References in Popular Culture
Charlie Sheen purchased the "Buckner Ball" at auction in 1992 for $93,000, and it long resided in the collection of songwriter Seth Swirsky, who refers to it as the "Mookie Ball." The ball was on loan for a time from Swirsky to the Mets to display in their Mets Hall of Fame and Museum, and it was among the most popular artifacts for fans to see. On May 3, 2012, Swirsky sold the ball through Heritage Auctions for $418,250.
Buckner and Mookie Wilson have become business partners to some extent, attending autograph shows together and signing copies of a photo of the 1986 play that linked the two players.
Buckner made a cameo at the beginning of the sports parody film The Comebacks and appeared in an episode of the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. . His famous miscue is also referenced in the films Good Will Hunting, Celtic Pride, Rounders and Fever Pitch, the episode Brother's Little Helper of The Simpsons, and the musical Johnny Baseball. On October 23, 2008, during former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's testimony in House hearings on the Economic crisis of 2008, Representative John Yarmuth referred to Greenspan as one of "three Bill Buckners."
Read more about this topic: Bill Buckner
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Vodka is our enemy, so let’s finish it off.”
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)