It was the one last wafer-thin wisecrack that made Bill Buckner snap. On 4 July 1993 he was signing autographs in a parking lot outside McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, and when a boy passed him a ball to sign a man passing behind them said: “Don’t give him the ball, he’d just drop it anyway.” Buckner left, dumped his stuff in his truck, came back, grabbed the man by the collar and pinned him up against a wall. Buckner managed to stop himself from punching the guy – “thank God for that” – but it was right around then that Buckner finally decided it was time to for him and his family to quit Massachusetts and move to Idaho.
Buckner had a 20-year career in Major League Baseball, turned out for five different sides, made 2,715 hits in 9,397 at-bats. But he’s famous for one thing – letting a ground ball hit by Mookie Wilson slip between his legs in the 10th innings of game six of the 1986 World Series.
Written by Andy Bull
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/oct/16/freddie-burns-bill-buckner-inglorious-failure under the title “Buckner and Burns blunder their way into inglorious sporting immortality | Andy Bull”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
