There was never a doubt, was there? After all Bucky Dent was getting the ball. After all he would trot out to the pitcher’s mound bedecked in a No. 20 jersey — it was his long before Jorge Posada put it on the wall of retired numbers, remember — and throw a strike for the ceremonial first pitch.
(No cheating, either: His throw traveled the entire 60 feet, six inches.)
This was October 2, in any case, and this was a winner-take-all Yankees-Red Sox game, and so Dent was going to be there, exactly 47 years after drilling that Mike Torrez pitch into the netting at Fenway Park, ensuring the Yankees accomplished certainly one of the best in-season turnarounds in history.
Hell, if they might’ve, the Yankees would’ve had Tommy Henrich, Ol’ Reliable, on the market with Dent, catching his pitch, perhaps throwing one alongside him, since it was Henrich’s home run on Oct. 2, 1949 — exactly 76 years earlier — that fueled the Yankees on their option to a do-or-die 5-3 win over the Red Sox that clinched that pennant.
There was never a doubt, was there? After all Bucky Dent was getting the ball. After all he would trot out to the pitcher’s mound bedecked in a No. 20 jersey — it was his long before Jorge Posada put it on the wall of retired numbers, remember — and throw a strike for the ceremonial first pitch.
(No cheating, either: His throw traveled the entire 60 feet, six inches.)
This was October 2, in any case, and this was a winner-take-all Yankees-Red Sox game, and so Dent was going to be there, exactly 47 years after drilling that Mike Torrez pitch into the netting at Fenway Park, ensuring the Yankees accomplished certainly one of the best in-season turnarounds in history.
Hell, if they might’ve, the Yankees would’ve had Tommy Henrich, Ol’ Reliable, on the market with Dent, catching his pitch, perhaps throwing one alongside him, since it was Henrich’s home run on Oct. 2, 1949 — exactly 76 years earlier — that fueled the Yankees on their option to a do-or-die 5-3 win over the Red Sox that clinched that pennant.
