner's error.
So, now that Billy Buck has thrown out the first pitch and all is well, can we get Stanley to throw one out, with Gedman catching?
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Wearing out the floorboards
I used to be able to hear the upstairs neighbors at my grand mother's apartment go to bed at such unbearable moments during Sox games. We'd be watching the game, late at night, Grandma and me, and you'd hear the floorboards above creaking as the neighbor shut down the TV (or radio) and walked the length of the apartment to the bedroom in the back.
Game 6 was one such moment.
Photos from the opening ceremonies
Capn Ho was there.
Forgiving Buckner
From the Library of Congress's Poem a Day for American High Schools.
... The runner scores, knight in white armor,
the others out leaping, bumptious, gladhanding,
your net come up empty, Jonah again. ...
Let's not romanticize him, either
Stealth reminds us he was kind of over the hill by the time he got to the Sox:
Now that Buckner has been forgiven
Now that Buckner has been forgiven, when will Steve Bartman get to throw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field for the Cubbies?
That one's easy
After they win two World Series.
the stories have it
the stories have it backwards: its Buckner who forgave the red sox fans yesterday
You're right Pierce.
You're right Pierce.
What made him cry
Red: Not Buckner, but Doug Mirabelli getting his ring:
Long-term memory deficit
Joy of Sox reminds us this is not the first time Bostonians gave Buckner a standing ovation. In fact, they did so not just on Opening Day, 1987, but FOUR DAYS after The Error.
Thank you for that!
Fucking A thanks for posting that story! What a good thing to read -- and by legend Peter G too! Seriously, it seems as if things like the "Buckner Thing" either grow naturally more wild over time or are simply propagated by bandwagoners.
Again: I cringed at the thought of that ball skipping over his glove, but I never hated they guy, nor did the 100+ Sox fans in my family. I think it's just crap like and the like that made morons hate Bill Buckner, and that was both unwise and unfair.
Thanks again for posting that. Sorry about the fucking A.
Now there's an idea
Leave it to Soxaholix to sum up the whole redemption/forgiveness thing. If we really want to forget the past,
One Problem
Well two, actually:
1)resource waste and air pollution
and, worse yet
2) more royalties for CHB