Bucky Dent’s Improbable Clout

By JAMES TUITE

BOSTON-Somehow, it all defied logic. After more than 300 hours of baseball in 162 games spanning half a year, the season was distilled into 172 minutes on a sunny October afternoon. Yet, here was the reductio ad absurdum: the New York Yankees, torn by bitterness and 14 games out of first place a month ago, sat atop the American League East today, headed for a pennant confrontation with the Kansas City Royals. "I've been dreaming of this," said Bucky Dent, of the seventhinning homer he hit over the leftfield wall. "You know you dream about things like that when you're a kid. Well, my dream came true."



Dent was talking about a looping drive that cleared the formidable rampart by at least five feet and sent Chris Chambliss and Roy White scurrying home ahead of him. That sent the Yankees ahead of the Boston Red Sox, 3‚2, and proved to be the mightiest blow of their 5‚4 victory. A double by Thurman Munson that scored Mickey Rivers provided another Yankee run in the seventh, this one off of Bob Stanley. He had replaced Mike Torrez after the Yankees put a Dent in their former teammate. A Reggie Jackson homer in the eighth put the game away.



The record books will probably find it difficult to explain that Rivers and a batboy deserve asterisks for Dent's home run. After Dent painfully fouled a ball off his ankle, Rivers handed a bat to Tony Sarandrea, the 18-year-old batboy. "Give this to Bucky," said Rivers. "Tell him there are lots of hits in it. He'll get a home run." Dent switched to the new bat and gave lie to Hemingway's observation that "a man can be destroyed but not beaten." That may apply to old fishermen but not to the Yanks: they defeated the Red Sox without destroying them.



For the Bostons, still on a natural high after winning 12 of their last 14 games and eight of them in a row, gallantly fought back. Their partisans among the 32,925 noisy viewers here saw them make a game effort with two more runs in the eighth but only after the Yanks had collected a decisive one on a looping homer to centerfield by Jackson. "It was a fast ball right over the plate," said Jackson, who detoured on his way back to the dugout to shake the hand of his part-time adversary and Yankee president, George Steinbrenner. That sealed the tasty conquest for Ron Guidry, who needed help from Rich Gossage in the seventh. Said Gossage, who achieved his 27th rescue of the season: "I wasn't worried out there. If I got beaten I was going to lose on my own effort."



"We've come back from bigger deficits," said Graig Nettles. "It was nothing to worry about. The best part was that we did it against Torrez. He's been badmouthing us all season, ever since he left the Yanks." Torrez, whose erratic pitching has not endeared him to the Boston fans in recent weeks, was rolling comfortably along with the two-run cushion provided by Carl Yastrzemski's homer in the second and a Jim Rice single that scored Rick Burleson in the sixth.



The Yankee players all had praise for Bob Lemon, who took over the club from Billy Martin during his tumultuous early months. "Lemon knew us all the way," said Nettles. "He was perfect for bringing us together. It wouldn't have worked if they had brought someone else in as manager." Lemon got an extra chuckle out of today's victory, for he had played on the Cleveland team that beat Boston the last time the Red Sox were forced into a one-game playoff. The year was 1948. As for Dent, he was not worried about his injured foot. "A little ice and champagne will fix that," he said smiling.



The Yankees went on to defeat the Kansas City Royals, three games to one, in the league championship series. They won the World Series in six games over the Los Angeles Dodgers after being down, two games to none.



Associated Press Bucky Dent connecting for a three-run, seventh-inning home run off the Red Sox' Mike Torrez that all but clinched a division title for the Yankees in a one-game regular-season playoff at Fenway Park. Dent had only four other homers all year.

Runners Up



1968: Bob Gibson struck out a World Series record 17 batters in pitching the St. Louis Cardinals over the Detroit Tigers, 4‚0, in Game 1 at Busch Stadium. Gibson, who had 13 shutouts and a 1.12 earned run average in the regular season, bested the 31-game winner Denny McLain. The "Year of the Pitcher" led to off-season changes such as the lowering of the mound and creation of a tighter strike zone.



1980: Larry Holmes, aged 30, defended his World Boxing Council heavyweight championship with an 11th-round technical knockout of Muhammad Ali, 38, in Las Vegas. Ali, who had been retired for two years, was trying to win the heavyweight title for an unprecedented fourth time (see Dec. 11).



1994: Don Shula, 64, and the Miami Dolphins defeated David Shula, 32, and the Cincinnati Bengals, 23‚7, at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. It was the first time in pro sports that a father and son faced each other as head coaches. Don Shula became the winningest coach in N.F.L. history (347‚173‚6 in the regular season and the playoffs). David (19‚52) was fired after four seasons.