The Bucky Dent Home Run

Excerpt from Remembering Fenway Park: An Oral and Narrative History of the Home of the Boston Red Sox/Abrams 2011 - -By Harvey Frommer now available in stores and on-line and direct from the author)

STEVE RYDER: Then all of a sudden:

BILL WHITE (GAME CALL) "Deep to left! Yastrzemski will not get it -- it's a home run! A three-run home run for Bucky Dent and the Yankees now lead . . . Bucky Dent has just hit his fourth home run of the year and look at that Yankees bench out to greet him..."

CARL YAZSTREMSKI: I've always loved Fenway Park. But that was the one moment I hated the place, the one moment the wall got back at us. I still can't believe it went in the net.

BILL LEE: Torrez threw that horseshit slider that is still sitting there in middle of the plate, and Bucky Dent hit right near the end of the bat. I couldn’t believe he hit it out, but he did.

ROGER KAHN: My memory is Dent slamming a foul ball into his foot and hobbling around and there was a delay of several minutes. During that whole delay Mike Torrez did not throw a single pitch. Normally, you just throw to keep loose. Dent got a new bat from Mickey Rivers. And the first pitch Torrez threw after the break that may have been five minutes, was that shot to leftfield. You could see Yastrzemski thinking he could play the ball and kind of crumpling when the ball went out.

LEIGH MONTVILLE: It was a ball that everyone thought was going to be caught, a nothing kind of hit.

DON ZIMMER: When Bucky hit the ball, I said, “That's an out.” And usually you know when the ball hits the bat whether it's short, against the wall, in the net or over the net. I see Yaz backing up, and when he's looking up, I still think he's going to catch it. When I see him turn around, then I know he's going to catch it off the wall. Then the ball wound up in the net.

MIKE TORREZ: I was so damn shocked.I thought maybe it was going to be off the wall. Damn, I did not think it was going to go out.

BUCKY DENT: When I hit the ball, I knew that I had hit it high enough to hit the wall. But there were shadows on the net behind the wall and I didn't see the ball land there. I was running from the plate because I thought I had a chance at a double. I didn't know it was a home run until the second-base umpire signaled it was a home run. It was an eerie feeling because the ballpark was dead silent.

STEVE RYDER: It was just a pop fly off Mike Torrez. It just made the netting. The crowd was just absolutely stunned, absolutely stunned.

REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK: http://harveyfrommersports.com/remembering_fenway/

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