Yes, it is Bucky Dent Day, kicking off Holy Month for our New York Yankees. (October 20th: Mickmas!)
We have been binging on schadenfreude these days, me as much as anyone. First the Metsies finishing up another inexplicably disastrous, last-place finish. Then the Sawx.
After the last game of the Wild Card series, I actually went on the Son of Sam website for the first time since 2003. Heh-heh-heh.
I was watching the 1978 playoff game in a college dorm, and was infinitely more nervous than I have ever been, watching any sports event—and enduring almost anything else in my life (okay, it's been a pretty nice life).
A friend who knew very little about baseball (hey, I have them!) walked in, saw Dent up, heard us all grumbling and nay-saying (yes, I was already doing that, too), and said:
"Hey, maybe he'll hit a home run."
"He has about as much chance of hitting a home run as I do," I snorted. Which, of course, proved to be untrue.
Horrible, I know. I am a terrible human being. Yaz was a great ballplayer (and nearly a Yankee, incidentally), and saddest of all, in a 23-year career he ended up not only never winning a ring, but also making the last out in both World Series he was in.
And...in the Bucky Dent Game.
Sad, but true.
And it brings out the bone-marrow-sucking barbarian in me.
Terrible, I know. As I say, I'm an awful human being.
But what a day.
Knicks in Five!
Happy Buckyversary, all!
ReplyDeleteOne of the best moments from my childhood, always remember the Scooter saying, "You can always rely on shortstops!"
ReplyDeleteBoston Sux.
ReplyDeletePoor Yaz. In '67, when Series games were still played in daylight, I remember sitting in my Polish Catholic grade school upstate. The same school my parents, over a dozen aunts and uncles, and my siblings went to. The old nun who was our teacher at the time (well, she looked really old to me, at 12) was a huge Yaz fan because he was Polish. Poor woman was heartbroken afterward.
ReplyDeleteSo I have this soft spot for Yaz and his "almosts."
Now, about Bucky...I remember reading years later that several members of the '78 Yankees were fueled by Peruvian marching powder that postseason. The poster boy was Dent. I've mentioned this before, and I swear I read about it--more than once, I recall. But if you scour the Intertubes today, that story is gone, gone, gone. Can't find it anywhere, not even as a purported rumor or speculation.
Weird, that.
This moment is commemorated in the Yaz section of beer concourse at phenweigh pahk.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2mpf0pblqd9tw6embuds2/IMG_6082_crop.JPG?rlkey=1ve1gneukq5cpctfm57msy5wm&st=kgxrgzsm&dl=0
ReplyDeleteFuck Yaz! I never liked the guy. Not only because he was a Red Sox star player, but in 1970, when Curt Flood sued MLB over the reserve clause and a concomitant CBA negotiation, Yaz voiced his opposition to the lawsuit. He also vocally and selfishly opposed his objection to a strike. He wanted to collect his large (at the time) salary at the expense of the other players. MLBPA head Marvin Miller excoriated him for those public statements.
Yeah, he seems to have been a jerk, politically. But then, sadly, so are most ballplayers. They have the most radical, successful union in American history...and 90 percent of them are right wingers.
ReplyDeleteYeah, agreed.
DeleteYay actually had a pretty good day that day, too: home run off Guidry, run-scoring single off Gossage. Not bad for a guy who had just turned 39. And in the postseason, lifetime, he was a .369/1.047 hitter...
ReplyDeleteFun fact? Yanks could easily have had Yaz AND Frank Robinson in their lineup, 1966-67. Not only did our scouts find Yaz first, but apparently the Yanks were on the verge of a deal before the 1965 season, where we would have traded Jim Bouton for F. Robby.
ReplyDeleteDeal fell through for some reason...and playing in frigid weather the next Opening Day in Minnesota, Bouton blows out his arm.
Due to his accent, I thought Yaz was from the Boston area. Yet his family were hick potato farmers from the east end of LI.
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