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A FEW WORDS
ABOUT BILL BUCKNER
on the
occasion of his induction into
the Baseball Reliquary’s Shrine of the Eternals
July 20, 2008
– by John Schulian –
He left memories scattered from Los Angeles to
Boston, but the Bill Buckner I remember best
defied the melancholy that draped Chicago’s
Wrigley Field like funeral crepe every
September. There were no pennant races for the
Cubs teams he played for in the late 70s and
early 80s, no roaring crowds to hail his refusal
to surrender to the franchise’s dreary
tradition. The shadows grew longer, the days
shorter, and anyone in need of a nap could find
plenty of room to stretch out in the bleachers.
“It’s like somebody turns off the electricity
every August 31st,” Buckner once told
me, but he would have none of it. A heart the
size of his doesn’t come with an off-switch.
So it is that I have this lasting image
of him stepping to the plate wearing the
dirtiest uniform on the field. He stares out at
the pitcher from beneath eyebrows that are the
perfect complement to his bushy mustache.
Wrigley is still without lights at this point,
and the fading sunshine mocks the grease that
Buckner has smeared under his eyes to cut the
glare. Maybe that’s why the pitcher tries to
sneak a fastball past him. Reasons don’t matter
now, though. Only results.
Buckner lashes a line drive to
left-center field, the sort of shot that was his
calling card for 22 big-league seasons.
Scuttling out of the batter’s box with his
ruined ankle begging for mercy, he’s hunched
over, almost crab-like yet hell-bent on ringing
up another double. And when he slides safely
into second base, he has done more than spit in
the eye of the Cubs’ lost season. He has
offered us a symbol of everything we should
treasure about him as a baseball player.
There are statistics involved, of
course. What would the grand old game be
without them? In the case of William Joseph
Buckner, allow me to point out that he won the
1980 National League batting championship with a
.324 average. He also led the league in doubles
twice, and then moved on to Boston, where he hit
46 of them in 1985 and somehow managed not
lead the American League. He drove in more than
100 runs once with the Cubs and twice with the
Red Sox. When you realize that 18 home runs
were the most he ever hit in a season, you come
to understand just how tough he was in the
clutch. And one other thing: in his youth with
the Dodgers, when he had yet to go under a
surgeon’s scalpel, Buckner stole as many as 31
bases.
Tote up all the numbers and you will find
that he batted .289 for his career while
pounding out 2,715 hits. That’s more hits than
Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and
about 70 percent of the other big bats in the
Hall of Fame. And Buckner played in more games
than Babe Ruth, Rod Carew and Willie Stargell.
You can look it up: 2,517.
Buckner’s accomplishments are, in many
ways, what people predicted for him when he
arrived in Los Angeles in 1969 as a 19-year-old
first baseman. He was one of the Dodgers’
golden children, shoulder to shoulder with Steve
Garvey, Ron Cey, Bill Russell and all the others
who set a standard that no subsequent youth
movement has equaled. The Dodgers moved him to
the outfield and he responded by batting .300,
running as if the cops were after him and raging
at injustice every time he made an out. “What’s
the matter?” Dick Allen asked during his one
season in L.A. “Don’t you think you’ll ever get
another hit?”
As a matter of fact, Buckner didn’t.
Such was the force that drove him. “After a
while,” he told me years ago, “you start
wondering how much you fear failure.” He feared
it beyond reason, because it suggested that he
wasn’t bearing down, wasn’t investing body and
soul in every time at bat. A trick of the mind
perhaps, but it helped him become everything he
could be on a baseball diamond. Everything
except lucky.
The ankle Buckner tore up in L.A. was the
first sign that no road is without potholes. He
went to Chicago in 1977, a first baseman once
again, and hobbled every step of the way. “Like
a hundred-year-old man,” he said. There were
high-top baseball shoes designed for him, and
still his ankle hurt. He was the first man at
the ballpark every day just to get himself
stretched out enough to play, but the pain
remained. The doubles, the RBIs, even the
batting championship -– none of that could cure
the hurt that Bill Buckner felt and never talked
about for public consumption.
He moved on to Boston in ’84 and found
balm for his competitive spirit in a city where
there really were pennant races and, two years
later, a World Series. But he hurt in more
places than ever, and the pain was etched in his
every step. He didn’t beg out of the line-up,
though, just kept busting his hump at the plate
and at first base. Then came the ’86 Series
against the Mets and the fateful grounder off
Mookie Wilson’s bat. It was as though every
good deed Buckner had ever performed were erased
when that ball, that damn ball, wormed its way
through his gnarled legs. Never mind that you
could point at any number of other reasons why
the Red Sox lost the game and the Series.
Buckner was the fall guy.
We of the Baseball Reliquary have come
together today to say that he is anything but
that, just as we would have if Boston’s fans
hadn’t finally embraced him again this past
April. We salute Bill Buckner because he
embodied the spirit, the passion and the
relentlessness that are the lifeblood of the
game we love so much. To watch him was to know
he was that most prized species, a big leaguer
who plays as hard as the fan in the stands
thinks he would if their situations were
reversed. And then there was Buckner’s
courage. He was, in no uncertain terms, the
bravest baseball player I’ve ever seen. He may
have feared making an out, but he refused to
back down from the pain that quite literally
never went away.
With all of that in mind, it is my great
pleasure to ask you to join me in welcoming Bill
Buckner to the Reliquary’s Shrine of the
Eternals. |
