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The greatest game I ever saw:
By Peter Gammons Issue date: July 19, 1993
The 1978 playoff game between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees on Oct. 2 was the sudden-death overtime to a six-month war. In late July the Red Sox had been 14 games in front of the Yankees, living up to a Boston Herald story titled, HOW THE SOX BUILT '78 WONDER TEAM. Then the Yanks began a two-month assault on the Red Sox lead and by Sept. 16 led Boston by 3 1/2 games, prompting New York third baseman Graig Nettles to say of the Sox, "I don't feel sorry for them -- I pity them." But Boston won their last eight games of the season to tie the Yankees, leaving Red Sox fans with a one-game shot at absolution for 60 years of torment. But for many of those fans there was a sense of dread: Said one fearful follower that day, "They got our parents, and now the sonsuvbitches are coming to get us." The tension in Fenway Park was nearly overwhelming. The Yankee starter was Ron Guidry, who came in at 24-3. Leading off the second for Boston, 39-year- old Carl Yastrzemski guessed right on a Guidry fastball and buzzed it inside the rightfield foul pole. Red Sox 1, Yankees 0. The homer unleashed the crowd, and by the bottom of the sixth it looked as if the Sox might blow the game open. Jim Rice singled in Burleson. Guidry then intentionally walked Carlton Fisk to pitch to Fred Lynn with two on, two out. "I knew Guidry didn't have his good stuff at that point," Yankee rightfielder Lou Piniella would say later. "I realized Lynn could pull him. So I moved over towards the line six or eight steps." Lynn smashed a line drive into the corner in right, but Piniella grabbed it just before it hit the low wall. Lynn later asked, "What was he doing out of position? How lucky can he be?" With two out, two on and a 2-0 lead in the seventh, Sox starter Mike Torrez faced number 9 hitter Bucky Dent. After ball one, Dent fouled a pitch off his foot and limped out of the batter's box. Mickey Rivers, the on-deck hitter, noticed a crack in Dent's bat and gave him another. Dent used it to make history. At the end of its arc the ball nestled into the screen just inside the leftfield foul pole: Yankees 3, Red Sox 2. How it got to be 5-2 is little remembered: an RBI double by Thurman Munson off reliever Bob Stanley, and a solo blast by Reggie Jackson in the top of the eighth. But for this 163rd game of the season, the difference could not be three runs -- it had to be one. In the bottom of the eighth, as if the game were scripted by the baseball gods, the Sox scored twice. Then, with one out, one on in the ninth, Jerry Remy jumped a Goose Gossage fastball and hit a line drive to right. In the late October sun Piniella could not see the ball. "I knew it was headed towards me," he said. "I just had to wait for it to come into sight and react like a hockey goalie." The ball landed in front of him and kicked up to his left; Piniella flashed out his glove and speared it. "If it had gone by me," he said, "it would've rolled to the bullpen, Remy would've had an inside-the-park homer, and he would forever be remembered as the man who ended the Curse. Instead, I got lucky." Rice flied to right center, and with Red Sox on first and third, it was all set up for one final two-out, bottom-of-the-ninth shoot-out between Gossage, the premier fastball pitcher of his time, and Yaz, arguably the premier fastball hitter of his. I was crouched in an aisle near the Boston dugout; after the first pitch, ball one, I turned to a companion and said, "Yaz always wins in these moments." Gossage's second pitch was 90-something miles an hour, and just as Yastrzemski began his swing, the ball ran in on him. "That I was not prepared for," Yaz said later. The pop-up soared over the third base coach's box, and when it finally came down, Nettles squeezed it. The one-run difference between the two best teams in baseball belonged to the Yankees. Gossage would later say, "In some situations there are no losers, only winners. That was one of them." But while the Yankees went on to win the world championship, the Red Sox, for all they had accomplished, were just another second-place team.
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