Sox fans still cringing 25 years after Dent’s crushing home run
BOSTON – The net where Bucky Dent’s homer landed 25 years ago is gone from above the Green Monster. The painful memories remain.
That stunning blow from a light-hitting shortstop started the Boston Red Sox toward a 5-4 loss in a one-game AL East playoff – and the New York Yankees toward their second straight championship.
These days, there are seats above that left-field wall in Fenway Park. A fan with a glove stands a few feet away from where Dent’s ball settled. He was in Fenway Park on Oct. 2, 1978.
“When Bucky Dent hit the homer, the park was like a tomb,” says the fan, Sherman Spritz. “It was just typical Red Sox lore that we’ve gotten used to. It’s always something.”
In 1919, the Red Sox began their 84-year streak without a World Series title. In 1975, they blew a 3-0 lead and lost to Cincinnati 4-3 in Game 7 of the World Series. In 1986, a grounder rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs in Game 6, and Boston, which had been one strike from the championship, lost another Game 7, that time to the New York Mets.
And in 1978, an infielder playing for Boston’s archrival hit just his fifth homer of the season: a fly ball that barely cleared the 37-foot high wall.
Red Sox fans still moan about Dent’s three-run shot, which not only came at the hands of their archrivals but also denied them a chance to pursue its first world championship since 1918.
“I think because of the fact that Boston has not won since then, it kind of sticks in their craw,” Dent said recently. So does the fact that the player who hit that homer ended his 12-year career batting a meager .247 with 40 homers.
Boston led New York by 14 games on July 19, 1978. But by the time the season had reached its last game, the Red Sox trailed the Yanks one. The Yankees lost theirs to Cleveland 9-2 and Luis Tiant beat Toronto 5-0 to force a playoff the next day.
One baseball game for a chance to keep playing. The only one of the day. A big television audience. The tension and quality of play added to the drama.
The Red Sox went ahead 2-0 on Carl Yastrzemski’s homer in the second and Jim Rice’s RBI single in the sixth. Boston pitcher Mike Torrez was exceptional through six innings.
“I pitched a great game,” Torrez recalled recently. “I had nothing to be ashamed of.”
Then came the seventh when Roy White and Chris Chambliss singled. Dent, batting ninth and hitting .140 in his previous 20 games, came up and took ball one. He fouled the next pitch off his foot then switched bats when teammate Mickey Rivers noticed a crack in the one he was using.
The next pitch was over the heart of the plate, and Dent hit his first homer in 45 games to make it 3-2.
When it was hit, Dent and Torrez both thought it was just a long flyout to left.
So did Ernie Harwell, handling the radio broadcast. (Harwell was a pro at these kinds of games. He also broadcast the NL playoff in 1951 in which Bobby Thomson’s homer off Ralph Branca gave the New York Giants the pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers.)
“When Bucky hit the ball, I told the folks ‘It was a fly ball to left field. Oh, it’s a home run,’ ” said Harwell, “I gave Bucky a tape later and I said, ‘I’m sorry Bucky, I said it’s just a fly ball to left.’ And he said, ‘That’s all it was.’ “
The Yankees made it 5-2 off Bob Stanley on Thurman Munson’s RBI double in the seventh and Reggie Jackson’s long homer to center in the eighth. But the Red Sox scored twice in the eighth then threatened in the ninth.
With Rick Burleson at first, Jerry Remy lined a one-out single. Rightfielder Lou Piniella, fighting the sun, held the runners at first and second. Rice’s deep drive to Piniella for the second out moved Burleson to third.
Then Yastrzemski, who had driven in two runs in the game, fouled out to third baseman Graig Nettles, and Remy, who had rounded second, changed direction.
“I remember running across the infield into the dugout,” said Remy, now a Red Sox broadcaster. “That place became dead silent. People couldn’t believe it was over.”
