RIP Bill Buckner, 1949-2019

[G-Fafif]

No outside confirmation, but Bobby V (his verified account) followed with a couple of pictures of himself and his old Dodgers teammate.



OE: It's official. Bill Buckner has died at 69.

[G-Fafif]

Per Jeremy Schaap, following a conversation with Jody Buckner (Bill's wife), Bill died today after battling Lewy Body Dementia.

[dgwphotography]

One hell of a hitter, and showed how classy he was by how he handled everything after 1986

[G-Fafif]

Remembering him for more than what shouldn't have to define a great career and full life http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2019/05/27/a-better-first-paragraph/here.

[batmagadanleadoff]

RIP. Jeez, he was like a part of the Mets family.

[Edgy MD]

Bill and Bobby debuted a few weeks apart from each other with the Dodgers in September 1969, and I assume were teammates on several minor league rosters.

[Guest 41Forever]

Edgy MD wrote: Bill and Bobby debuted a few weeks apart from each other with the Dodgers in September 1969, and I assume were teammates on several minor league rosters.

Is this Buckner, Lasorda, Garvey and Bobby V?



https://scontent.fdet1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/61238640_10157030090450900_5116285826065498112_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&_nc_ht=scontent.fdet1-1.fna&oh=9f5fbd7a0e184a7aa587b2f7cb56d197&oe=5D9300D2>

[Frayed Knot]

Edgy MD wrote: Bill and Bobby debuted a few weeks apart from each other with the Dodgers in September 1969, and I assume were teammates on several minor league rosters.

And both were considered superior athletes (even among groups of athletes) until injuries, age, and time wore them down.

NFL coach, and a college coach prior to that, Dick Vermeil once named Buckner as the player he was most disappointed at being unable to recruit.

I think Vermeil heading up Stanford at the time and Buckner was a local HS wide receiver "who could fly" acc to Vermeil.



Keith will likely have some words tonight (assuming he makes this trip).

He was just a couple years behind B.B. and described him as "a schoolboy legend" in northern California.

[G-Fafif]

It was overwhelmed by 1986, but Bill also had a moment of infamy in the 1974 World Series, trying to stretch a double into a triple and getting thrown out easily to kill the Dodgers' last chance. Johnny Carson joked about it in his monologue the next night, getting all-too-knowing laughs from his L.A. studio audience.

[Edgy MD]

Buckner was also an outstanding fielder, at least for the first half of his career. He played the cutoff like a quarterback. He was to the cutoff play what Keith Hernandez was to the sacrifice bunt.



Of course, he would never win a Gold Glove, because he was not Keith Hernandez.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy MD wrote: Buckner was also an outstanding fielder, at least for the first half of his career. He played the cutoff like a quarterback. He was to the cutoff play what Keith Hernandez was to the sacrifice bunt. Of course, he would never win a Gold Glove, because he was not Keith Hernandez.

That's odd because my first serious memories of Buckner came from playing the 1971 Strat-O-Matic set (for many years) and from that set at least, I remember Buckner as a pretty good hitter though not much of a home run threat who, defensively, was a jack of all trades who played several positions, none too well.

[Frayed Knot]

Great mustache

[batmagadanleadoff]

Buckner beat out Keith Hernandez for the NL 1980 batting crown by three points, depriving Keith of a second straight batting title.

[Edgy MD]

Edgy MD wrote: Buckner was also an outstanding fielder, at least for the first half of his career. He played the cutoff like a quarterback. He was to the cutoff play what Keith Hernandez was to the sacrifice bunt. Of course, he would never win a Gold Glove, because he was not Keith Hernandez. That's odd because my first serious memories of Buckner came from playing the 1971 Strat-O-Matic set (for many years) and from that set at least, I remember Buckner as a pretty good hitter though not much of a home run threat who, defensively, was a jack of all trades who played several positions, none too well.

That's probably accurate — both your memory and the ratings — but he became more refined at first as it became his position, if only briefly with the Cubs during the Mets' Torre Era. As his wheels started going early, he almost never took a grounder unassisted. He considered covering first on a grounder to him to be the pitcher's responsiblity, and he'd point at the bag to remind the pitcher to hustle over.

[TransMonk]

[MFS62]

Remembering him for more than what shouldn't have to define a great career and full life http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2019/05/27/a-better-first-paragraph/here.

The update sports person on WCBS quoted Mookie Wilson saying (basically) the same thing.

RIP.

Later

[Fman99]

Hey, 2700 career hits. An All Star. A batting title. Pretty damn fine career, errant WS grounders notwithstanding.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Lunchbucket's got a Bill Buckner avatar.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

That's right. Jesse Orosco's first batter faced

[Edgy MD]

Had an great and awful uncomfortable-looking stance.



Like a guy with a bad back who can't squat all the way down on the toilet.

[Willets Point]

[Lefty Specialist]

Classy guy and a great hitter who always deserved better.

[Guest 41Forever]

I'm surprised a guy with 2,700 hits and a batting title was an All-Star only once.

[Edgy MD]

1) He was a firstbaseman with limited power.



2) It was like, Gospel, for ballot stuffing boys everywhere to believe in the American American-ness of Steve Garvey. American in a way that Al Oliver and Tony Perez and Bill Buckner and Keith Hernandez and Richie [CROSSOUT]Hepburn[/CROSSOUT] Hebner and Mike Ivie could never be.



So, if Garvey got the automatic vote that he was due from every right-thinking, flag-waving, barbecue-grilling American, and the sentimental old-guy selections went to Willie McCovey and/or Willie Stargell, there weren't going to be a lot of All-Star appearances left to dole out among National League firstbasemen during Buckner's best years.



The only way Garvey's lock on the starting first base slot in the All-Star Game was broken was by Pete Rose moving over there — with appreciation of pre-Dowd Report Pete also being a near-requirement of citizenship, despite being perhaps the weakest starting firstbaseman in the league. His pursuit of the hit record and his being held up as the model of American grit and hustle outshone even the gleaming smile of rugged Park Ranger Steve Garvey.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Richie Hepburn? I'm not sure if you actually meant to type "Katharine" or "Audrey" there.

[Edgy MD]

I think Hebner got autocorrected.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The truth about baseball and its slow accumulations is more mundane than any of the stories—of failure, or of misunderstanding, or of redemption—that attached themselves to Buckner. For him, it was a mile of eye black and thousands of bags of ice and shredded knees, bickering with team executives about contracts and managers about playing time. It was appearing in a major-league game for the Dodgers at nineteen and winning a batting title with the Cubs at thirty-one. It was the great satisfaction not of being hailed by the fans on Opening Day, in 1990, but grinding to make the team in the first place. It was running the bases that season to leg out an unlikely inside-the-park home run, looking like “a suitcase falling downstairs,” as Roger Angell put it at the time.