Why the Red Sox' 1986 World Series loss might not be all Bill Buckner's fault
The following is excerpted from LOSING ISN’T EVERYTHING by Curt Menefee with Michael Arkush. Copyright © 2016 by Curt Menefee. Used by permission of Dey Street Books, a division of Harper Collins. All rights reserved.
With two outs at Shea, the crowd stunned, Gary Carter, the Mets’ future Hall of Fame catcher, walked up to the plate. Calvin Schiraldi was feeling pretty good about things, especially for somebody who had needed to refocus because he’d assumed he was done for the night. In the top of the tenth, with the game tied 3–3, he was told the Sox would pinch-hit for him. The move was the right one. He had pitched two innings already. Calvin threw as much as three innings only a few times the whole season.
“So now I’m relaxed on the bench, chilling out,” he said.
Losing Isn't Everything
by Curt Menefee
An athlete, you see, digs deep to get into what is called “the zone” and tries to remain in the zone for as long as he has to perform. Once he leaves, even briefly—“You breathe,” Calvin said—finding his way back into it isn’t always easy. It might take time, and that was a luxury he didn’t have.
Yet, after the Sox were retired, he went back to the mound and had no difficulty with Backman and Hernandez. With Carter representing the final out, there was no point in being precise.
“I’ll just throw it down the middle and see what happens,” he figured.
Even if Carter were to knock it out of the park, the Sox, who tacked on an insurance run after Henderson’s homer, would still be leading 5–4. The one thing Calvin didn’t want to do was walk Carter to bring the tying run to the plate.
There was little danger of that happening. On a 2-1 delivery, Calvin threw it right down the middle, as he had planned. Carter took advantage, stroking a single to left. The Mets weren’t dead yet.
Next up would be pinch hitter Kevin Mitchell, who had to be summoned from the clubhouse. He, like many others, had figured the game was over.
Calvin and Mitchell knew each other, having been roommates on the Mets’ top farm club, the Tidewater Tides, in Portsmouth, Virginia. The two used to talk about a day they might face each other. Now that day was here. Back in Portsmouth, Calvin had told Mitchell exactly what he would do: he’d throw a slider because it was a pitch that usually gave him a lot of trouble. He hadn’t forgotten.
“He knows what’s coming,” Calvin said, “but if I throw a good one, he’s not going to hit it.”
Just one problem: Calvin didn’t throw a good one. He threw a terrible one. He hung it. Mitchell, most likely remembering their conversation as well, was ready for it and lined a single to center to put the tying run on base. One of the most important pitch selections of the Series had come not from a manager or a catcher but from the fact Calvin and Mitchell had been teammates in the minors. Shea began to stir.
The next batter was third baseman Ray Knight, a .298 hitter in 1986. The first pitch was a fastball at the knees. Strike one. On the next pitch, Knight hit a slow roller along the third base line that went foul. The Mets were down to their last strike.
Now, with a 0-2 count, Calvin could afford to waste one outside the strike zone. Perhaps Knight would even help him by chasing a pitch in the dirt and striking out. At the very worst, the 1-2 count would still be in Calvin’s favor.
That seemed quite logical, but that’s not what Calvin did. He had no intention of wasting anything. All he thought about was rearing back and throwing the ball as hard as he could.
“I didn’t know where it was going,” he conceded.
Maybe not, but he, and everyone else, saw where the ball ended up: on the grass in center field. Knight didn’t hit it particularly hard, but it was hard enough to allow Carter to score, and suddenly, the lead was down to just 1, the Mets still threatening with runners on the corners.
Calvin was angry with himself. He knew better. He picked the worst time to give up his first hit of the whole year on an 0-2 count. He was anxious to make up for his blunder right away.
“I was a little tired,” he recalled, “but I wanted to finish. This was my doing.”
He wouldn’t get that chance. John McNamara, the Red Sox manager, had seen enough. With Mookie Wilson, a .289 hitter, due up, he handed the ball to another relief pitcher, Bob Stanley, known as “Steamer.” Calvin understood the reasoning.
“Steamer had good success against Mookie,” he admitted. “I had never faced him.”
If Calvin, as fate would have it, wasn’t the man to lead the Red Sox to their first World Series title since 1918, perhaps Stanley was. He saved 16 games that season, the most on the team.
Perhaps not. The baseball gods had teased the Sox and their fans long enough. It was time to torture them. After four pitches, Stanley was even with Wilson: 2 balls and 2 strikes. The Sox again were one pitch away.
