Bill Buckner, gritty warrior who spurred 1986 Red Sox to A.L. pennant, dead at 69

Another clutch hit for Bill Buckner.

Thirty-five years and two days ago, the Red Sox traded Dennis Eckersley and Mike Brumley to the Chicago Cubs for Bill Buckner. The trade was a key to Boston winning the 1986 American League pennant.

Eckersley, battling back and shoulder injuries as well as personal demons, was struggling along with a 5.01 ERA at the time of the May 25, 1984 deal. He would show sparks of brilliance in Chicago, but really wouldn't return to All-Star status until a move to the bullpen. Brumley, then a minor leaguer, was a lifetime .206 hitter in the majors. Neither he or Eck would likely have helped the '86 Red Sox.

Buckner, however, played a major role in Boston's AL championship that year. He had 102 RBIs in 1986 -- 50 before the All-Star Game and 52 after it. The Red Sox entered September in those pre-Wild Card days in first place, but just 3.5 games ahead of second-place Toronto. It was Billy Buck who helped Boston pull away as the team's best hitter in the final weeks. He batted .315 with 8 homers, 22 RBI, and a .938 OPS in September and October.

So please don't add a comment below saying that Buckner cost the Red Sox the '86 World Series. If it was not for him, a guy who played hard and well despite being in immense pain, that club most likely would never have gotten as far as it did. 

THAT should be how Boston fans remember him, with headlines like the one above. Not for that other thing. But there is always going to be that other thing, and that will be in most of the headlines.

When my son told me a few minutes ago that Buckner had died at age 69, a robust man felled by the rare disease of Lewy Body Dementia, my thoughts like everyone else's returned to 1986 and the moment that unfairly condemned this All-Star and borderline Hall of Fame-caliber player to years of abuse. 

This was before Boston was Titletown, when the Red Sox were closing in on 70 years of heartbreak instead of going for their fifth world championship in 15 years. Buckner took the jokes and the boos and the taunting that came his way after his error in Game Six of the 1986 World Series as best as I can imagine anybody doing, and when it got too tough for his wife or kids to handle he moved west to Idaho. It was there he found peace, before dying in his native Vallejo, California this morning with his family by his side.

I wish he had enjoyed that peace for far longer.

Buckner at peace, coaching for Class A Boise.

First some more facts: Buckner was already a former batting champion and All-Star with a .295 lifetime batting average and just shy of 2,000 hits when the Red Sox picked him up in 1984. He continued to perform like an All-Star in Boston, batting 299 with 110 RBIs and 201 hits for the 1985 Red Sox despite hitting just 16 home runs. He usually batted third or fourth because he was so adept at moving runners along. At first base, he was a solid defender who was especially strong at scooping up low throws. 

He did this at less than his peak physically. Once one of the fastest runners in the National League, who roamed the outfield like a deer, Buckner severely injured his left ankle playing for the Dodgers in early 1975 and it hampered him the rest of his career. He managed to play more than 1800 games after the injury, often at an elite level, but his days as an outfielder were over.

The logical spot for Buckner was at third or first base, but the Dodgers had Ron Cey and Steve Garvey entrenched at those spots. So Buckner was traded to the lowly Cubs, where he took over at first, became a fan favorite, and won the 1980 batting title. 

Jeff English started his fine biography on Buckner for the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) with a definition:

GAMER 1. A player who approaches the game with a tenacious, spirited attack and continues to play even when hurt; a competitor; a player who doesn't make excuses. The term is a compliment, most especially when it comes from another player.

That was Buckner. He played nearly every day, with no whining, despite the pain. Entering 1986, he was only 34 and already had close to 2,200 hits; 3,000 and Cooperstown still seemed a very real possibility. Bone spurs in his left ankle were bothering him so much by this point that he announced he would be having surgery after the '86 season. In the meantime, there was a pennant to win, so Buckner spent hours wrapping, unwrapping, and icing his left leg before and after games. He played in 153 of Boston's 162 contests that regular season -- and three of his days off came after the Sox wrapped up the title.

By the playoffs, unfortunately, he could no longer produce despite the pain -- which only got worse when he hurt his other leg in the League Championship Series against the Angels. He hit just .214 in the ALCS, and .188 in the World Series. But Bill Buckner DID NOT lose the '86 World Series for the Red Sox any more than Bob Stanley or Rich Gedman or John McNamara or anyone else did. What Buckner did do was his best despite injuries that would have put a lesser man on the bench. 

