No Need for Absolution

Nice, very nice, but overdue, and too bad it was necessary.

That’s my take on the heartwarming “Welcome Home” for Bill Buckner, as he threw out the first pitch at Fenway Park for the Red Sox home opener last week.

The 40,000 in attendance were surprised when Buckner was announced and ambled in from a door in the left field wall. The ovation was sustained, and Buckner was visibly moved.

More than anything, his appearance and the response to it underscore how powerful his identity as a symbol of incompetence and the cruelty of fate had become.

Buckner was a complete player with near-Hall of Fame numbers. He won a batting championship, hit homers and drove in runs (102 in 1986), played capably in the field, stole bases (31 one year, 28 in another). He was a consummate professional, yet he was known far and wide for a momentary lapse.

In its coverage of the Fenway event, ESPN showed the highlights of Buckner’s post-game press conference in which he acknowledged, choking up as he said it, that he didn’t have to “forgive” the fans, but he now had forgiven “the media” and had “moved on.”

Immediately after showing that image, the fatuous ESPN sportscaster felt the need to offer a wisecrack about the consequence of Buckner’s error. What irony.

More locally, the picture on Page One of the Burlington Free Press the next day identified Buckner as the player who had disastrously “let the ball roll through his legs.” He let the ball roll through his legs, as if it were an intentional act, or he were a T-ball player just beginning to learn the game.

That’s hardly “closure.”

Buckner committed an error at a crucial point in a big game. That’s what happened. And his error was hardly the only mistake that contributed to the Red Sox loss in the 1986 Series. Errors happen. Baseball is hard.

And his error occurred in Game Six. Had the Red Sox won Game Seven, Buckner’s mistake would have been a footnote. The barroom debates in Boston since 1986 have more often been about who was the real goat in that game: Manager McNamara, catcher Rich Gedman, and pitchers Roger Clemens and Calvin Schiraldi are all candidates.

Buckner’s error became the story line, shorthand, for Boston’s 86-year drought. It was easy: “Run the Buckner clip, boys.” The national media fixated on it and showed it incessantly. It somehow grew beyond cliché into some category of mythical nightmare.

Seeing the footage, again and again, was almost literally nauseating, not because of any disappointment for me as a Red Sox fan; it was disgusting because of the way it reduced a life to a single moment.

It was grossly unfair to the man and his family. To be remembered so universally for one mistake — not a mistake of moral judgment or a criminal act, but a human error — is cruel in the extreme.

The column in this space in the euphoric immediate aftermath of the 2004 Red Sox World Series win was titled “Time to Come Home, Billy Buck,” and suggested that Buckner throw out the first pitch in April, 2005 and receive “the standing ovation his 22-year career deserves.” Well, now that’s happened I’m glad, but there’s a residue.

Many of the articles in the aftermath of this year’s emotional first-day events presented the view that fans at Fenway were showing that all is forgiven, that Buckner has been absolved of his complicity in the years of frustration for Red Sox fans.

That’s wrong.

The response of fans in the opener this year was not some transformation of attitude. It was the opportunity, again, for Red Sox fans to recognize the man, the player, the quality of his effort and performance, his extraordinary skills, and his competitive spirit.

Opening Day was hardly the first time Buckner has stood on the field to receive in person the appreciation of Red Sox fans. In April 1987, just a few months after his costly error, on Opening Day, he received a warm and sustained ovation from fans — and then again when he came back to the Sox two years later in the final season of his career.

He never had to be forgiven by any real Red Sox fans, except for those most fringe members of so-called Red Sox Nation, or the arriviste.

I agree with the blogger who suggested the ovation Opening Day was not an absolution, but instead an apology, made “on behalf of the media who all too often would rather be glib than right,” on behalf “of the late night comics going for a cheap punch-line,” and their ilk among us.

So Bill Buckner, here we are, clowns to the left, jokers to the right, we’re stuck in the middle with you, and it’s okay with us, and always has been.