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Piniella is sitting in the visiting dugout, gazing toward right field. It’s now 25 years later and he’s the manager of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a team that didn’t even exist when the famed game was played. Piniella points to where the late-afternoon shadow cast by the Fenway roof ends and the sunlight begins.
Just about the spot where, blinded by the sun, he stuck his glove out and grabbed Remy’s hit. Had it gone by him, Burleson almost certainly would have scored, Remy would have reached at least third and Rice’s fly ball would have driven in the winning run.
“It was really bright that day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky,” Piniella said. “It was just a beautiful, beautiful October afternoon here in Massachusetts, in Boston. It’s the most fun game I ever played in.”
Piniella said he didn’t see the ball until the last instant. Burleson, running around second, jammed on the brakes.
“I didn’t panic,” Piniella said. “I knew it would come out of the sun invariably. I just didn’t know where. And it came out right on the side of me and just jumped right into my glove. What can I say?”
Remy was confident after Dent’s homer because the Red Sox had three innings left. He remained confident in the ninth with two runners on, one out, Rice and Yastrzemski due up and Boston trailing by one run.
“I thought one of those two guys, especially Yaz when he came up, was going to come through,” Remy said. “Dent’s home run was huge because he was not a home-run hitter. Everybody makes a big deal about Bucky Dent, but Bucky didn’t beat us.”
Jackson’s homer and Piniella’s catch also were critical.
“I see it a lot on TV,” Remy said. “I know one of these days we’re going to win that game. One day that ball will get by Piniella.”
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Dent became MVP of the 1978 World Series and returned to Fenway Park many times. From 1995 to 2001, he was a coach with the Texas Rangers where Boston’s John Burkett pitched from 1996 to 1999.
“In the dugout, you’d hear people yelling at him,” Burkett said. “He’d just smile with pride no matter what people said.”
Today, Dent is manager of the Yankees’ Triple-A team in Columbus. Torrez has a promotions business in Chicago that sells caps and other items with corporate logos.
They’ve done card shows together and joke about that day.
“Mike’s such a class guy,” Dent said. “Through this whole thing, our friendship has been great.”
Torrez was a Yankee in 1977 and pitched two complete-game wins in the World Series, including the Game 6 clincher in which Jackson hit three homers. In 1978, he was 16-13 with Boston.
“You have to learn to take the good with the bad,” Torrez said. “One day you’re on top, the next day you’re in the gutter.
“It was tough the first year” after Dent’s homer, when he also was 16-13 with Boston. “Then I said, ‘What the heck, I have to move on with my life.’ “
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Members of the 1978 Red Sox recall the agony.
“That was the saddest day for everybody,” said Tiant, now a Red Sox pitching instructor. “Yaz cried. I cried. I couldn’t believe we lost the way we did.”
But it’s ancient history to the 2003 Red Sox.
“I was only 4 years old then,” says general manager Theo Epstein, who moved from New York to the Boston area in the summer of ’78.
The Red Sox expect to spend the anniversary next Thursday in Oakland in the second game of their best-of-5 playoff series. If they advance and beat the Yankees in the ALCS, the cloud over their fans might lift.
“The big goal for the Red Sox is to win a World Series,” Dent said. “Until they actually win one, I think there’s going to be some self-doubt from their fans.”
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One of them, Sherman Spritz, watched Dent’s homer from section 27 along the third-base line. Now he’s 51 and looking from the Monster seats during batting practice before a recent game.
“If Piniella doesn’t make that catch out of the sun, Bucky Dent’s homer doesn’t mean anything,” said Spritz, a marketing executive from Brookline. “And Yaz, typical Yaz, popped out to end the game. We couldn’t believe it was over. Everybody grumbled and swore.”
His son Danny is 14 and, like his father, hasn’t seen the Red Sox win a World Series. He roots for them but also knows about Dent’s homer.
So is this finally the year?
Danny looks at his dad, breaks into a hopeful smile but says cautiously, “I’m not going to say.”
AP-ES-09-25-03 1942EDT
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