Peter Gammons described Buckner's gritty effort that postseason for the Nov. 10, 1986 issue of Sports illustrated: 

"He crawled like an alligator into one base. He went after a pop-up, fell down and did a backstroke trying to make a catch in Game 4. He scurried on hands and knees to take the first base bag with his glove. He limped out for the national anthem, bat in hand, just in case he needed a cane. He wore a high-topped right shoe for the Achilles tendon he pulled in the seventh game of the playoffs, but it was the pain in two parts of his left ankle that had created the original limp and had necessitated nine cortisone shots since April." 

This underscores why Buckner should have been on the bench when Mookie Wilson came up in the tenth inning of Game Six, but also why he was not. Buckner was not going to ask to sit down -- because even at less than his best, Billy Buck felt he could do the job. The manager did not put Dave Stapleton in at first base with a two-run lead in the bottom of the 10th inning in Game Six, even though he had done so in similar situations during the playoffs. Whether he did it so Buckner could be on the field for the title that never came is irrelevant. It was a mistake, but it wasn't Buckner's mistake. 

Buckner never ducked responsibility. 

The ground ball that went through his legs and allowed the winning run to score that night was his mistake, and he never did anything less than stand up and take blame for the error -- the final miscue in a chain of bad events that cost Boston that game.  He then went out and had two hits in Game Seven, including a single to start a two-run Red Sox rally in the eighth that nearly tied the contest. But they didn't tie it, and the Mets won the game and the series -- leading to all those awful Bill Buckner jokes that made their way across the country in those pre-internet days. 

I was a stupid 19-year-old college kid ranked into oblivion at Syracuse by Mets fans, and I admit I told some myself. Just thinking about my behavior then makes me sick, even if everybody else in my dorm was doing it.

Buckner never deserved the abuse, but it never let up, until Buckner was traded to the Angels the next summer. Boston fans did give him a standing ovation when he made the team in 1990, and another one when he threw out the first ball before a World Series game decades later, but as far as I'm concerned both these gestures were far too little too late. The damage was done.

"I'll be seeing clips of this thing until the day I die," Buckner told the Wall Street Journal in 1998 of his infamous error. "I accept that. On the other hand, I'll never understand why."

Neither do I. And if there was anybody who deserved to live to a ripe old age bouncing grandchildren and great-grandchildren on his knee -- or tossing them pitches in the backyard -- it was Billy Buck.

In his November 1986 piece on Buckner for Sports Illustrated, Peter Gammons related an incident that occurred after Buckner's post-World Series ankle surgery:

"I just want to tell you that you'll always be my inspiration," said a small boy who ducked into Buckner's hospital room Wednesday night. "Thanks for a great season." Then the boy disappeared."

I wish I knew who that kid was; if I did, I'd call him up now and give him my appreciation for doing at a very young age what the rest of us lunkheads did far too late. 

Thank Bill Buckner for representing Boston so well.

Hearing the cheers on Opening Day, 2008

Another Hall of Fame honors Pedro Martinez for his deeds and recalls his classy words

Pedro earned his stripes in Montreal.

For Red Sox fans it was a single sound byte in a month-long stretch of magical, must-see video. Most probably didn't even hear it above all the screaming in living rooms, dorm rooms, and bars across New England. Fewer would recall it later.

Over the border, however, folks took notice -- and never forgot.

Pedro Martinez had just helped the 2004 Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years. The triumph climaxed a seven-year run of domination by Pedro unseen before or since: a 2.45 ERA and 0.978 WHIP in regular-season play during an era when steroid-fueled sluggers ripped other pitchers to bits.

In his and Boston's crowning moment of glory, a champagne-socked Pedro took a moment in the raucous Boston clubhouse to thank the Montreal Expos fans that had embraced him as he grew to stardom with their team in 1994-97. The cash-strapped Montreal front office had sent Pedro to the Red Sox in a one-sided deal after his Cy Young season in '97, knowing it couldn't resign him. Now they were losing far more than a pitching ace.

Always an afterthought in hockey-crazed Canada, and saddled with a dismal stadium that citizens voted down replacing with a publicly-funded ballpark, Les Expos were moving south to become the Washington Nationals.

"I would like to share this with the people in Montreal that are not going to have a team anymore," said Martinez. "My heart and my ring is with them, too."

A moment shared.

He was speaking to a single Montreal reporter, but the 12-second clip soon went worldwide. The classy comments were Pedro's way of thanking those who had believed in him. Tommy Lasorda and the Dodgers may have thought Martinez lacked the strength and size to be a starter (swapping him to Montreal even-up for Delino DeShields), but Expos manager Felipe Alou and his organization gave Pedro the chance to prove he could. Now the country he departed after four years and a .625 winning percentage is thanking him back with its ultimate honor.

