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Didja ever notice: The Bill Buckner of...

So I'm eavesdropping on a conversation between two people the other day, one famous and one not, and the celebrity says to the non-celeb that the greatest relief of his career is that he never had a "Bill Buckner moment."

But others have. I did a number of googlings to try to find references and wasn't particularly satisfied when I searched for "Bill Buckner moment" or "Bucknerian." The best results came from trying to find Bill Buckner equivalents, ie: "The Bill Buckner of..." Here's what I found.

*When 1996 Team USA Olympic softball player Dani Tyler was called out for failing to touch home plate after hitting a home run, Peter King's story in Sports Illustrated said "She may go down as the Bill Buckner of fast-pitch softball."

* Television reporter Andrew Gilligan has been called "The Bill Buckner of the BBC" due to some unsual blunder of which I'm not aware.

* A Massachusetts News headline regarding gover Paul Cellucci said "The Mark McGwire of Tax Cuts Becomes the Bill Buckner of Beacon Hill. "

* A frustrated message board poster, lamenting the one that got away, wants to be known as "The Bill Buckner of Striped Bass Fishing."

* USA Today hockey writer Kevin Allen once dubbed former Olympic goalie Tommy Salo as "the Bill Buckner of Sweden."

* John Kerry and Al Gore have been called the "Bill Buckner of presidential candidates." or variations thereof in multiple spots. Michael Brown has been called the "Bill Buckner of national disaster management" and a person who blundered on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was called "The Bill Buckner of quiz-show contestants."

and lastly a New Mexico-based high school baseball player was saved from becoming "The Bill Buckner of Capital High" by a nifty rally by his teammates in a state tournament game. How did they win? By walk-off, of course.

Those truly amazed know... That, at least for now, googling "The Casey Stengel of" yields an appopriate number of hits- 37 to be exact.

The idea to find "The Bill Buckner of" was partly inspired from a massive list seen many years ago of "The Babe Ruth of..." A google search of that yields many, many, many hits. Can anyone recall seeing the list I saw?

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