Baseball's Holy Grails

This is the second part of a 25 part series dealing with the greatest objects in baseball lore, and what would be, if they could be found, the greatest collectibles in sports.

Bill Buckner's pebble

It's a sad testimony to the four score long history of the Ruth Curse that a lot of the Holy Grails of baseball belong to the Boston Red Sox. This is perhaps the meanest of my choices. Also, it's likely to not exist at all. I have seen the video a number of times (I've not seen a frame by frame analysis which would show a bad hop or not) and it's not known whether the ball really took a bad hop. Here's what Wikipedia says about it:

On October 25, 1986, with the Boston Red Sox leading the New York Mets 3-2 in Game 6 of the best-of-7 series, the game was tied in the bottom of the tenth inning. The Red Sox had taken a two-run lead in the top of the tenth, but the Mets had come back to tie on a wild pitch by pitcher Bob Stanley. Mookie Wilson of the Mets fouled off several pitches before hitting a ground ball to Buckner at first base. The ball took a deadening bounce on the dirt and rolled under Buckner's glove, through his legs, and into right field, allowing Ray Knight to score the winning run from second base. It capped an astonishing comeback for the Mets, though it did not (as is often misremembered) end the World Series. The Met victory, in fact, forced a seventh game, which was played two nights later and won by the Mets.

To be fair to Bill Buckner, his error had very little to do with the loss of the 1986 World Series. In game seven the Red Sox were able to surrender a 3 run lead to lose the series. Buckner has taken his infamy in stride, he signs baseballs with Mookie Wilson and he also co-signs pictures of the famous error with Mookie.

The actual baseball is in collectors hands. However, the actual dirt that caused the bounce/deadening probably could never be verified. Had I been the head groundskeeper, I would have taken a shovel and removed the dirt around the area of the error (if anyone asked any questions I would just cite superstition). You jar that dirt and there's your holy grail of baseball. I doubt this one will ever surface. But who knows? Maybe there was some groundskeeper or security guard who took a shovel full of souvenir.