On June 16, Martinez will be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, along with former Blue Jays outfielder Lloyd Moseby and baseball historian William Humber.

In a conference call with reporters after receiving the news on Feb. 1, Pedro expanded on why the honor meant so much. After his 1994 trade from the Dodgers, where his big brother and teammate Ramon had always looked out for him amidst the craziness that is LA, Martinez established his independence in Canada.

"At the time, I didn't know what to do in the streets," said Pedro. "Montreal helped me to become a man, because not only was I on my own, but doing it in a place where I felt really, really safe and loved by the people and embraced by the people that did not care what color you were, what you were wearing, how much money you were making. They were there to make you feel comfortable. So Montreal means the world to me."

Alou gave Martinez a chance.

Martinez always felt, as did many of his teammates at the time, that the Expos could have won the 1994 World Series. They were in first place with the best record in the MLB on August 12 when the remainder of the regular season and entire postseason were canceled by the 1994 baseball strike. Pedro, in his first year with the club, was 11-5 and on a five-game winning streak when the strike hit.

That's why when he finally won his first championship a decade later, Pedro wanted Montreal fans to know he wished it had been with them. His Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown may include a Red Sox hat, but he will always be remembered warmly by Canadians as more than just a baseball star. His brilliance went beyond the numbers, on and off the field.

Boston fans understand completely.

Why David Ortiz has more in common with Sandy Koufax than Ted Williams

What's this .097 hitter have in common with Ortiz?

He's not a pitcher, he's not a Dodger, but the final months of David Ortiz's career are more closely mirroring those of Sandy Koufax than Ted Williams.

Long before Ortiz hit his 522nd lifetime home run on July 1 to pass the total hit by Williams, people were linking the two Red Sox icons. No less an authority than Carl Yastrzemski has called them the two greatest players in franchise history, and all but die-hard Yaz fans would agree.

When it comes to swan songs, however, the comparisons don't measure up. Ted played his final year for a moribund Red Sox team that finished 7th in the American League, and his 29 homers and .316 average meant nothing beyond padding his Hall of Fame statistics. He gave fans some final thrills at age 42 -- including, famously, a bullpen blast in his last at-bat -- but the Fenway stands that day and many others were largely empty.

Pressure? For Williams, in 1960, there was none.

Less than 11,000 saw Ted's last HR live.

Ortiz is playing under far different circumstances. The Red Sox near the All-Star break in the thick of the AL East and Wild Card races, meaning each Big Papi hit -- even, in one memorable case, a game-saving triple -- has far more importance. On a team filled with budding superstars, it is still Ortiz opposing pitchers fear most in crunch time. Fenway is regularly jammed to capacity with demanding Boston fans.

Whereas Williams was truly a lion in winter during his final season, emerging from hibernation to accumulate just 310 at-bats, Ortiz is playing nearly every day and leads the AL in OPS. True, he has yet to take the field on defense, but what he's doing at the plate is still remarkable for a 40-year-old. One could make a strong argument that Big Papi has been the league MVP over the first half-sesaon, and he is slated to start at DH for the AL in next week's All-Star Game.

It's enough to make a guy change his mind about retirement, but Ortiz insists that won't be the case. He is too proud and too smart to chance playing one year too long and leaving fans with a less-then-flattering image of a .220, 12-homer campaign. Plus, in addition to the normal aches that can hamper a ballplayer of his age and size, he has severe pain in his feet  that clubhouse onlookers confirm he hides behind his gregarious persona.

Here's where Koufax comes in.

Fifty years ago, the Dodgers hurler dubbed "The Left Hand of God" faced his own physical challenges. Although the he was just 30 in 1966, Koufax's arthritic left elbow caused him constant pain on and off the mound. His arm remained bent at a 22.5-degree angle between starts, and he had suits specially tailored to hide the deformity, Doctors warned him that he could permanently damage his arm by continuing to hurl 300 innings a year.

Koufax on ice -- a common occurrence in '66. 

But, like this year's Red Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers of '66 were a contending team -- in fact, the defending World Series champs -- in a tight pennant race. There were other strong players on the club, and two future Hall of Fame pitchers in Don Drysdale and rookie Don Sutton behind him in the rotation, but Sandy was clearly the star. As with Ortiz, nobody performed better when the pressure was greatest.

This stayed true down the stretch in '66. The pain never lessened, but Koufax kept winning -- going 8-2 with an 1.78 ERA and 8 complete games in his final 11 starts. On the last day of the season, with the National League championship on the line, he beat Phillies ace Jim Bunning with a 10-strikeout performance on two days rest.

