Sox tribute to Buckner is puzzling

Two of the bigger sporting events this week didn’t involve actual sporting events but ceremonies.

No wonder both of them confused me.

The first came on Tuesday afternoon at Fenway Park in Boston, where the Red Sox felt obliged to celebrate the contributions of Bill Buckner during opening day festivities – and oh, by the way, also hand out its 2007 World Series championship rings.

The day should have been all about last year’s run to a second world title in four years, not more reminiscing about the 86 years of futility that preceded 2004.

No doubt Buckner’s ceremony represented the best marketing efforts of Red Sox Nation to erase a guilty conscience, having turned the retired first baseman into the personification of all that had gone wrong before then.

That Buckner was appreciative of the attention was nice, but hadn’t he already returned to Fenway in 1990 for the final 43 at-bats of his career and gotten his standing ovation then? And if some kind of next-generation ceremony was needed, wouldn’t it have been better held after the 2004 championship season that put the Curse of the Bambino to rest?

People are going to remember Buckner in their own way, as the .289 career hitter who had 18 homers and 102 RBIs in 1986 while hobbling around the bases or as representative of the postseason woes that sent legions of Red Sox fans to their graves without the satisfaction of a championship parade through downtown Boston.

Now what will the Red Sox do for an encore if they win it again this year, bring back the ghost of Harry Frazee?

Well, at least it would be better than Neil Diamond.

The second sporting event without an actual sporting event was much more serious in nature, the so-called “Five-Ring Circus” that brought the Olympic flame to San Francisco.

Even its most ardent supporter understands that the purity of the Olympic ideal has been circumvented by the politics of the modern world.

So when the International Olympic Committee opted to hold this year’s Summer Games in Beijing, it was asking for a public response from any group with a gripe against China – and there are many.

But I’m a little sympathetic toward the people who turned out to see the Olympic flame only to have it briefly extinguished and redirected away from its original route.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for those sports fans, but it was taken away from them by protesters who, with a little imagination, can protest every day.

I’m actually more concerned about the opportunity for athletes to live out their Olympic dreams this summer, people like Exeter native Adam Craig, who begins his pursuit of one of two spots on the U.S. Olympic men’s mountain biking team in Europe next weekend.

No doubt Craig and other Olympic aspirants have their own views on global issues. But they also share an Olympic goal of measuring themselves against the world’s best athletes in their chosen disciplines.

That chance is still on schedule, but in this year of a presidential election, the words “boycott” and “Olympic” already are being used in the same sentence – and the emotional furor only figures to escalate as August’s opening ceremonies approach.

Indeed, it should be interesting when the Games do arrive.

They can’t come quick enough for me – all these ceremonies are just too draining.

eclark@bangordailynews.net

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