Bill Buckner, the outstanding major league hitter whose career was overshadowed by a historic error in the Red Sox’s 1986 World Series loss, died Monday at the age of 69.
Buckner died of Lewy Body Dementia, according to his family. “Our hearts are broken but we are at peace knowing he is in the arms of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” his family said in a statement to ESPN.
Buckner played in 22 major league seasons as a first baseman and outfielder for several teams, amassing over 2,700 hits and winning a batting title in 1980.
He gained infamy, however, in the 1986 World Series as a member of Boston Red Sox when they imploded against the New York Mets. After the Red Sox had come within one out from wrapping up the series in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6, he capped off the team’s collapse by committing an error on a routine ground ball to first base by the Mets’ Mookie Wilson, allowing the winning run to score.
The Red Sox would go on to lose the series, and Boston fans and the media scapegoated him. In time, the anger of the fan base — which had not seen a World Series victory since 1918 and came to view Buckner’s error as part of a ‘curse’ lingering over the team — led him to relocate from Massachusetts to Idaho and maintain a low profile.
The Red Sox won the championship in 2004 and 2007. For some time after the curse was lifted, Buckner avoided attention and turned down an invitation from the team to appear in Boston, having grown accustomed to abuse from bitter Red Sox fans. But when the team invited Buckner to throw out the first pitch of the 2008 season he accepted and earned a long ovation from the Fenway Park crowd.
“I really had to forgive, not the fans of Boston, per se, but I would have to say in my heart I had to forgive the media,” Buckner said then. “For what they put me and my family through. So, you know, I’ve done that, and I’m over that.”
