1978 BOSTON RED SOX

99 wins and only 64 loses and a team doesn’t go to the big dance?

That was the way things worked out for the Boston Red Sox in 1978. The Red Sox were playing great baseball, with the New York Yankees far behind, as the month of July was concerned.

Boston led by 14 games in July and still held a 7.5-game lead with 32 games remaining. It seemed certain that the American League East was all but settled in Boston’s favor. But then, something happened.

Something always happened or so it seems with the Sox. Suddenly, the Bean-town nine couldn’t win anymore, things were happening, calls were going against them, errors were made but hits weren’t and it all contributed losing 14-of-17 games. That losing streak was the opening the Yankees needed and they began to close the gap, which included a four-game sweep at Fenway Park.

In a panic, the Red Sox won their final eight games, and needing a Cleveland victory over the New York Yankees to force a one-game playoff at Fenway Park.

And so the stage was set, on October 2, 1978 in Boston Mass., as two rivals, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, would square off for all the marbles in the American League East. Winning a coin toss gave the Sox the home field advantage that was the last thing they would win that year from the Yankees.

And that's when the name Bucky Dent became an expletive in New England, as the Yankees' light-hitting shortstop hit a home run in a 5-4 New York victory. The Yankees won their second consecutive World Series.

32,925 fans crowded into the old ballpark, and Ron Guidry for the New Yorkers and Mike Torrez for the home town Sox squared off. The Red Sox jumped to an early 2-0 lead with a home run by Carl Yaztrzemski and a base hit RBI by Jim Rice.

Then in the top of the 7^th, the walls came crumbling down all around the Sox fans when Bucky Dent, light-hitting Bucky Dent, connected for a three-run homer and create the most hated name in Bean Town history to give the Yankees the pennant and a consecutive World Series victory. And so the collapse was complete.

That’s all I wrote, folks!