The year was 1986, the place Winooski, the setting Bradshaw's Tavern. Winooski is an old mill town just outside Burlington, Vermont. It was my first year at Saint Michael's College and my class was the last to be grandfathered in for the 18-year old drinking age. Bradshaws had Labatt 50 pints for a buck and before craft beer there was Canadian beer and it was damn good.
Vermont was one of the last holdouts to raise the drinking age to 21 in exchange for federal funds. And thankfully, it changed the age gradually, using the grandfathered-in system and raised it one year, each year until it was raised to 21. For some unlucky souls, missing the cutoff by one day equated to missing it by three years.
It was a cold October night and it was game 6 of the 1986 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets. The bar like our college was equally divided by Boston and New York fans. The Red Sox were up three games to two and winning game six would mean the first World Series title since 1918 and erase the Curse of the Bambino.
The Red Sox were ahead and looked to everyone, including the dejected Mets fans on one side of the tavern, that the curse was about to be reversed, history in the making. However, unbeknownst to anyone there or anyone watching the game from elsewhere, a different type of history was about to be made.
It is interesting how New Englanders divide mainly along geographical lines to either root for the New York or Boston teams. New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are solid Red Sox country with the occasional New York fan sprinkled in for good measure. Connecticut tends to go for Boston teams for its eastern half and northwest portion near Hartford that borders Massachusetts but most of western Connecticut, especially its gold coast full of NYC commuters, go for the New York teams. In Vermont, which tends to have a lot of transplants from other New England states and New York, it is a split. Also, the New York Giants used to practice at Saint Michael's College and to this day many Vermonters are proud Giants fans.
Now back to this October night in a bar full of fans, half giddy about the Red Sox about to win the series and half with their heads down and solemn and looking like they were waiting for the pain to end.
I won't rehash the game itself or the events that led up to the blunder heard around the world because that has all been done before. What I will say is that a slow rolling ball to a first basemen named Bill Buckner that should have been fielded flawlessly and sealed the victory, somehow and by some means, natural or supernatural, went right through his legs.
The ball went through Buckner's not-so-sticky wickets (we Red Sox fans wished he had coated his stockings in pine tar to catch the bounding ball but no such luck) and we all went dead quiet, the dead quiet stillness that permeated most Red Sox crowds up until that point--a New England pessimism and guardedness, one that Bill Lee hated, he called us the most miserable and negative fans in the game--and he was right while the New York fans, fans used to winning, erupted in hope.
The rest of the pieces fell out of place and just like that The Mets took game 6. We all knew game 7 was over before it started. That error had the earmarks of Babe Ruth playing havoc with the ball and somehow distracting Bill Buckner. We knew that error signified the end and so did The Mets. They took game 7 and that was that. But we all remember where we were during game 6.
