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Gary Carter, Howard Johnson celebrate an improbable Mets win in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. (Allsport)

• Bill Buckner's World Series error: 56k | 300k

Bill Buckner always knew there was only one sure way for him to rewrite his legacy. But his legs gave out before he could outrun his past. Thus, in 1990, he ended his 22-year career with 2,715 hits, still 285 short of the charmed 3,000 that would have ushered him into the Hall of Fame, with all the extra baggage left at the door.

But when he gave up the hobble, the baggage, sadly and unfairly, is all Bill Buckner had. A spectacular hitter, daring fielder and workhorse hustler -- he embodied the most exalted word in the ballplayer's dictionary, "gamer" -- Buckner became destined to be remembered as the embodiment of something else in that dictionary.

"The one that got away."