My Time to Shine

         For twenty two year's I worked in one of the greatest professions in the world. I played a game for a living, the game of baseball. In those twenty two years, I accumulated 2,715 hits and only struck out  453 times. In 1980, I won the batting title.  I am currently ranked 59th all time in career hits. That’s 59th out if thousands of players who have played this game for over a hundred years. From 1973 to 1983 I am ranked 5th in hits during that time. What I’m getting at is that I had a pretty productive career.          
   
    The problem with all of this is I will forever be remembered as the man who let one go through his legs. In 1986, the sixth game of the World Series came down to a two out, three and two pitch to Mookie Wilson who hit a lazy ground ball in my direction. All I had to do was bend my knees and grab it and the Boston Red Sox would have had their first championship in over 60 years. Just bend your  knees Bill. That’s what I told myself for a couple years after that incident. Just bend your knees.

         But then I started to remember the more important things about that series. The baseball fans of the world seem to have a selective memory. More important, the media doesn’t report that entire story. You see, people have forgotten that we lead that game going into the eighth inning before Calvin Schiraldi came in and gave up both a run in the eighth and the two in the tenth to lose it.  No one talks about the fact that all during the season, I was usually taken out of most games in the late innings for defensive purposes, yet I was left in this game in the 10th inning by manager John McNamara. And the biggest thing that everyone seems to forget is that we still had game seven to play. We even lead game seven by three runs going into the sixth when the Mets tied it. Calvin Schiraldi comes back in the seventh and here we go again, the Mets take the lead for good.
 
    So there you have it. It was sad that we lost our chance to overcome the “curse of the bambino” that year.  It was nice to have the Red Sox fans give me a standing ovation on my return to the Sox in 1990. Even though I retired two month later, I felt a touch of gratitude towards the fans of Boston. In 2008, after finally winning the World Series in 2007, the opening day crowd at Fenway gave me a four minute standing ovation as I helped unfold the Championship banner. Funny how life comes full circle,isn't it?

  I’d love to say my biggest disappointment was losing the pennant that year but for me, it was much deeper than that. For me, it destroyed my career.