Posted on 09/07/2023 6:46:43 AM PDT by 4Runner
This game is an absolute classic performance by two teams that battled all year. In some ways there was no loser. Boston played a great game. They hit some balls very hard off Guidry & had 5 hits versus the Goose. It's not too often that a team plays as well as it can possibly play and loses. That's what happened to Boston in this game. And the Yanks, both in 77 & 78, had a knack for clutch hitting & timely fielding plays. Both teams put on a performance that will never be forgotten.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Bucky Dent’s unlikely 3-run homer in the 7th changes the game in an instant. Reggie Jackson hits a titanic home run to center field for the fifth Yankee run in the 5-4 win. Lou Piniella loses a ball in the sun in right field but still manages to get his glove on it and save a run late in the game.
No Wild Cards back then. Win the Division or you’re out.
At the time this was treated as the greatest comeback ever. I don’t know at all if that’s true. The Yankees had sucked between the mid’60s and the mid ‘70s, and Steinbrenner and free agency was still pretty new, so they were NOT the Evil Empire, but the Return of the King.
Now, the Yankees have been humialiated by horrifyingly bad performances by superstars that they never should have touched (Donaldson, Rodon) even if they seemed great at the time (Stanton) and have been letting go of people who were expected to be the core of the team (Hicks, Donaldson, Bader). So they FINALLY ditched the hitting coach, and have started simply over-riding the worst-in-history General Manager (Cashman) to bring up the most hyped rookie in Yankee history (Jasson Dominguez).
Too soon to get excited over winning a mere five in a row, including sweeping archrival Houston Astros? They’re six and a half back in the wildcard with seven games upcoming against the team they have to beat (Toronto Blue Jays), and only 23 games to go, so it’ll take an even more shocking comeback than their defeat of the Red Sox. But Jasson’s rise and Cashman’s decline have us Yankee fans feeling good for the first time since last year’s worst-in-baseball-history summer swoon.
One correction to your post: There was plenty of profanity at Fenway that day. “Bucky F#%&ing Dent” was forever immortalized in the lore of Red Sox futility that day. LOL.
I remember watching that game; the most exciting baseball game I saw.
Bucky F’ing Dent.
Those Yankee teams were so loaded.
I remember the World Series team where Reggie hit 3 home runs in a game: Rivers, White, Chambliss, Munson, Dent, I think Hunter was pitching for them then. Not really a soft spot in either the pitching rotation or the lineup.
They seemed to do well when Mattingly was the hitting coach. He used the teaching point that bat had to hit the ball albeit some of the hitters these past years do look good with their patented whiffs.
Given how many of the pitchers have had problems, they could probably use a decent pitching coach too!
Bucky Dent! A name that will live on in baseball history or infamously depending on which team you were rooting for.
I was driving home from college in the Bronx on the GW Bridge when Bucky Dent hit the home run. I believe Bill White and Phil Rizzuto were the broadcasters on 1010 WINS.
The one positive about this nightmare season is that the Yankees may get rid of Boone and Cashman. There is a recurring pattern of acquiring red hot players who start out doing great then suddenly turn cold. That happens over and over. To me that indicates a manager problem (not motivating the players). Another issue is all the pulled muscle, sprains, etc indicative of inadequate warm-ups. It’s ridiculous. Time to replace a lot of the trainers.
I was watching, sitting in a bar in my college town. Best game ever for a Yankees fan of our generation.
It would have been a 9 game winning streak but the Yankees lost an extra inning game.
I got curious: they’re medical director has almost no experience in sports medicine at all! (He did a little work for a few months at a time twice in low-A for the Indians.) He may very well be a great man (he instead dedicated much of his career to rehabbing soliders!!!) but this isn’t his thing.
Consider:
1) The Yankees traded away a VERY successful, highly underrated pitcher (Jordan Montgomery, 2022+2023 ERA: 3.44) for an extremely likeable outfielder (Harrison Bader) known for his exceptional speed who arrived with plantar fasciitis. How did this miss screening? He came off the IL, but unable to run.
2) The Yankee’s big free-agent signing last year, at 27M per year for six years, was Carlos Rodon, who arrived injured. He is off the DL currently, but gives up a touchdown per game.
3) The best hitter in baseball, Aaron Judge, completely severed the main tendon to his big toe. It took 3 weeks on the IL before this was even diagnosed, let alone treated. He ended up missing 50 days.
4) The Yankees’ second best hitter was hit by a fastball in the head. He was batting .304 with 11 HR in 200 AB at the time. He immediately went into a season-long slump batting .176 since then, includimg 1 HR in his last 50 games. It took more than 3 months to notice something was wrong.
5) Due to injuries causing slumps and time on the IL, the Yankees’ #2 pitcher is their 14th-string pitcher.
“Big” Bob Welch was a friend of mine. He and the starting basketball guard and I played the backfield in the university flag football championship, we won. Bob Welch wasn’t “Big” we called him that because his arm was “Big”.
I didn’t know our other “Big” arm ace, Bob Owchinko but the baseball in the mid-late 70’s was unbelievably exciting...
My dad was a lifelong Sox fan. He was 7 years old when they won the World Series in 1918. Sadly, he passed away early in 2004 before they finally won it again.
Right. And they weren’t just loaded. They had great chemistry on the field, and even their role players were important contributors.
The year of the “Boston Massacre.”
“The Yankees won all four games in the series, by a combined score of 42–9, leaving the teams tied with identical 86–56 records at the end of play on September 10.”
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