But after Wilson fouled off the next two pitches, Stanley threw a wild one. Wilson had to jump out of the way as it went all the way to the backstop, allowing Mitchell to score and tie the game at 5–5. Knight moved on to second. Suddenly, amazingly, the Mets were a base hit away from winning the game and taking the Series to a deciding Game 7.
Wilson fouled off two more pitches before . . . well, you know the rest. The most famous ground ball in baseball history went off Wilson’s bat and through first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs. Buckner, with his ailing ankles, shouldn’t have even been in the game at this point. His backup, Dave Stapleton, who was better defensively, had replaced him in the late innings of the Sox’ victories in Games 1, 2, and 5.
Game over. Curse alive and well.
Calvin, who took the loss, watched the ending on TV in the clubhouse. He dressed in a hurry, and then faced the music again before going back to his hotel. The only consolation was that the Red Sox, and perhaps Calvin, would get one more chance. Game 7 was less than twenty-four hours away.
At the hotel, he opened his Bible. For a change, he didn’t pick up at the section where he had left off. He went back to the passage that had moved him so deeply after he blew the save in Anaheim, dealing with life’s trials and tribulations. Calvin needed to take in the comforting words now more than ever.
Heavy rain fell the next day in the Big Apple, postponing Game 7 for a day. Calvin doesn’t remember much about the day off. He would prefer to forget the day after as well.
With everything on the line for the Sox, he came in a bit earlier than normal, starting off the seventh in relief of Bruce Hurst, the game knotted at 3–3. Leading off for the Mets was Knight. Perhaps Calvin could get him out the second time around, just as he got Brian Downing out the second time in the ALCS.
No such luck. Knight didn’t hit a soft liner to center as he did in Game 6. On a 2-1 pitch, he hit a homer to left. The Mets went on top, 4-3.
Lenny Dykstra, pinch-hitting for Mitchell, followed with a single to right and advanced to second on a wild pitch. He then scored on a base hit by Rafael Santana. Facing only four batters, Calvin gave up 3 runs on 3 hits and a wild pitch, and recorded just 1 out. New York won the game 8–5. Calvin took the loss once more.
Mets: world champions. Red Sox: cursed again.
Now in his midfifties, Calvin spends a lot of his time these days either baking in the Texas sun or hanging out in his “office,” a messy trailer that is attached to a shed and surrounded by dirt. When he’s at work, Calvin is at peace. He doesn’t cling to the past, that’s for sure.
You can tell by the pictures on the wood-paneled walls across from the old air conditioner. Only one photo has to do with his time in the bigs, and that’s of him at Fenway Park in Game 7 of the 1986 ALCS against the Angels. The only reason that’s even up there is that somebody gave it to him at a reunion. All the other dozen or so photos are of high school kids. These are the memories that mean the most to him.
“Kind of hard to beat what I’ve got down here,” he said.
Down here is St. Michael’s Catholic Academy in Austin, only a few miles from where he grew up. Calvin came to St. Michael’s five years after he threw his last pitch in the majors, in 1991 with the Texas Rangers. He was only twenty-nine. He’d lost that tremendous fastball of his and couldn’t get it back. He wasn’t the first.
“I crumbled down and had a conversation with God,” he recalled. “I said, ‘What am I supposed to do?’”
What he was supposed to do, he realized, was pass on his knowledge of the game to others by becoming a coach. He went back to the University of Texas and earned his teaching degree.
St. Michael’s isn’t very big, with about 350 students in grades nine to twelve. In 2014, only seventeen boys went out for baseball, including freshmen. That wasn’t enough to field a full practice game. No matter. Calvin is more fulfilled here than when he was pitching in front of thirty-five thousand screaming fans at Fenway. He’s able to make a living in the only world he has ever known and, better yet, make a difference.
“I like the younger guys,” he said. “I can teach them more about the game. Kids in high school are very naive.”
He doesn’t care how many go on to play college ball; he counts ten in twenty years, with just three making it as far as the minor leagues, including his son, Lukas, who plays in the Seattle Mariners’ organization. But Calvin cares tremendously about the values they adopt and the men they become. He expects them to be on time, have their shirts tucked in, and do their schoolwork.
“Take care of your stuff up there,” he warns the teens, referring to the school’s main building, about two hundred yards from the baseball field, “before you come down here. If I get an e-mail from a teacher that says you are messing up in class, it’s your ass in practice.”
Most of his players have been aware of who Coach Schiraldi was back in his day, although, with a handful of exceptions, they choose not to ask him about the past, or they don’t care. He won’t bring it up, either, except when it can be instructive.
“With the kids,” he said, “it’s all about St. Michael’s and how far we can go in the playoffs.”