In addition to helping the Dodgers to the World Series, where they lost to Baltimore, Koufax led the league in wins (at 27-9), ERA (1.73), strikeouts (317), Bar Mitzvah invitations, and marriage proposals. He won his third Cy Young Award in four years, and only a career season from Roberto Clemente denied Sandy NL MVP honors as well.

Then, shocking the sports world, Koufax walked away. In a hastily called press conference, he stated that "I've got a lot of years to live after baseball and I would like to live them with the complete use of my body."

There will be no such surprise announcement from Ortiz. Everybody knows he is retiring. But, like Koufax, and unlike Williams, Big Papi is doing so on a team that could very well be playing important games in September -- and maybe October.

In the end, that's far more important than any home run.

Will Ortiz's last season also end with bunting?

Lackey, Beckett take different routes since chicken and beer

Beckett and Lackey -- partners in crime 

Three years ago, they were the poster boys for bad clubhouse behavior while with the Red Sox. This week, John Lackey and Josh Beckett were both in the headlines again -- and for dramatically different reasons.

On Monday, Lackey pitched seven stellar innings for the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Three of the NLDS, picking up the victory in a 3-1 Cardinals triumph over the Los Angeles Dodgers. St. Louis clinched the series the next evening, setting up an NLCS date with the Giants in a series that starts tomorrow night in San Francisco. 

Then, on Wednesday morning, as his Dodgers teammates were still lamenting the abrupt end of their season at the hands of Lackey and the Cards, Beckett announced he was retiring from the major leagues after 14 seasons. He faced surgery and months of rehab for a torn labrum in his left hip, and at age 34 figured enough was enough.

Things never came together in LA (USA Today)

It was a sad end to a rough few years for Beckett, who has struggled with injuries since his trade to the Dodgers in August 2012. Although he did pitch a no-hitter earlier this season, he made just 35 starts in his three seasons in LA.

It is hard to imagine two players taking more disparate paths than Beckett and Lackey have since the summer of 2011. In August of that year, Beckett was among the AL leaders in earned-run average while Lackey was at the other end of the Boston rotation -- with an ERA north of 6.00 and status as perhaps the most reviled athlete in New England with his bloated contract and hound-dog face.

In 2011, Lackey couldn't look

As long as the '11 Red Sox were cruising along in first place with the best record in the league, which they were as late as Sept. 1, Lackey's problems were confined to the back-burner. But when Boston had its monumental collapse in September with a 7-20 mark that left it out of the postseason, Big John was seen as one of the key causes for the meltdown. Beckett, after all, still finished 13-7 with a 2.89 ERA.

Then the news got worse. A few days after the season ended, a story by John Tomase of the Boston Herald broke that Boston starting pitchers had spent their off-days during the season hanging in the clubhouse scarfing down beers and fried chicken rather than sitting in the dugout. Beckett, Lackey, and lefty Jon Lester were eventually tabbed as the top offenders, and were raked over the coals by media and fans in a wave of bad publicity that helped cost manager Terry Francona his job.

After the secret (sauce) got out

Beckett never really recovered. He went 5-11 for last-place Boston in 2012 before being traded to the Dodgers along with Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, and Nick Punto in a salary-dumping move that would help both teams. Away from the boo-birds and pressure-cooker atmosphere at Fenway, Beckett pitched much better in Los Angeles, but could not stay healthy. Shoulder injuries wrecked his 2013 season, and hip problems put him on the disabled list three times this year -- including for the postseason. 

Lackey, in contrast,enjoyed a dramatic resurgence after Chicken-Gate. When it was revealed just how hurt he was during 2011, and that he had pitched a full season in constant pain and without complaint, it won him back some respect. Things were so bad, in fact, that he needed to have Tommy John Surgery and sat out the entire 2012 campaign.

Nobody knew what to expect from Lackey in 2013, but he emerged as one of Boston's top starters during that championship summer with a 1.157 WHIP and 3.52 ERA that went down to 2.77 in the postseason -- when he went 3-1 and became the first man in MLB history to win a World Series clinching game for two different franchises (having done so with the Anaheim Angels as a rookie in 2002).

In 2013, jeers turned to cheers USA Today)

It was more of the same for Big John this year, when he pitched with better velocity and better results than at any time in his Boston tenure before being dispatched to St. Louis for Joe Kelly and Allen Craig as part of John Henry's trade deadline fire sale. Now he's back working his magic in the playoffs, and may even get a crack at a third world championship ring.

Neither Josh Beckett or John Lackey will make the Hall of Fame, but both were All-Star pitchers and key starters on two World Series champions -- Beckett getting his rings with the Florida Marlins in 2003 and the Red Sox in 2007, when he went 20-7 during the regular season and then 4-0 with a 1.20 ERA in October.

