Way back in the year 2003, I was just starting to figure out why I had a website and where I wanted to go with it. I wasn't sure on a lot of the specifics, but even before I started, I knew that Buckner Week would be a feature at some point. Now some film critics have argued that Buckner Week is what got me started, but most have argued that it may have been more impactful if it had been produced later in my career. The good thing about all of this is that through a greed-motivated edict from the production company, I was able to take the original, repackage it in a pretty box, talk about some random uninteresting things, and pass it off as new and revised content.
I love technology.
A lot has happened since Buckner Week premiered on the infant web page, Leonardite.com. Its host site has grown beyond the home familiar to Buckner Week and the sheer magnitude of the whole operation is enough to make 2003 Leonardite.com look like a trial-and-error homepage (wait a minute...) But obviously the most important development has been the Boston Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series.
I could talk all day about why this sucks, why the Yankee haters who think this is a good thing are, to borrow Baseman's phrase, complete asshats, but that's not why we're here today. In the midst of all this has been a nationwide forgiveness of Bill Buckner and a negative reflection on the "misery" he has been put through. Rick Reilly just recently in fact wrote his increasingly-gay column on this very subject.
Tender-hearted sissies everywhere are calling for the denouncement of Buckner ridiculing. But stone-willed Leonardites aren't about to acknowledge the edicts of retards.
Is it Buckner's fault that the Red Sox lost the 1986 World Series? No. But did it contribute? Yes. Do I really care either way? Get real. Watch the video. Bill Buckner's joints move an inch at a time as he makes some sort of physical movement that slightly resembles a "bend." The end result is the most stereotpyical of all baseball errors: A S-L-O-W bouncing ball splitting the wickets of a rickety first baseman who has a tremendously cool mustache.
And you're trying to tell me that we need to forget this.
The Mets go nuts on home plate, Red Sox fans overreact massively as usual, and Buckner makes it to the dugout in about the same time it took him to bend at the waist. Now people are worried about Buckner's feelings. "Look at the anguish he has to go through for watching the ball roll between his legs." The guy is a baseball player. He has his ardent supporters, the people who defend him with such over-the-top zeal that it makes you wonder what's in it for them. This famous man made enough money to retire to a life of watching himself look like a boob in the World Series. I think it's worth having a few finely-crafted croquet sets in his likeness in exchange for that luxury.
Back to Buckner Week, the content has been altered a bit in spots. At the time it first ran, I had mistakenly thought that Bill had moved to Montana (he's actually in Idaho.) This has been corrected in spots, but preserved in images and the poem. I also tried to take out a few of the phrases that were related to the website at the time, but if you are curious as to what was there, you can check out the original version which is available on this disc.
In conclusion, Buckner Week was a lot of fun then and it's even more fun now that Rick Reilly thinks I'm a big meanie for teasing an old baseball player. Personally I think that Reilly should stick to writing every third column about Lance Armstrong and continue his pursuit of getting him to remove that sweaty yellow jersey and wrap it sexily around Rick's smile-laden face.
Back in the box, Mookie