For an entire generation of Red Sox fans, 1986 is now little more than a footnote
COMMENTARY
Based on the welcoming reception Bill Buckner received at Fenway Park Wednesday night, Red Sox fans have forgiven the circumstances of the past.
So there are probably no hard feelings directed toward Buckner now for treating the 30th anniversary of New England’s collective, emotional scarring with what might come off as an aloof shrug.
“Hey, as they say, s*** happens,” Buckner said prior to taking part in an on-field feting of the 1986 Red Sox team that came one strike away from winning a World Series title 18 years before the 2004 team re-wrote baseball history.
S*** happens?
Maybe Buckner, above all, deserves to treat the history with an iron heart, not for the least for the torturous aftermath he experienced in the years after “…it gets through Buckner. Here comes [Ray] Knight and the Mets win it.” The man became a punchline, a victim of circumstance that received the bulk of the blame hardly levied upon the likes of Calvin Schiraldi, Bob Stanley, or manager John McNamara for not putting Dave Stapleton in as a defensive replacement at first base as was the norm.
So, perhaps, in that vein, indeed, s*** happens.
But it was one, huge pile of dung.
Buckner, Roger Clemens, Marty Barrett, Dwight Evans, Jim Rice, and Wade Boggs (along with, perhaps, more memorable names such as Tim Lollar, Joe Sambito, Sammy Stewart, and Jeff Sellers) were among the nearly three dozen players and coaches from the 1986 Red Sox honored for their part in one of the most memorable Red Sox teams in franchise history, three decades after the most trying period in Boston sports history.
Twenty years after you figured it to one day be an impossibility, Clemens received a loud ovation from the Fenway crowd, as did Wade Boggs, who will have his No. 26 retired prior to Thursday night’s series finale against the Colorado Rockies. Both players, of course, eventually defected to New York (Clemens by way of first playing closer to his Texas home…in Toronto), where they won World Series titles with the New York Yankees in lieu of here in Boston. There might have been some bitterness about that.
But no worries about that anymore. Hey, the happy, go-lucky Fenway fans of present day even gave a polite hand to former pitcher Mike Trujillo, who happened to pitch a grand total of 5 2/3 innings for the ’86 squad.
Thirty years after the ball rolled through Buckner’s legs. Nineteen years after Boggs finally won a ring in the Bronx. Seventeen years after Boston’s occasional encounters with Clemens began and brought out the merciless nature of what was, frankly, a more hardened fan base.
All’s good.
“We didn’t bring a championship back to Boston,” Boggs said about the ’86 team that lost to the New York Mets in seven games in one of the best World Series ever played. “But thank God for 2004.”
We knew it would, but it’s in instances like Wednesday night that you really understand how much the 2004 World Series title altered the fan base’s personality, from one doomed to hard-luck fate to what is essentially a “Lego Movie” soundtrack. More than any other team, the ’86 Red Sox defined this franchise’s adversity, reminding its fans that they’d better have a hardened soul to follow this team, because they would have no problem tearing your heart from your chest at the most inopportune moment.
Three trophies later, it’s all gone.
As difficult as it might be for some of us of a certain age to comprehend that the experiences of 1986 now took place 30 years ago, so too it is for a generation of fans to truly understand what the aftermath of 1986 was like in these parts. Consider that fans who happen to be the same age as Red Sox studs Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts (23) were born during Boggs’ final season in Boston (’92). And he went on to play another seven years in New York and Tampa.
“Everybody kept saying, 1918, 1918, 1918,” Boggs said. “We’re tired of hearing that, and we were on the brink.”
And then…
For an entire generation, postseason heartache was really limited to watching Aaron Boone launch one off of Tim Wakefield in the 2003 ALCS, a defining moment that lasted all of 365 days in the inner torture chamber. For the rest of us, ’86 burned a reminder in our rawhide souls that lasted through both the up and down years. That doesn’t make the old-timer sitting next to you any better, but a reminder of how damned good you happen to have it.
“This is a special one, because it kind of put me on the map,” said Clemens, who was 24-4 for the ’86 Red Sox, the first of six World Series appearances he would make over his career. “The championship year that we’re celebrating is very special. We had some guys on that team that were winners, that wanted to win, that expected to win…I think that’s what you want in a team.”
It was also one that was picked to finish fifth in the preseason, according to Boggs.
“Things absolutely got better for us after the Red Sox won,” he said. “No more 1918. I think now people can appreciate our team for what we did and not for what we didn’t do.
“I don’t think we’re underachievers. At all. I think we came up one step short. Naturally.”
Naturally.
But hey, s*** happens.
Just no longer it seems.
Heck, after the recent welcomes he’s received in his former den of shame, Clemens is even looking forward to more historic celebrations in the future at Fenway Park.
“We’ll go to 2034 for the 2004 team,” he said, “see what those guys look like.”
That ceremony is only 18 years away.
Plenty of time for a handful more World Series trophies, right?
Red Sox in the Baseball Hall of Fame
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