Learning to Hate and to Forgive Buckner

So after I wrote my blog here last night, about Bill Buckner’s return to Fenway, I felt pretty content with myself. I felt as if I had expressed my opinions about Buckner and the situation and in just a tiny bit less than mature way. But that was okay with me. Then I woke this morning, and checked the comments on my different blog sites and the only that stood out to me the most said something in the nature of “grow some pubes and grow up”. Others just simply told me that I was wrong to hate Buckner. I was told to hate Calvin Schiraldi, but my blog says that he is one of the people who I widely hate and blame for 1986. Other just simply tried to explain to me who Buckner is not the person to blame or hate.

Being only sixteen, many of my early baseball views came from other baseball fans; those people primarily being, my dad, a Red Sox fan, and my step-mother and step-sister, both Yankees fans. Being a “daddy’s girl” I sided with my dad and any opinion that he had of baseball. The first time that I heard about Bill Buckner was when I was about six or seven. My dad was going on a rant and I patiently sat, listened, and learned. He never even mentioned Schiraldi or Stanley. He placed the blame of Buckner and the fact that the ball went through his legs. I didn’t even know that this happened in the top of the tenth, after Stanley had allowed the game to be tied on a wild pitch. All I heard was “The Red Sox lost the 1986 World Series because Buckner allowed the ball to grow through his legs”. I knew that this guy had “hurt” my dad greatly when he was only fourteen. So of course, my early intense hatred for a baseball figure went to Buckner.

It wasn’t until two years ago, when I became extremely interested in baseball that I actually learned of what really happened in 1986. I learned that the Red Sox had tied the game at the top of the tenth; I learned that Schiraldi blew the inning, and the Stanley allowed the game to be tied. I learned all of this through spending the better part of a year just reading books on the Red Sox. I was then, fourteen and just learning to appreciate baseball and the Sox (and it was a tough season to do this during).

What I’m trying to say is that I grew up hearing that Buckner caused the pain, and that Buckner was the person to hate. When I finally began learning for myself I did transfer a lot of the hate onto other people. But what still stood out in my mind, was that 1986 was the first year that my dad got to see the Red Sox and a World Series, and he told me to hate Buckner. So naturally, that still remained in my mind and my heart.

So at sixteen, yeah I do need to grow up more. And I do still have a lot to learn about the game. I need to learn to forgive and forget, and my time of forgiving Buckner and forget the play will eventually come. Maybe it will come sooner than later. But for now, I will still go about with at least some of the feelings that I had yesterday (at this point they have been trampled by these comments and some of my teachers who read my blogs). I respect Buckner, but right now, now I do not forgive him for breaking my dad’s heart.