Bucky Dent Breaks BeanTown Hearts
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Though Bucky Dent was not known as a home-run hitter — he hit a grand total of 40 in 12 years in the major leagues — his place in the annals of baseball has been secured by his three-run homer that gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead in the 1978 AL East division playoff game with their archrivals, the Red Sox. With a fierce wind blowing out to left field, Dent connected with a badly hanging breaking ball thrown by Mike Torrez (who had pitched for the Yankees only the previous season), and hit a fly ball to left that would just clear Fenway Park's Green Monster (310 feet from home plate), giving the Yankees a one-run lead. The Yankees went on to win the game 5-4 and the division title, thus upholding the Sox's so-called Curse of the Bambino. Since the event, Red Sox fans have held a great deal of animosity toward Dent, and gave Dent a profane nickname, Bucky F***ing Dent, usually printed for public consumption as "Bucky (Bleeping) Dent" or reduced to a middle initial as Bucky "F." Dent.
