RIP Bill Buckner

I play in an online trivia league in which players play head to head matches, then assigning point values to the questions (from 0 to 3) based on how much difficulty they think their opponent will have answering them. Defensive skills are just as important as knowledge, unless you answer all six questions for a perfect 9 points (known as a beer; the occasion 9(5) when you miss only the question to which your opponent has assigned zero points is known as a Dolly).
On occasion, a player, if he/she has played lousy defense, can answer two more questions correctly than an opponent yet lose. Being on the losing end of such a match has been known as getting Bucknered.
There is no political correctness in this game. The name isn't changing.

 

So there are two 1's and two 2's to be handed out?

 

Just because we're sj.com: What's a 6?

 

Michelle Beadle

 

Good job, NY Daily News

 

Yikes

 

He was a pretty good player who managed to stick around as an everyday major leaguer for a really long time (an impressive feat in its own right), enabling him to compile a lot of hits. He was neither great nor near-great. He rarely walked, had limited power for a corner infielder and - because of lack of speed - grounded into a lot of double plays and couldn’t stretch many hits for extra bases (though he had a couple years early in his career with a surprising number of SB). Average defense before his legs gave out. 1 All-Star Game appearance. Advanced stats (15.1 career WAR, 100 OPS+) show him as a slightly above-average player who’s remembered as better than he really was. He didn’t deserve the grief he got in the media (I’ve lived in Boston for more than 25 years and he was never really vilified by the average fan. Maybe a few cretins, but not by Boston fans generally). He certainly didn’t deserve what sounds like really difficult final years. But without the Game 6 error, he’d barely be remembered. He certainly wouldn’t have the TV cameos or the money he got signing autographs. And if he made the play, they still probably woukd have lost the game. They would have had to score the next inning and hold off the Mets after the previous inning’s debacle.

 

His weird (now it would be considered almost superhuman) ability not to strike out is really the most extraordinary element of Buckner's career.
Tyler Kepner of the Times noted that on Sunday, 16 MLB batter struck out three times in their games. In 22 years, Buckner never did so.
Joe Posnaski noted that last year Joey Gallo struck out 207 times. Bucker struck out 205 times in the 1970s.

 

That is impressive. But he still - overall - wasn’t as productive an offensive player as people consider him to be for all the hits he got.

 

Now I’m not making a direct comparison to joe DiMaggio, but he shared some similar traits: he didn’t either walk or strike out a lot; he put the ball in play.

 

In 1941, he had 622 PA' and struck out 13 times. That's insane.

 

And yet he only walked 76 times, his second highest total (80, 1950). That didn't even crack the top 10 in MLB, with Ted Williams nearly doubling his walk total with 147.

DiMaggio liked to swing the bat, was less discriminatory than Williams and many others. But he still put the ball in play. Might help explain why he had a hitting streak of 56 games while the longest of Williams' career was just 23 games.