I hate skewed narratives in baseball
I started Saturday and broke up over the hours watching the Bucky Dent game, as I’ll be seeing Mike Torrez at a card show in St. Louis Sunday.
I knew it was 2-0 Boston and Dent made it 3-2 in the seventh and how many times over the years I’ve heard Bucky ‘Bleeping’ Dent with respect to the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry.
Yet, having finished the whole game, that home run doesn’t tell everything - Munson’s RBI double in the seventh, Reggie’s homer in the eighth, the Red Sox getting two runs back in their half of the eighth and Lou Piniella cutting off a Jerry Remy-hit ball in right in the ninth.
Eleven years later, Bill Buckner is forever associated with a ‘curse’ not broken for another 18 years, which makes no sense because the Mets were down to their last strike. Calvin Schiraldi and Bob Stanley couldn’t get the job done. The game was already tied, so it goes to another inning even if Buckner makes that play. And they still had Game 7 and John McNamara couldn’t get the job done.
And as a Cubs fan, don’t even get me started on Bartman, who somehow had his life ruined and got harassed to no end while Alex Gonzalez gets to live life not bearing the scrutiny a fan did.