Mookie on relationship with Buckner: 'We were that close'

NEW YORK -- Former Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson will never forget the phone call he received on May 27, 2019. He was in Atlanta with a relative when a reporter told him Bill Buckner passed away. Buckner was 69 years old.

Wilson, now 65, didn’t believe it. He had just seen Buckner a month before as they were making another appearance signing their names on baseballs and photos. Wilson knew Buckner was battling Lewy Body Dementia, but the news of his passing hit him hard.

“I was one of the first he called to tell me about his diagnosis,” Wilson said via telephone. “It took me a few days [to accept the fact that Buckner passed away]. I cut my phone off. I didn’t want to hear that he died. … I felt like I lost a brother. We were that close. You don’t know how close you feel to people until something like that happens. It stuck with me pretty hard.”

Wilson and Buckner became great friends after being forever linked to Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

Wilson was the hero; Buckner became the goat. In the bottom of the 10th inning with Red Sox reliever Bob Stanley on the mound, Wilson hit a slow roller to Buckner at first base. The ball went through his legs, allowing Ray Knight to score the winning run and tie the Series at 3. It didn’t help that Buckner was playing with a bad ankle.

“I can’t remember the last time I missed a ball like that,” Buckner said after the game, “but I’ll remember this one.”

The Mets would go on to win the World Series two days later, their first title since 1969. For the Red Sox, it didn’t matter that closer Calvin Schiraldi lost two games or that Oil Can Boyd gave up six runs in his lone start; Buckner was taking the hit for the World Series loss. That’s unfair, according to Wilson.

“It was just one of those things that happened,” Wilson said. “We just happened to be two of the fortunate, unfortunate people that were involved. Let’s move on. As he told me, ‘Let's ride with it.’”

After their playing careers ended, Buckner and Wilson became close friends while making appearances at baseball card shows.

“We made a little pact between us,” Wilson remembered. “We wouldn’t [make appearances] unless we both agreed to do it. He would say, ‘Look, I got this gig, you want to do it? Here’s how much we get paid. ... If it’s our price, we’ll do it.’ We would go over the amount, how long we would be together, what we are going to do. It was a gentleman's handshake deal. It was very simple. To this day, I never do certain interviews because it would put Bill on the spot. I turned down a lot of interviews and a lot of things because of that.”

Once they became friends, Buckner would sometimes call Wilson in the middle of the night. They didn’t talk about baseball. They would talk about family or potential fishing trips.

“He wanted me to go ice fishing with him,” Wilson said. “I said, ‘Man, look, Black guys don’t fish in no ice. They don’t do that kind of stuff.’ We had such a relationship that people don’t understand what it meant for us to be together in the same room. People would say, ‘You guys are talking?’ Why wouldn’t we? We became that close.”

Buckner’s wife, Jody, wanted Wilson to come to the private funeral service, but Wilson declined.

“I couldn’t do it and then I felt it was a family thing. I really did,” Wilson said. “But she expressed to me how Bill felt about me and our relationship. That made me feel really good. He felt that close to me that he was able to tell Jody. It was one of those situations where I was out of it for a while [because of Buckner’s death].”

How did the friendship start?

Wilson and Buckner first came into contact as National League East rivals. Wilson began his Major League career with the Mets in 1980 and became a popular figure in the city because of his heart and hustle. The only Buckner he knew prior to his big league debut was Jim Buckner, Bill’s younger brother. They were teammates for one year in 1979 when both were with Triple-A Tidewater.

“They were identical twins. Jim is the same size, left-handed. He ran like Bill,” Wilson recalled.

Bill was a veteran and one of the Cubs’ run producers. He would often say hi to Wilson because of the latter’s relationship with Jim.

On May 25, 1984, Buckner was traded to the Red Sox. Two years later, Buckner led Boston to the World Series against Wilson and the Mets. It was Buckner’s last solid season in the big leagues. At 36, he finished second on the team in RBIs with 102. Jim Rice had 110.

It was Game 6 of the World Series. Boston was one out away from winning their first World Series since 1918. In fact, in the bottom of the 10th inning, the Shea Stadium scoreboard flashed, “Congratulations, Boston Red Sox. 1986 World Champions.”

Even Wilson admits he thought the game was over after Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez made the first two outs of the inning. The Mets were down, 5-3.

“When Wally and Keith made the outs, it wasn’t looking too good,” Wilson remembered. “... I’ll be honest with you, I said, ‘We are about to blow this.’ There was no encouraging signs anywhere in that dugout. … There was no rah, rah.”

With two outs and Schiraldi on the mound, Gary Carter kept the inning alive by singling to left field. Pinch-hitter Kevin Mitchell followed and singled to center field to put runners on first and second. Ray Knight followed and blooped a single to right-center field, scoring Carter to make it a one-run game and moving Mitchell to third.

Red Sox manager John McNamara made a pitching change and put in Stanley, who proved to be no better than Schiraldi. Wilson was in the batter’s box when Mitchell scored on a wild pitch to tie the score at 5.

Wilson was the sixth hitter in the inning and he started to think the Mets could win the game. He felt he was dealing with house money. Wilson couldn’t lose the game because it was now suddenly tied.

Wilson worked the count full and then he hit a slow roller to first base that went through Buckner’s legs, allowing Knight to score the winning run. Shea Stadium went nuts. It was as if the Mets won the championship. Buckner became known as the goat for letting the winning run score and Wilson became the hero who hustled toward first when Buckner made the error.

“I had to do better with the pitch. I said things I shouldn’t have said. You know the words you say when things don’t go quite your way. I remembered I had to run,” said Wilson, who refused to reveal what he said as he was running the bases. “The ball would take forever to get down there. I’m just running hard. When the ball went through [Buckner’s] legs, I said those same things I said [after I hit the ball].

“I was just surprised. I knew Buckner very well. And I know the player that he was. [He] catches that ball in his sleep. Most people do. But like I said, crazy things happen for a reason.”

After that Series ended, Wilson and Buckner didn’t see each other again until the 1989 season. Wilson was a member of the Blue Jays, while Buckner was on the Royals’ roster. During pregame warmups at Royals Stadium, Buckner spotted Wilson stretching and asked, “Hey, Mookie, you want to hit me ground balls?”

“That broke the ice and it made me feel a lot better talking with him,” Wilson said. “From that day, that's how it started.”

Although Buckner’s career has been defined by that play in Game 6 of the ‘86 Fall Classic, Wilson, now an ambassador for the Mets, believes Buckner is a borderline Hall of Famer. Buckner finished with a .289 batting average, 2,715 hits and 1,208 RBIs, but his Wins Above Replacement was just 15.1 over his 22-year career.

“He was a phenomenal ballplayer,” Wilson said. “He did everything extremely well. He has better numbers than some of the people they put in the Hall of Fame now. I don’t get it.”