"Little roller up along first ... "

I remember being outside the Red Sox clubhouse and watching them take the champagne out, and the trophy, and Jean Yawkey out, too. Very weird.

 

It certainly helped but I don't know if that's totally it. Pesky holding the ball lost its resonance after a while, too.

 

As a die-hard Bosox fan, that's why when people say Buckner I say "whatever."

It was never Buckner's fault, it was Bob Freakin' Stanley, you throw a wild pitch to allow the tying run to score and the go ahead runner to go to 2nd? Why he never got the brunt of the grief, I will never understand.

I wish Buckner the best, he was a great hitter.

 

The Buckner thing was largely one of those national media creations. As QT points out, a billion things went wrong before the ball went thru Buckner's legs. I don't even think he beats Wilson to the bag if he fields it cleanly. And if he does, all that does is get the game to the 11th. The easy thing to do was to say Buckner blew it, but anyone who watched the game knew differently--particularly Sox fans, who, I believe, gave Buckner a standing ovation when he returned to Fenway w/the Royals in 1988. And he felt welcomed enough in Boston to finish his career there in 1990.

Yet the "Buckner blew it and Boston fans hate him" storyline was the easy one, and all it took was Buckner finally hauling off and nearly cold-cocking one of the knucklehead douchebags who yelled something about the error for everyone to believe he was loathed in Boston and living a life of haunted isolation in Idaho. The truth is he's a low-key guy who liked the country life yet is savvy enough to make a few autograph appearances a year with Mookie and make a few bucks off his 15 seconds of unfortunate fame. Good for him.

 

I remember coming home from playing hockey and watching the game from the 8th on. It was surreal

I still think Stanley's wild pitch was a passed ball. Gedman should have blocked that

But as BYH said, a billion things went wrong like Carter starting the rally off with two out

And Knight was 0-2 before he hit his RBI. And Schiraldi had the look of a man on death row

And Mookie had two strikes on him and had fouled off at least four pitches.

And in case we forget, Marty Barrett was named player of the game after two out in the 10th

 

I remember that brief moment when the Diamondvision showed the "Congratulations World Series champion Red Sox!" sign and feeling pretty depressed, with just a small part of me thinking it was premature.

But I also can't help but feel sorry for the Red Sox fans who saw that and how heartbroken they must have been afterward. All those years, one strike away, and the scoreboard was even congratulating them. And they had to wait another 18 years after that.

 

I remember how pissed I was watching it live. I really wanted that Red Sox team to win a World Series.

Now? I'd probably stick my finger in my throat and root for the Mets.

 

I grew up a Mets fan and remember vividly watching this game.

What JR mentions is absolutely correct: Schiraldi looked like someone who did not want to be there. The closeups were painful.

I always believed Sox fans secretly enjoyed/wallowed in their oh-so-poetic epic torture, and welcomed another chance to be cruelly victimized by the fickle baseball gods, Curse of the Bambino, yadda yadda, yadda.

 

I'm pretty sure the Curse idea didn't pick up steam until after that. Shaughnessy's book came out in 1989 or 1990.

 

The pictures on p. 38-39 of the SI issue at the time showing the contrast of the emotions for some Boston bar patrons from Henderson's homer to give the Sox the lead to the ball going through Buckner. Just fantastic at catching the opposite ends of the spectrum of emotions. Well worth the look.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/cover/featured/9035/index.htm

Which also included Gammon's great piece that sums up what being a Red Sox fan at that time felt like.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1065413/index.htm

"And when the ball went through Bill Buckner's legs, 41 years of Red Sox baseball flashed in front of my eyes. In that one moment, Johnny Pesky held the ball, Joe McCarthy lifted Ellis Kinder in Yankee Stadium, Luis Aparicio fell down rounding third. Bill Lee delivered his Leephus pitch to Tony Perez, Darrell Johnson hit for Jim Willoughby, Don Zimmer chose Bobby Sprowl over Luis Tiant and Bucky (Bleeping) Dent hit the home run."

 

As that article proves, this was when Red Sox fans took insufferability to previously purely theoretical levels.