Bucky Dent's Home Run in the 1978 AL East Tiebreaker

October 2, 1978. Fenway Park. The afternoon sun was doing that thing it does in New England in early October -- hanging low over the right-field grandstand, blinding anyone foolish enough to stare into it. The Red Sox led 2-0 in the seventh inning. Mike Torrez was two outs away from handing Boston the AL East title, and the man stepping in to bat for the New York Yankees hit home runs the way most shortstops do: rarely, and usually by accident.

Bucky Dent's home run total for the 1978 season, going into this at-bat, was four. In 162 regular-season games.

What happened next permanently split the baseball world into two populations: those who remember where they were, and those who've spent the last four decades pretending the whole thing didn't happen.

How Both Teams Arrived at October 2

The 1978 Yankees had spent the first half of the season trying to destroy themselves from the inside. On the morning of July 19, they sat 14 games behind the Red Sox in the AL East -- behind a Boston team led by Jim Rice, who was having one of the great offensive seasons in American League history, and a rotation that had handled the division all summer. The Yankees were 48-42 and actively on fire, in the organizational-chaos sense.

Bob Lemon took over as manager on July 25, five days after Billy Martin's famous goodbye, and the Yankees went 48-20 (.706) the rest of the way. (Steinbrenner, characteristically, announced on Old Timers Day that Martin would return as manager in 1980 -- four days into Lemon's tenure. The man had a gift for the untimely press release.) What Lemon brought was calm: a veteran presence who didn't need to win every argument, in a clubhouse that had been running on pure adrenaline and grievance for two years.

Then came September. Specifically, September 7-10 at Fenway.

The Boston Massacre

The Yankees arrived in Boston with a four-game lead having evaporated to four games behind. They left having outscored the Red Sox 42-9 across four games -- 15-3, 13-2, 7-0, 7-4. The sports press named it "the Boston Massacre" before the series was finished, and the name stuck. Boston's 14-game lead had become a tie in the standings.

The Red Sox stumbled through September while the Yankees kept winning. When the dust cleared after 162 games, both clubs sat at 99-63. A coin flip determined the site of the tiebreaker: the Red Sox won, Fenway Park it was. One game. Winner takes the AL East and plays Kansas City in the ALCS. Loser goes home and thinks about what they did.

Ron Guidry on Three Days' Rest

Ron Guidry walked to the mound for the Yankees on three days' rest, which was less than ideal. He'd gone 25-3 with a 1.74 ERA during the regular season, won the Cy Young Award unanimously, and struck out 248 batters. He was, without argument, the best pitcher in the American League in 1978 and probably the best arm in baseball. Three days' rest still made everybody a little nervous.

Don Zimmer sent out Mike Torrez for Boston -- 16-12 on the year, 3.96 ERA, a workhorse right-hander who knew the Yankees well. He knew them very well. Torrez had been a Yankee in 1977, won two games in the World Series that October, then signed a seven-year, $2.5 million free-agent deal with Boston in the offseason. (There's irony in that transaction, and the irony is going to get a lot worse before this story ends.)

The early innings were quiet. Both starters cruised.

Carl Yastrzemski and the 2-0 Lead

Carl Yastrzemski led off the second inning and hit a solo home run off Guidry to put the Red Sox up 1-0. Yaz was 39 years old, in his eighteenth season, and still the most feared hitter in the Boston lineup in a pinch. Fenway shook.

In the sixth, Rick Burleson doubled into the corner. Jerry Remy bunted him to third. Jim Rice singled to center, scoring Burleson. Red Sox 2, Yankees 0.

Two runs, two innings to go, Torrez dealing. Nobody in Fenway was particularly worried.

"There Are Lots of Hits in It"

With one out in the seventh, Chris Chambliss singled to center. Roy White followed with another single. Jim Spencer, pinch-hitting for second baseman Brian Doyle, flied out to left. Two out, Chambliss and White still on base, and Bucky Dent -- batting ninth, a .243 hitter, a man defined by his glove -- walked to the plate.

On Torrez's second pitch, Dent fouled the ball off his shin. He'd had a shin injury all year -- fouled a ball off the same spot in spring training, didn't wear his shin guard for this game -- and the contact sent him to the ground. The trainer jogged out. The crowd waited.

Mickey Rivers, on deck, glanced at Dent's bat and noticed a crack running through the wood. He waved the bat boy over and sent him with one of his own bats and a message: "Tell him there are lots of hits in it. He'll get a home run."

The bat boy delivered the bat. Dent took his stance on a 1-1 count.

He swung. He hit a fly ball toward left field. Carl Yastrzemski drifted back, watching it. His shoulders sagged.

The ball cleared the Green Monster and landed in the screen above it.

Three-run home run. Yankees 3, Red Sox 2. The Fenway crowd went so quiet you could hear the pigeons.

After Dent, Mickey Rivers walked and stole second. Torrez was finally lifted. Thurman Munson doubled to center off reliever Bob Stanley, scoring Rivers -- Yankees 4, Red Sox 2. Then the inning ended. But the inning had already done its work.

