THE WORLD SERIES : New York Mets vs. Boston Red Sox : Red Sox Come Out Swinging as Buckner Leads the Way

There was holy water for Bill Buckner, a song for Dave Henderson, and one last ride on the New York shuttle for the Boston Red Sox, who bid farewell to Fenway Park Thursday night with bats flailing, the only way to go on a night that Ted Williams, the Splendid Splinter himself, threw out the first ball.

The Red Sox, held to a dozen hits while being outscored, 13-3, in the first two games at home, knew they had to come out swinging to avoid being swept here.

Buckner, batting .167 coming into the game, wasn’t taking any chances. Someone had sent him a bottle of holy water from La Salette, a religious shrine located in a Boston suburb. A rain shower had washed out batting practice, so the Red Sox first baseman--who had 3 hits in 18 World Series at-bats--shrugged and took a swig.

“What did it taste like? It tasted like water,” Buckner said. “I drank half of it and saved the other half.”

It didn’t make the lame walk--if Buckner were a horse, someone would have shot the hobbled first baseman by now--but on Buckner’s first at-bat he whacked a single through the legs of Met pitcher Dwight Gooden.

That was the first of 12 hits the Red Sox would get off Gooden and reliever Sid Fernandez in a 4-2 win that sent the Red Sox alighting in LaGuardia with a 3-game-to-2 lead in the 83rd World Series.

In the third, Buckner reached base again on a check-swing ground ball that bounced off the knee of Met shortstop Rafael Santana for an error. He advanced to second when Jim Rice walked, and somehow scored on Dwight Evans’ single to right, an act akin to A.J. Foyt crossing the finish line at Indy with four flat tires.

Buckner, whose ankles and Achilles’ tendons are so sore that he took to wearing high-topped black shoes that he must have borrowed from Johnny Unitas, crossed the plate with what looked like a head-first slide.

“That wasn’t a slide at home,” he said. “I died at home.”

Henderson, who tripled and scored the first Boston run in the second and doubled home a run in a two-run fifth, acted like a man who had died and been born again.

“Hey, Hendu,” hollered Rene Lachemann, the Red Sox third-base coach who once had managed Henderson in Seattle, “there are more people around you than were in the Kingdome when you played.”

Henderson, a part-time player in Seattle who has become a full-time celebrity in Boston ever since his playoff home run resuscitated the Red Sox in the playoffs, hasn’t quite adjusted to being the darling of the TV minicam set.

“I don’t know anything about this World Series stuff,” said Henderson, who is batting .444 in the Series, including two extra-base hits off Gooden, the other a Doc-defrocking home run in Boston’s 9-3 win in Game 2.

“This is all new to me,” Henderson said. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. I’m overwhelmed with everything.”

When they’re not cheering for Henderson in Boston, they’re serenading him from the center-field bleachers.

Just what is it they’re singing?

“I’m not a singer,” said Henderson, who has been just about everything else for the Red Sox. “You’ll have to go out yourselves and listen to it.”

Wade Boggs, the Red Sox third baseman, was humming a tune himself the night before, even though he’d gone 0 for 5 in Boston’s 6-2 loss.

But that didn’t mean Boggs was happy. The big league’s top hitter wasn’t taking kindly to only 10 hits in 47 postseason at-bats.

“It comes to a head and has to explode,” Boggs warned then.

The explosion didn’t actually come Thursday night--Boggs had a ground-ball single in the fourth and a line drive off the ankle of Met second baseman Tim Teufel for another base hit in the eighth.

He did, however, put the cap on potential Met uprisings with four fine defensive plays at third, the best coming in the fourth inning, when he gloved Ray Knight’s smash at his feet and turned it into a double play.

“If you can’t do it with the bat,” Boggs said, “you’ve got to do it some way.

“It’s a good thing I’m not the DH--I would have committed suicide a long time ago.”

Boggs, who wore the label of good-hit, so-so field before this Series, may have clipped that tag out of his uniform for good with two big games in the Series, the other being Game 1, when he saved a run with a stop of a Mookie Wilson shot down the line.

“It’s just something you’ve got to shake,” Boggs said, “and the World Series is a good place to shake it.”

The same could be said for the Red Sox, the team with a legacy of losing the big one.

“What’s at stake on Saturday,” said Don Baylor, the Red Sox designated hitter who had an RBI single Thursday, “is something in this clubhouse we’ve been waiting for, for a long time.

“We’ve got to get on the roller-coaster now and go to the top.”