They made their mistakes in Boston, to be sure, but they should be remembered for the joy they helped bring to Yawkey Way -- not the buckets of extra-crispy breasts.

Thanks for the (good) memories (Getty Images)

Who needs the Yankees? Postseason could still bring high drama for Red Sox

Tito and Farrell could meet up again Friday.

Tito vs. Farrell. Drew vs. Iglesias. Big Papi against Crawford and A-Gon.

There may never be a playoff series at Fenway Park quite like the epic 2003 and '04 Red Sox-Yankees ALCS classics -- ending 86 years of misery against your arch-rivals is tough to top -- but this year's possible postseason opponents present plenty of intriguing scenarios for the Sox. 

As the Wild Card entries do battle over the next several days, we can have fun thinking about three great "what ifs" that could become reality:

Red Sox-Indians in the ALDS

Papi would be pumped to face the Indians.

Cleveland, which closed the regular season with 10 straight victories, will face the winner of Monday's Tampa Bay-Texas tiebreaker in the AL's one-game Wild Card "play-in" on Wednesday. Assuming he can prevail in the winner-take-all contest, Indians manager Terry Francona will return Friday night to Fenway Park -- his summer home for eight years and two World Series championships -- for the AL Division Series.

Francona got a loud and long ovation when the Indians came to Boston for four regular-season games in May, but now things really count. New Englanders are hungry for some playoff success in the Red Sox's first postseason berth since 2009, and current Boston manager John Farrell -- who served as Francona's pitching coach for five years with the Sox, including the '07 world championship squad -- will be attempting to beat his old boss and create some October glory of his own.

In addition to the Tito-Farrell storyline, a Red Sox-Indians series would match up the two most-improved teams in the American League; the Sox went from 69-93 to 97-65 this year, and the Indians from 68-94 to 92-70. In head-to-head play in 2013, Boston won six of seven from the club on which Farrell came to the majors and pitched for parts of five seasons.

Red Sox-Tigers in ALCS

In September, Iglesias was springy vs. the Sox.

Unlike Boston and Cleveland, Detroit surprised nobody with its strong showing in 2013. The Tigers, World Series runner-ups last fall, won their third straight AL Central title with a 93-69 record that was second only to Boston in the circuit. 

Detroit has one of baseball's best offenses, led by sluggers Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder, but it is their rookie shortstop who may get the bulk of the attention at Fenway were these two teams to meet. Jose Iglesias, the favorite to win both the AL's Rookie of the Year Award and a Gold Glove, was developed in the Boston farm system and spent the first four months of his freshman season with the Red Sox before going to Detroit in a three-way trade on July 30 that brought White Sox pitcher Jake Peavy to Boston.

Iglesias' average, which had hovered around .325 or higher most of the summer, fell off badly in September as skeptics long predicted. His glove, however, remains second to none, and a few dazzling plays in the field may have Boston fans wishing he was still around (even with Stephen Drew and Xander Bogarts both performing well at short for the Sox). 

The Tigers were 4-3 against Boston this year, but the Sox did win two-of-three at Fenway in September -- including a 20-4 shellacking in which they hit eight home runs. 

Red Sox-Dodgers in the World Series

Crawford and Gonzalez have something to prove.

It has been just a little over a year since the Big Trade of 2012, when Boston sent overpaid, underachieving, unhappy stars Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, and Josh Beckett to the Dodgers along with Nick Punto and $12 million on Aug. 25 for a quintet of prospects. Unlike many transactions, this was definitely a move that helped both teams. 

The trade, which will save the Red Sox approximately $275 million in salaries and luxury tax over the course of all the players' contracts, freed up money for Boston to rebuild in 2013 with lower-priced, hungrier character players like Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino. These additions (and subtractions) helped turn the clubhouse atmosphere at Fenway completely around, and the result was a worst-to-first finish in the AL East.

Initially snickered at by Boston fans when the deal went down, Dodgers management has no problem with how things have turned out. Although Beckett suffered a major injury in his pitching hand that all but wiped out his '13 season, Gonzalez and Crawford have both been major contributors for Los Angeles -- which claimed the NL West title and is considered a favorite to win the pennant as well.

Like Edgar Renteria a few years back, Gonzales and Crawford rebounded once they left the pressure-cooker atmosphere of Boston for laid-back LA. The Red Sox, however, would have home-field advantage for the World Series, meaning both players would have up to four games with the probing eyes of Fenway once more upon them.

Hang on, Red Sox fans, it could be a very fun ride.