25. "The Biggest Boston Game Ever"

Was my team doomed? Sure seemed like it. Just one year earlier, I figured out that Santa Claus was a sham because he couldn't possibly hit everyone's house in one night, although I peeked downstairs to see my parents sticking gifts under the tree to make sure. So I was a realist (the Santa Claus theory), but also a little kid (peeking on Christmas Eve to make sure). And that's how I approached the [Boston Red] Sox over the next few years: I knew things were probably going to end badly, but that didn't stop me from watching as many games as possible and hoping I was wrong. When they jumped to a seemingly insurmountable fourteen-game lead over the Yankees in July of 1978, it seemed like our fortunes had changed. Then the Yank[ee]s started creeping back into the race -- to the abject horror of everyone in New England -- as the lead dwindled and eventually disappeared during the demoralizing Boston Massacre.* But just when it looked like the Sox were finished, they battled back with their own little streak, winning 12 of their last 14 (including their last eight) to force a one-game playoff.

You can't possibly imagine how big that game was. We didn't have cable TV. We didn't have video games. We didn't have the Internet, cell phones, DVD players or iPods. Honestly, there wasn't much happening in 1978. And when you don't have a ton of distractions, the distractions that do exist take on epic proportions. You know, like the Red Sox. This wasn't just the most important game of my entire life, it remains the biggest Boston game ever and will never be topped. We had to beat the Yankees. When you combine the circumstances between those two teams, with the Shakespearan relationship between those two teams, as well as the ghoulish setting of Fenway Park in the late afternoon and a petrified crowd ... seriously, has there ever been another baseball game quite like that? Even when ESPN Classic shows the old broadcast, there's an eerie vibe from the fans: deafening silences, urgent cheers, a palpable nervous energy, almost like 35,000 people were warned that they would be collectively slaughtered if the Red Sox lost.

My parents kept me home from school that day, like thousands of other kids in the Boston area. It felt like we were preparing for a nuclear attack; I'm not even sure if I was excited or scared. We watched the game in the basement of our house in Brookline .... Nursing a 2-0 lead in the seventh, Mike Torrez yielded the infamous three-run homer to light-hitting Bucky Dent, a pop fly that somehow drifted over the[Green] Monster and spawned Bucky's lifelong nickname in Boston: Bucky Fucking Dent. The Yanks padded the lead with two more runs, followed by the Sox answering with two in the bottom of the eighth. Yankees 5, Red Sox 4. With one out in the ninth, Rick Burleson walked against a tiring Goose Gossage (pitching into a third inning). Jerry Remy followed with a line drive to right field, where a flustered Lou Piniella -- completely blinded by the setting sun -- thrust his glove out and somehow snared the ball, almost like a guy defensively swatting at a bee and miraculously connecting. Burleson held at second. Unbelievable.

Now [Jim] Rice was up. Remember, this was his famous "46 HR/139 RBI/406 total bases" MVP season during an era when sluggers didn't have oversize heads, extended jaws, and back acne .... If you put Rice on an HGH program back then, he would have belted the first 700-foot homer. Believe me, there was nobody more imposing in 1978. You wouldn't have wanted anyone else up in this spot. Anyway, Rice ended up creaming a ball to right-center that looked like the game-winning double, only it veered right to Piniella (playing him perfectly in right-center), so the crowd ended up making one of those combination shriek/groans that became a Fenway trademark over the years. With Burleson advancing to third, the tying run was 90 feet from home plate. And Yaz was coming up.

Understand this about [Carl Yaztrzemski]. Nobody personified the Red Sox quite like him. A surly chain-smoker with a thick Boston accent, poor Yaz wore every harrowing Boston defeat on his face; he always looked 10 years older than he actually was, like a famous actor who seems too old to be starring in a baseball movie. Of course, no Red Sox player came through more times when it mattered, and few Boston athletes ever had a better sense of The Moment. Seeing him stride to the plate against the fireballing Gossage, well, other than Kirk Gibson's famous homer off Dennis Eckersley, has there ever been an at-bat that felt more like a movie scene? There was grizzled old Yaz trying to save the season, his lungs filled with nicotine residue, the sun setting behind him, needing a single to save the season. If this were a movie, William Devane would have played him, and Yaz would have ripped a Gossage fastball into the right field bullpen, and everyone would have happily skipped out of the dugout in slow motion, and the fans would have charged the field, and Yaz would have been swarmed as he hopped on home plate, and then the credits would have rolled. The end.

Here's the thing that killed me (and everyone else): Right as we were entertaining these magical thoughts, Yaz swung late on a Gossage heater and abruptly popped up to third. What sports movie would ever end like that? I remember the ball slicing up in the air, Yaz grimacing in disgust and slamming his bat like a shovel, the crowd shrieking n horror, Craig Nettles settling underneath it, the Yankees celebrating, everything going quiet, Yaz limping back to the dugout, the finality of it all.

I started crying. I cried and cried. My mom rubbed my head. I kept crying. Life wasn't fair. I kept crying.

I had just turned nine years old.


*On September 7, the Yankees rolled into Fenway trailing by just four games, then pulled into a dead heat by outscoring the Sox 42-9 in four games. That was the Massacre. The definitive moment: A haunting photo of Yaz slumping against the Green Monster during the umpteenth pitching change -- it was like that famous photo of  the naked little girl running in Vietnam.


Now I Can Die In Peace, Bill Simmons
Copyright 2005, 2009, Bill Simmons
Published by ESPN Books

Image: Bucky Dent hits the three-run homer and earns a nickname