Former Red Sox, Cubs, Royals, Angels and Dodgers OF/1B Bill Buckner passed away this week at the age of 69. When he was with the Cubs from 1977-1984, he was the best hitter on some pretty bad Cubs teams. Oh, and he was BY FAR my favorite Cub player as I grew up in suburban Chicago. Long-Time Chicago sportswriter John Schulian
I’m not here to write Billy Buck’s obituary. Others have done a much better job of that. Instead I wanted to look at Bill Buckner and sports radio. For more insight on this topic, I reached out to someone who has been part of the Boston sports radio scene for years–Jason Wolfe. Jason was the producer of “The Big Show with Glenn Ordway” and later the PD of WEEI in Boston for 16 years.
I asked Jason what would it have been like if sports radio was around in 1986 in Boston like it is now?
Jason Wolfe: If there was a full-fledged (sports) format and two or three stations…I’m sure it would have been an awful lot worse. I really think the bigger issue would have been social media. If Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube and everything else existed it would have been a thousand times more ugly than it was. But when you think about it, how much worse could it really have been from his perspective?
The guy was driven out of town and wound up having to move to some ranch in the deep woods of Idaho because there were death threats, harrassment from the media, his kids were bullied at school. This was just an awful situation. Years later when he came back and threw out the first pitch in ‘08, he talked about having to forgive the media.
Matt: What was your interaction with Buckner like after his playing career was over?
Jason: When I first started at WEEI and he got this job with the Brockton Rox, this was in ‘92 or 93, I remember bringing him (Buckner) in the studio and telling him, “We’re going to talk about being the new hitting instructor for the Brockton Rox, but I gotta be honest with you people are probably gonna bring up ‘86 are you okay with that?” He said, “ Yeah, from a fan’s perspective I can understand that. I’m over it now.”
So what happens? He comes into the studio and Glenn Ordway was the one doing the interview. He welcomed Buckner and asked him a couple of questions about the new job and veered into talking about ‘86. Buckner could not have been more eloquent and more welcoming for the question itself to the point where he ended up taking calls from listeners for the next hour and a half.
It was a real genuine, heartfelt, pleasant, enjoyable conversation to listen to. I’m in the other room producing it and I’m sweating bullets thinking he’s gonna be all pissed off. He didn’t care. He walked out and thanked me for bringing him in. He was happy to do it and off he went.
He was a great, great guy. He really was. I think the people that knew him best recognized that. They’re the ones that felt maybe even worse than he did for everything he had to go through.
Conclusion
Have we learned anything from Buckner’s lesson above? Sports radio and the media is tougher and more aggressive than it ever has been. I can’t even imagine how bad it would have been for Buckner and his family were sports radio around in 1986.
To me the great lesson is not necessarily a lesson about the media but the lesson of how Buckner handled everything. It takes a special person to get over something like that and handle it. Heck, he was even able to make fun of himself in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Matt Fishman is a former columnist for BSM. The current PD of ESPN Cleveland has a lengthy resume in sports radio programming. His career stops include SiriusXM, 670 The Score in Chicago, and 610 Sports in Kansas City. You can follow him on Twitter @FatMishman20 or you can email him at FishmanSolutions@gmail.com.