Reggie Jackson, Because of Course

Reggie Jackson led off the eighth inning against Bob Stanley and hit a home run to right field. His 27th of the season. Because it was October and there was a camera rolling and Reggie Jackson was Reggie Jackson, he did what he always did in moments like this: he hit it hard and watched it go. Yankees 5, Red Sox 2.

Goose Gossage came on and Boston clawed back -- a Remy double, a Yastrzemski RBI single, a Fisk single, a Fred Lynn RBI single. 5-4 Yankees heading to the ninth.

Lou Piniella's Brilliant Bluff

Gossage got the first batter in the ninth, then Rick Burleson walked. Jerry Remy hit a line drive to right field and Lou Piniella lost it completely -- the late-afternoon sun swallowed it whole. What Piniella did next is why they still talk about this game in the context of baseball IQ as much as home runs.

Instead of throwing his glove up in a panic or diving uselessly, Piniella calmly pounded his mitt like he was going to catch it easily, bluffing Burleson into holding at first. The ball bounced past, and Piniella stabbed it on the short hop and threw quickly to hold Burleson at second instead of third.

Jim Rice hit a fly ball to right. If Burleson had been on third, he scores. The game ties. Instead, Burleson was on second, and he stayed there.

Two outs. Burleson on second. Carl Yastrzemski at the plate -- tying run on base, potential winning run at bat, 32,925 people standing in Fenway Park.

Gossage threw. Yastrzemski popped the ball up in foul territory toward third. Graig Nettles squeezed it.

Yankees win.

What Came Next

New York swept Kansas City in the ALCS and then won the World Series in six games against the Dodgers. Bucky Dent -- the man with four home runs in 162 games -- hit .417 in the World Series and took home MVP. It's one of the stranger postseason resumes in October history, and it belongs entirely to a shortstop nobody picked to be the hero.

Torrez had won two World Series games as a Yankee the year before. He then signed with the Red Sox and gave up the home run that has defined his career in the public mind ever since. He pitched in Boston for four more seasons. He was always asked about this. (He handled it with considerable grace, which is more than you can say for the people asking.)

In New England, Bucky Dent acquired a new middle name. It was unprintable. It became, over time, a kind of affectionate profanity -- the way you'd use a word that still stings, but in a resigned, exhausted way, 47 years later. Red Sox fans who weren't alive in 1978 know exactly what "Bucky F---ing Dent" means and why.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was Bucky Dent's home run total before the famous 1978 playoff home run?

Dent hit four home runs in the 162-game regular season. The tiebreaker game was technically Game 163 of the regular season, making the playoff shot his fifth of the year. For context: he hit 40 home runs in his entire 12-year career. This one landed in the screen above the Green Monster, which probably still confuses people who know his regular stats.

Why did Bucky Dent switch bats before hitting the home run?

On the second pitch of his at-bat, Dent fouled a ball off his shin -- he wasn't wearing the shin guard he normally used to protect a spring training injury. While the trainer attended to him, Mickey Rivers, on deck, spotted a crack in Dent's bat and had the bat boy deliver one of his own. Rivers allegedly told the bat boy: "Tell him there are lots of hits in it. He'll get a home run." Whether Rivers actually believed that or was just being Mickey Rivers is a question that can't be answered. Either way, it worked.

Why is the game played at Fenway Park instead of Yankee Stadium?

Both teams finished the 162-game season with identical 99-63 records, which required a one-game tiebreaker. The American League used a coin flip to determine the home site -- the Red Sox won the flip and hosted the game at Fenway. They won the right to play at home and then lost the game, which is the kind of detail that follows a franchise around.

What happened to Mike Torrez after giving up the home run?

Torrez remained with the Red Sox through the 1982 season, going 16-13 in 1979. He was asked about the Dent home run for the rest of his career and generally answered with honesty and without bitterness -- he'd had a good career, won two World Series games as a Yankee in 1977, and one bad pitch didn't define him in his own telling. It defined him in everyone else's. He pitched in the majors until 1984, finishing his career with the Mets. The irony of going from one New York team to the other after the home run that cost Boston a pennant wasn't lost on anyone.

Who is Bucky F---ing Dent?

That's the nickname Red Sox fans gave Dent after October 2, 1978. It became so attached to him in New England that it's practically the official version. Dent himself knew what he'd done to Boston -- he heard the nickname, understood the anger behind it, and never seemed to take personal offense. He'd just hit a fly ball that happened to go over a famous wall. The rest of it was everybody else's problem.

Bucky Dent played shortstop for the Yankees through the 1982 season, then went on to manage the club briefly in 1989-90. He never hit more than 8 home runs in any regular season. He eventually opened a baseball school in Florida and signed thousands of autographs, many of them to people from New England who wanted proof it really happened.

It really happened. And somewhere in that net above the Green Monster, the ball is still sitting.