Bill Buckner, Baseball Great From Napa, Dies at 69

Bill Buckner, regarded as one of the best hitters in baseball history but better known for making one of the game's most infamous plays, died Monday. He was 69.

Buckner's family said in a statement that he died after a long battle with Lewy body dementia, a disease that causes Alzheimer's-like symptoms along with movement and other problems.

"Bill fought with courage and grit as he did all things in life," his family said.

Buckner was born in Vallejo in 1949 and raised in American Canyon, where his mother falsified his birth certificate to get him into Little League a year early.

He was a two-sport star athlete at Napa Valley High School. He set several receiving records as a pass-catching end on the football field, and he was named to the Coaches All-American team two years in a row. On the baseball diamond, he hit a remarkable .667 in 1967 and .529 in 1968, before graduating and getting drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Buckner was one of baseball's best hitters. A career .289 hitter with 2,715 hits in 22 major league seasons, he won the National League batting title in 1980 and was famous for almost never striking out. (His highest strikeout total for a season was a measly 39 in 1984, and he holds the Napa Valley High School record for fewest strikeouts in a season with one.)

He had another great year in 1986, hitting .267 with 18 home runs and 101 runs batted in to help lead the Boston Red Sox to the World Series against the New York Mets. But Buckner will always be first and foremost remembered for one fielding mistake in that World Series.

The Red Sox, looking for their first World Series win since 1918, were up 5-3 on the Mets in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 at Shea Stadium. The Mets tied it with two outs, and then Mookie Wilson hit a trickler up the first base line that rolled through Buckner's legs, an error that let Ray Knight rush home from second base with the winning run.

The Red Sox lost Game 7 8-5, and the team's World Series drought remained for almost another two decades until 2004.

Buckner, who was known as one of baseball's toughest competitors and a great teammate, was savaged by Boston fans for years because of the error, which was repeatedly shown on highlight reels.

But in 2008, after the Red Sox won their second championship in four years, Buckner was invited to throw out the first pitch at Boston's Fenway Park. Buckner wiped tears from his eyes as he stood on the mound, taking in the crowd's standing ovation before delivering a strike to former teammate Dwight Evans.

Buckner said the moment was "probably about as emotional as it could get."

"I really had to forgive," he said later that day, "not the fans of Boston per se, but I would have to say, in my heart, I had to forgive the media for what they put me and my family through. So I've done that. I'm over that. And I'm just happy that I just try to think of the positive. The happy things."

"You can look at that Series and point fingers in a whole bunch of different directions," Buckner said. "We did the best we could to win there and it just didn't happen and I didn't feel like I deserved" so much blame.

Several of Buckner's teammates, coaches, opponents and sportswriters took to Twitter on Monday to remember Buckner as much more than a single error.

Buckner lived in Boise, Idaho, after he finished playing. He was the hitting coach for the Chicago Cubs' minor league affiliate in Boise in 2012-13, and owned three car dealerships and several commercial properties.

In 1997, Buckner was elected to the Napa Valley High School Athletic Hall of Fame and was an inaugural inductee to the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Hall of Fame in 2010.

Just last year Buckner, along with Oakland A's and San Francisco Giants great Vida Blue, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the first game of the independent Napa Silverados.

He is survived by his wife, Jody, two daughters and one son.

Reporting from the Associated Press was used in this report.