Buckner was the answer to one of my favorite baseball trivia questions:
Which former Red Sox player had 200 hits in both leagues?
Even today, there's still only 5 players that have gotten 200 hits in both leagues: George Sisler (poor soul played for both St. Louis Browns and Boston Braves), Al Oliver (Texas and Montreal), Steve Sax (Dodgers and Yankees), Vlad Guerrero (Expos and Angels), and, of course Bill Buckner ('82 Cubs and '85 Red Sox).
He only walked 40+ times in a season once, never hit more than 16 homers and had a career OPS of .729. He was one of those guys who hit off their front foot and just put the ball in play. No criticism from me, but the idea that the error kept him out of the HOF is not valid.
For me, it's not so much the error hurt his HoF chances; as you correctly noted, his career was not Hall worthy. However, he did hold the record for best fielding percentage for a first baseman at the time. While I wouldn't call him the best fielding first baseman, he was better than average, and his fielding does get a bad rap due to that error.
There was a year he hit 18...
The criminal thing was he had an ops of .579 vs LH , yet was out there for 200abs. They couldn't trade for a RH hitter that could play 1b, any RH hitter?
The idea of platooning a veteran player, especially one that just came off a 0.299 season (0.773 OPS) the prior year did not occur to most teams back in those days. To be fair, his OPS the prior season against lefties was a respectable 0.716. The Sox big moves during that regular season were to trade for Spike Owen and Dave Henderson to shore up the SS and OF positions and to trade for Tom Seaver. IIRC, the SS situation was far more desperate (Ed Romero and Rey Quinones played most innings at the position). Not sure Owen was any better, but he had a good turn at the plate during the playoffs.
One notable offseason move that year, which was not given much notice, especially as it happened right between the Ojeda/Schiraldi and Easler/Baylor trades, was the player they drafted in the second round of the amateur draft: