There must be a specter of bad timing that haunts good athletes, like some ghost that breathes allergenic dark matter into a player’s airway and makes him cough up the moment. It appears in about two and a half seconds: Which is how long it took the ball to leave Mookie Wilson’s bat, bounce toward first base, and make it to Bill Buckner—and also how long it took on the final play of Saints-Vikings for the ball to leave Case Keenum’s hand, float 40 yards on a straight line, and make it to defensive back Marcus Williams. Had Buckner done his job the way he usually did, the Red Sox may have won the 1986 World Series. Had Williams done his, New Orleans, not Minnesota, would be among the final four teams in this year’s NFL playoffs.
Instead, their careers were spoiled in almost identical time, down to the instant New York Met Ray Knight (ed: not Phil, of Nike fame!) crossed the plate after Buckner’s error and Viking Stefon Diggs reached the end zone after Williams’s whiff (five seconds each). The events were so aligned, it’s like Vin Scully hung on a fermata for 32 years so he could describe what happened to Williams exactly the way he described what happened to Buckner. Listen to how his telling of the Sox’s demise matches what transpired in Minneapolis Sunday night:
The Vikings Bucknered the Saints. pic.twitter.com/RI0v722Jnf
— Chris Deaton (@cgdeaton) January 15, 2018
If Bill Buckner had made the Hall of Fame (he didn’t), his plaque still would’ve read “It gets through Buckner!” He had a fine career: He won a batting title in 1980, was an all-star in 1981, and was respected by teammates throughout a two-decade run for being a “selfless player in an age of big salaries and bigger egos,” his profile in the book The 1986 Boston Red Sox: There Was More Than Game Six reads. But one ignominious instant defined him.
“The one thing anyone has ever said about me defensively is that I have good hands,” he told Peter Gammons after the season from a hospital, where he was being interviewed by Sports Illustrated for a story and being treated by doctors for an ankle injury that hampered his season. He’d sustained a staph infection in that ankle 10 years prior, necessitating a position switch to first from the outfield, where he could get away with “basically playing with one leg.”
“I think if I had two good legs, I would’ve done enough to get in [the Hall],” he said, reflecting on his career in 2003.
Instead, Buckner’s reputation was stained by the late-career mishap—1986 was his age-36 season, and Boston released him midway through ’87. But while his name was cursed on sports talk radio and he received death threats, many fans embraced him: He received a one-minute ovation at a post-World Series rally and was well-received upon returning to the Sox for a last hurrah in 1990. It was the media that Buckner said gave him the toughest time. In an anecdote he’s mentioned over the years, an Associated Press reporter asked him if he had considered suicide, after an old teammate who also experienced playoff mishaps, California Angels pitcher Donnie Moore, took his own life in 1989. (Moore’s story was more complicated than just baseball.) “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, for what they put me and my family through,” Buckner said after Red Sox opening day in 2008.
Marcus Williams’ media critics will be the social ones: the Twitter types and such, but also the pulmonary journalists whose almighty radio and TV commentary is amplified on social platforms. What listeners may not hear through the noise is that Williams, a rookie, was graded a “high-quality” defensive back and one of the league’s 10-best newcomers by the leading football analysts who get paid to evaluate this stuff. His Saints teammate and fellow defensive back Sterling Moore called him “wise beyond his years.” He had an interception earlier in the game against the Vikings—without which the Saints might not have even been in a position to win.
Such is the give and take of sports. For a skilled 21-year-old paid to intercept footballs, there’ll be a lot more taking in the future.
