The year was 1978 and the typical baseball fan was not privy to a steady onslaught of games, highlights and information bordering on arcana.
Heroes such as Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk, Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson were still largely relegated to the pantheon of demi-gods who resided in the fans' imagination, an imagination borne of morning box scores, terse newspaper accounts, static-riddled radio broadcasts and the occasional six o'clock news highlight.
In mid-July of that year, the reasonable observer of Major League Baseball would have concluded that the AL East race was a fait accompli. The leaders for the entire year, the Boston Red Sox, owned a fourteen-and-a-half game lead over the New York Yankees, a team infested with clubhouse dissension and the assorted antics of such stalwarts as Billy Martin, George Steinbrenner and Jackson.
Steinbrenner, in a fit of pique that may have inadvertently saved the season for the Yankees, fired the notoriously intemperate skipper, Martin, and hired Bob Lemon. Lemon, while no milquetoast, was a much-needed mollifying antidote to Martin's incendiary machinations.
The Yankees began their inexorable push to the top of the standings and the Sox their seemingly inevitable decline. In mid-September, the Yankees completed a four-game sweep of the Sox and assumed their place atop the AL East.
It appeared the Sox were done but then they dug in their heels, winning their last eight contests, getting some surprising help from the Cleveland Indians on the final day of the season and gaining a tie with the Yankees.
They would play on Monday afternoon in Fenway, a crystalline autumn day in New England, amidst the flinty-eyed gazes of thousands of Red Sox fans, their memories and disappointments whittled to a fine Calvinist point.
Ron Guidry, the indisputable ace of the Yankees, would start on short rest, and Mike Torrez, hero of the previous autumn for the Yankees, would start for the Sox.
The Red Sox scratched out a two-nothing lead against a less-than-sharp but valiant Guidry, and would carry that lead into the sixth inning.
Bucky Dent, one of the more unassuming figures of the team, and an owner of a thoroughly pedestrian .243 batting average, would send a wedge shot sailing into the netting over the Green Monster, a chastening cheat of a three-run homer that would chase Torrez and return the psyches of Red Sox fans everywhere to stygian depths.
The Yankees tacked on two more runs courtesy of a blast from Mr. October himself, Reggie Jackson, whom one could not expect to be merely a footnote in a matter rife with such high drama.
The Sox, again, dug in their heels and pushed two runs across the plate and would have had more were it not for the heroics of the consummate Yankee professional, Lou Piniella, who made a fine running catch of a flyball hit deep into the right field corner and had "decoyed" the Sox baserunners into not moving up on a rather uncatchable ball hit into shallow right, a play that almost undoubtedly saved the Yankees a run. Piniella's teammate, Sparky Lyle, had once noted that Piniella was the best "slow" outfielder in baseball, a bit of a back-handed compliment but one that rang true on this single, portentous afternoon.
The afternoon wore on and the shadows girding the field lengthened and the Yankees brought on their best reliever, Rich "Goose" Gossage, a glowering, Fu-Manchu-ed presence, and the owner of a fastball approaching 100 mph. The Sox again proved their mettle, managing to place the tying run aboard third with two outs and legendary left-fielder Yastrzemski coming to the plate, he of the peculiar high-handed stance and the occasionally dyspeptic demeanor, witness to the disappointments of '67 and '75, and the one who had assumed the mantle of greatness from Ted Williams with fierce alacrity.
On this day, Gossage got the best of number eight, humming a high and outside fastball that Yaz sent towering into cerulean heights to be clutched by Graig Nettles near the third base line, and restoring the hopes of New Englanders everywhere to dust, dust that would lie dormant in winter and then produce the tender shoots of springtime rejuvenation and hopes that, all but exhausted last fall, would be rendered attainable once again.
» Pat McCrary lives in Greensboro.
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Copyright © 2005 by Pat McCrary. Posted September 13, 2005.
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