Minutes later, they were parking on Lansdowne Street. They could see the stadium right there, the Green Monster. On the radio, the Yankee shortstop, Bucky Dent, is announced as the batter. It’s the seventh inning. The Sox are up 2–0. They’ve missed nearly the entire game. Ted jumped out of the car. “C’mon, Dad, let’s go in.”
“When this inning’s over. They’re winning without me, I don’t wanna jinx it. Let’s listen from here.”
“It’s Bucky Dent. He can’t hit. Nothing’s gonna happen. Let’s go.”
“We’ll go in when the inning’s over.”
Ted sat back down in the car. “All right, suit yourself.”
As Ted stared at Fenway just a few hundred feet away, he thought of Moses on Mount Pisgah, given a sight of the Promised Land only to be told by God he could not enter.
There was an erratic, swirling breeze. Phil Rizzuto said, “I tell ya, did you take notice of the flag? I couldn’t believe it. Just as Jim Rice came to the plate, the wind started blowing to left field. It not only helped Yastrzemski’s homer, but it hurt Jackson’s. The wind was blowing to right field when Jackson hit the fly ball, when Yaz hit the homer the wind was blowing to left field, kept it from going foul. Somebody told me the Red Sox controlled the elements up here. I didn’t believe ’em till today.”
Ted wished, for the thousandth time, that his intransigent seat could recline as they listened to Dent coming up to the plate against Boston’s Mike Torrez. For the millionth time, the announcers, with the numerical fetishism common only to baseball fans, astrologists, and Kabbalists, described the short left-field porch guarded by the Green Monster. The Green Monster always put Ted in mind of Sir Gawain’s deathless adversary, the Green Knight. Fenway’s eccentric dimensions, to baseball aficionados, were as much a numerical given as the Pythagorean theorem—a throwback to the days before conformity and cookie-cutter ballparks, its height making up for its lack of depth. Only 310 feet from home plate, barely farther than a Little League field, the wall rises up like a thing in nature, 37 feet 2 inches, exponentially higher than any fence in any other major league ballpark. Like a capricious god, the wall could punish well-hit balls that would be home runs in other parks, but, in Fenway, without enough loft, might merely line into the high scoreboard and ricochet back for only a single. And yet the wall giveth and the wall taketh away; the Monster could reward an unworthy pop fly, a can of corn in any other park, and decree it a home run. It was a ridiculous, unreasonable, Old Testament wall.
On the radio, Rizzuto was growing more nervous. He was such a biased homer, blatantly pulling for the Yankees. It was the seventh inning, the Sox were still up 2–0, and the former Yankee Mike Torrez was strong, throwing a shutout. But the Yankees were mounting their first real threat of the game with runners on first and second. The announcers pessimistically discussed the number-nine hitter coming to the plate now, the light-hitting Bucky Dent, batting a mediocre .243 for the year, with no power, only four home runs. They talked about how the Yankee manager, Bob Lemon, who had been brought in to replace the volatile Billy Martin mid-season, probably wanted to pinch hit for Dent, but there was no one left on the bench. They were stuck with Bucky Dent.
It’s a funny feeling because Ted and Marty, even as they are listening, can feel the energy from the nearby stadium, where 32,925 are focused on the actions of two men playing a child’s game. Dent swings at a pitch and fouls it off his ankle. He takes a minute to walk it off. He’s in obvious pain and limping, but Lemon has no choice but to keep him in. Dent steps back in, swings, and fouls off another pitch, breaking his bat this time. There’s another minute while he heads back to the dugout for a new bat. The Yankee center fielder, Mickey Rivers, in the on-deck circle, tosses one of his own bats to Dent, saying something like “Use mine, you can’t hit anyway.” Bucky Dent laughs and walks back out to the plate with Mickey Rivers’s bat.
Bucky digs in again. Torrez delivers, Dent swings. And then a strange sound comes from the stadium, from Fenway. It’s the sound of 32,925 people holding their breath. Tens of thousands of people absolutely quiet watching the arc of a ball and doing mental calculations of its parabola. And then another odd sound emanates from the stadium, a sickening mixture of disbelief, horror, fear, and animal disapproval: 32,925 souls, minus a few hundred gate-crashing Yankee fans, just got gut punched. Bucky had lofted a lazy fly ball, but because of the capricious Green Monster, the easy out became a will-sapping, confidence-destroying, fateful home run. Water had been turned into wine, lead into a lead. The ball cleared the wall. Bucky Dent had hit a three-run homer over the Green Monster; what the Boston pitcher Dennis Eckersley later called “a fucking piece of shit home run.”
There’s a general feeling of panic riding on the air. Shadows are falling and the temperature is dropping in the early October afternoon. There is quiet in the car except for the radio. Bucky Dent rounds the bases on his way home. Yanks are up 3–2. Phil Rizzuto said, “Don’t ask me to say anything, I’ve been holding my breath, Bill White … I’m in a state of shock, so I’m not going to be much help up here. I’m like a hen on a hot rock, I don’t know whether to jump or sit or lay an egg.”
Marty spoke first. He reached over and turned the radio off, silencing Rizzuto and White and the world.
“Bucky Dent?! Bucky Dent??!! Bucky Fucking Dent???!!!”
“It’s okay, Dad, there’s a couple of innings left. We’ll come back. Let’s go in. It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Marty settled back in his chair, seemingly emptied of hope. “It’s over.”
“It’s not over. It’s a one-run lead in the seventh. Far from over.”
“Ted. It’s over. I can feel it. I know it.” And then Marty just kept repeating in disbelief, “Bucky Dent? Bucky Dent? Bucky Fucking Dent?” As if, if he said it enough, he could turn back the clock or at least make it make sense to himself. Marty was right: within the hour, the season would be over. The Longingness would continue because of Bucky Dent.
“Bucky Dent. Bucky Dent. Bucky Fucking Dent.”