1986: the obvious.

[Note: this may be the first of several baseball posts. I'm not quite sure.  It's a little silly to do this now, since the Series has ended and we are well and truly into football season, but it's what is on my mind after seeing Moneyball last Friday.]

As many of my friends can tell you, I have a penchant for stating the obvious.  It's not because I'm not bright, but because I don't always self-edit as much as I could.  So, once again I am going to state the obvious truth:

Bill Buckner did not lose the Red Sox the World Series in 1986.

I have always hated the Blame Bill Buckner theory, because a) it's not fair to Buckner and b) it belittles exactly what the Mets did to win the Series. In order for it to make sense, you have to ignore several crucial facts.

Fact 1: Baseball is a team sport.  No one person, generally speaking, loses a game for a club -- unless it's a pitcher that gives up 5 runs in an inning, and even then, the manager bears some responsibility for not yanking the guy.

Fact 2: The poor performance of the Red Sox relievers.  The Mets were behind 5-3 with one out remaining. The Red Sox relievers gave up not one, not two, but three singles to let the Mets tie the game.  If any one of those singles had been an out, then the Sox would have won the Series, and saved the rest of us from having to hear their fans crying about it to this day.* And that is even overlooking Bob Stanley's wild pitch that allowed Kevin Mitchell to score the tying run.  So Mookie Wilson's slow grounder to first went through Buckner's legs?  Mookie Wilson should never had been up to the plate in the first place; the relievers fell down on the job.

Fact 3:  This was only Game 6.  There was another game. I mentioned this to a Red Sox fan in the mid-1990s, and his reply was that it was simply a foregone conclusion that the Sox would lose Game 7.  They would simply be too demoralized.

Baloney.  The Red Sox led through five innings, and it was tied in the sixth. I remember: I was sitting chewing my fingernails watching the game.  Fortunately, Sid Fernandez (on whom I had a major league crush at one time, heh) held down the fort so that Jesse Orosco, who Bill James names as one of the best left-handed relievers in baseball history, could close out the game.  Also fortunately, the Mets bats finally came alive.

Great teams come back from humbling defeats.  The fact that the Sox were able to get a lead and hold it for more than half the game showed that they were a great team, that they had not been beaten down by the loss the night before.

They were simply beaten by a greater team.  The Mets never led the series until they won it.  They had been down two games to none and they battled back.  They were down three games to two, and they battled back.  They were down to their very last out, and they scrapped out a win.

So no, Bill Buckner did NOT lose the Series for the Red Sox in 1986.  If any of their players were responsible, it was their relievers.  In reality, though, no one lost the '86 Series for the Red Sox...

The Mets won it for themselves.

*Although since 2004 they've cried about it a great deal less often.