
I have found myself pausing reflectively in front of one
shelf in my study a number of times recently, ever since hearing of the death
of former Red Sox first baseman, Bill Buckner. In the right hand corner of the
shelf there is a small glass case framed in black-stained wood. In the case
there is a signed baseball, a few warm words in blue ink before the signature:
“To Vic, Happy 60th, Bill Buckner #6.” In truth, the connection I feel with
that baseball is more with the person through whom it came to me than with the
one who signed it. Through the years, however, I have come to feel that the
life teaching of a baseball player and the challenges he faced on and off the
field is its own gift. It is a gift whose meaning has come to be interwoven
with my love for the one who gave the ball to me and facilitated its signing.
My son, Yossi, was working in New York that summer for the
TV program, Curb Your Enthusiasm, with Larry David. One episode was built
around Bill Buckner and the one game in his long baseball career for which he
is, sadly, most known. On the day of the filming, Yossi’s job was to look after
Bill Buckner, picking him up at the airport and taking him wherever he needed
to be. Having become friendly during the day, at some point Yossi shared that
he would be heading to Boston soon for his father’s sixtieth birthday. And then
Yossi asked Bill if he would sign a baseball for me. Yossi ran to the props
department and came back with a baseball that Bill Buckner happily signed. The
story still makes me smile, even causing me to tear up now as I feel the
ballplayer’s warmth.
As I explained in sharing this story as part of a High Holy
Day sermon in 5771 in September 2010, Bill Buckner’s story is about much more
than baseball and about much more than Bill Buckner. It is about life and about
all of us. It is about t’shuva, the
way of our turning to each other to make amends, to reweave wholeness, and
about the way of our going on the path of life. It is about how we pick up and
keep going when things don’t work out quite as we hoped they would. And it is
about how we respond to others when they don’t come through quite as we hoped they
would.

As some surely remember, and as others have surely heard the
much-told tale, it was on October 25, 1986. It was the sixth game of the World
Series between the Red Sox and the Mets. Playing in New York, Boston was
leading the series three games to two. The game went into extra innings, with
the Sox going ahead in the top of the tenth. In the bottom of the tenth, the
Mets tied the game. With a runner on third, Mookie Wilson at the plate for New
York, a routine ground ball to first, the promise of another opportunity for
the Sox. And then it happened. The ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs. The
runner on third scores and the Mets win. Having been one out away from their
first World Series title since 1918, the Sox lost that game, and the next. Winning
the World Series would wait until 2004.
Whether a baseball fan or not, the story of Bill Buckner is
for all of us. It is about how we respond to ourselves and to others when an
error is made, when the ball goes through our legs or those of another. The
fans and the sports media were brutal to Bill Buckner. I start to cry as I
think of how his error brought out the worst of people. His was simply an error
on the ball field, hardly the only factor that contributed to yet one more
season of demise for the Red Sox. The error of Boston fans on the field of life
contributed to the near destruction of a life. Bill Buckner continued to play
ball for a few more years, retiring after a career that spanned more than
twenty years, a career in which he accumulated more total hits than either of
the baseball greats, Ted Williams or Joe Dimaggio. Eventually, he and his
family moved far enough away from New England to escape the vitriol that
continued to be directed at him by fans whose inability to forgive stands as a warning
to all of us.
It is the nature of life. Balls go through our legs at the
most inopportune time. Mistakes are part of life. Sometimes the stakes are
higher and sometimes lower. That is why we need
t’shuva, that turning to forgive, to reweave wholeness. In a
ballpark conversation once with my youngest daughter, much important
“Torah”/teaching to be learned while watching a ballgame, I asked whose
responsibility was it to do
t’shuva,
Bill Buckner’s or the fans’? The answer was clear. The fans’ error was the
greater one, the one with the greatest consequence, and the one with the
greatest challenge for all of us.

Asked about the play that defined his career,
Buckner said: “It’s an issue society has to figure out, especially when it
comes to teaching lessons to children. I realize professional athletes accept
some of that responsibility…. But is that what you want to do to the kids, that
they shouldn’t try?” It takes courage to try. It takes courage and faith to
fail. A question of acceptance and forgiveness, a way of going in life, how do
we judge our selves and others when the ball goes through our legs?
Bill Buckner died in the week of the Torah portion called B’chukotai (Lev. 26:3-27:34). I thought
about that as I looked at the baseball and read his good wishes to me. The
portion offers teaching about how we go, how we walk on the way of life, how we
comport our selves in the world. So it opens, im b’chokotai telechu/if you will walk in my statutes…. The
Slonimer Rebbe pushes back vociferously against any who say that these words
are simply about fulfilling commandments. He says that these words are about going in the way and spirit of the Torah/al
halicha ba’derech v’ru’ach ha’torah. The Slonimer points out that there are
many situations encountered in life for which the Torah does not offer specific
guidance, a specific mitzvah/commandment.
That is when we need to know and be guided by the way and spirit of Torah, a
way that encourages us to walk in harmony with God and with people, a way that
begins with a gentle breath upon the water, the first expression of God’s hope
for us in birthing a world.

Hoping that we will learn to walk with each other, God says
a few verses later,
I will walk among
you/v’hit’halachti b’to’cha’chem and will be God to you, and you will be a
people to me…. Rashi brings a beautiful rabbinic reframing of that verse,
God telling the people:
atayel imachem
b’gan eden k’echad mi’kem/I will walk with you in the Garden of Eden as one
with you and you shall not be shaken…. A way is modeled for us, a way by
which we shall walk together, giving strength and understanding to each other,
adults and children, that none shall feel shaken by mistakes or be afraid to
try, walking together toward wholeness.

As I stood in front of the shelf in my study this week,
gazing at the baseball signed in blue ink, reading its warm words, I thought of
the teaching that makes Bill Buckner’s memory a blessing for all of us.
Carefully turning the baseball in my hand, feeling the smoothness of its
surface punctuated by the roughness of its stitching, melodic modes and moods,
seasons of life, I imagined how he might have turned it, perhaps a bit
wistfully, before signing it. In the turning of a baseball, I thought of a
teaching of the rabbis concerning Torah,
hafoch
ba, hafoch ba d’kula ba/turn it, turn it, all is within it… It is true of
Torah, it is true of baseball, and it is true of life. In the turning of life,
we know for a certainty that there will be for each of us high points and low,
joys and sorrows, triumphs and tribulations. Sometimes the ball will go through
our legs, and sometimes through someone else’s. The only question is of our
response, whether we shall further compound the pain, or if in the fullness of
Eden’s vision we shall walk together, responding with compassion for ourselves
and for others. It is a teaching of Torah and of a warmly signed baseball in a
small glass case, the giver of the ball and its teaching having become one, and
of the love that joins us on the path of life.
Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein