1978 World Series: Yankee shift

The Teams 
American League: New York Yankees (100-63) - 32nd World Series (won 21 previous times)
National League: Los Angeles Dodgers (95-67) - Seventh World Series (won in 1959, 1963, 1965)

What Happened
One year after the Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series, the same two teams were back again to face off in 1978. Though the Yankees had gotten the better of them the previous season, the Dodgers seemed to have more things working in their favor the second time around. Aside from having home-field advantage this time, the Dodgers also came in facing a tired Yankees team - New York had come from 8.5 games back on August 20 to tie the Red Sox, then had won the one-game playoff, then had to endure a tough playoff series with the Royals.

The Dodgers seized on their advantage. They hit three home runs in the first four innings to win Game 1 in a laugher, then took a 4-3 lead into the ninth inning of Game 2. The Yankees got two runners on base in the ninth, but Dodgers pitcher Bob Welch - normally a (very good) starter who was forced to the bullpen for the playoffs because the Dodger starters were too good - retired Yankee stars Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson to end the game and put the Dodgers up 2-0.

From there, the series went to the Bronx, and the momentum of. the series shifted in favor of the Yankees. But it didn't have to be that way. The Dodgers had plenty of chances to stem the momentum that the Yankees were building. Trailing 2-1 in Game 3, the Dodgers twice loaded the bases, only to have both chances snuffed out on a ground out to Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles. A three-run home run by Reggie Smith gave the Dodgers a 3-0 lead in the fifth inning of Game 4, but the Dodgers only got two hits the rest of the way and let the Yankees tie the game and eventually win it in the 10th.

By then, things were getting out of control. The Yankees unloaded for 12 runs in Game 5, then took a 3-0 lead back in Dodger Stadium in Game 6 before a Reggie Jackson home run clinched the series.

Defining Game
The way the early games of the series played out, it became clear pretty early that the winner of Game 4 was going to win the series. The Dodgers' Tommy John and the Yankees' Ed Figueroa kept the game scoreless through four before Smith's two-out home run gave the Dodgers the lead. The Yankees got two back in the sixth - scoring one on a single by Jackson and another on an error on what should have been an inning-ending double play. Munson's 8th inning double tied the game, and the teams did nothing until the 10th. With two outs sandwiched around a walk, Jackson singled for the Yankees to send Roy White to second representing the game-winning run. Lou Piniella drove White home with a single, and the Yankees had their momentum-shifting win.

MVP
Bucky Dent was named MVP, which is a little weird since this is the first time he's being mentioned in this writeup. It could have easily been Jackson, but maybe the voters figured that since Jackson wasn't as good as the previous year's series, he shouldn't win a second straight MVP. Or maybe it was leftover karma after Dent's playoff-clinching home run. 

Scores:
(Home team shaded; winners in Bold)

New York	5	3	5	4 (10)	12	7
Los Angeles	11	4	1	3	2	2

The List
I'm ranking all the World Series, from worst to best. Here are the ones I've done so far:

68. 1978 - New York (A) def. Los Angeles (N) 4-2
69. 2006 - St. Louis (N) def. Detroit (A) 4-1
Numbers 70-79
Numbers 80-89
Numbers 90-99
Numbers 100-107

1978 AL East Tiebreaker: That Shortstop

Pregame
After the exciting pennant race of 1949, baseball fans eagerly anticipated the second act between the Yankees and Red Sox. Few people expected it would take as long as it did. However, after topping the Red Sox in that thrilling weekend in 1949, the Yankees went on to win 16 American League pennants and 10 World Championships in the next 28 years, while the Red Sox won two pennants and finished second just twice.

Halfway though the summer of 1978, it didn't look like the rivalry was going to continue any time soon. While the Red Sox were running away with the American League, the Yankees were struggling. On July 19, after the All-Star break, the Yankees were in 4th place, 14 games behind the first-place Sox. The last thing anybody expected was a New York-Boston battle for the pennant.

But then the Yankees, the two-time defending American League champions, got back that winning feeling. From July 19 on, the Yankees went on a 52-21 run, 10 games better than the next best team in the A.L. East. Boston only played .500 ball over that stretch, and the result was Boston trailing the Yankees by 3.5 games on September 16.

A week later, the Red Sox were down by one game with seven games to play in season. Improbably, the Red Sox won all seven games. Just as improbably, they didn't gain any ground, staying a game back until the Yankees finally lost on the final day of the season, setting up a one-game playoff the day after the end of the regular season.

The Game
The Yankees had exactly the guy they wanted for the one-game playoff. Ron Guidry had gone 24-3 in 1978, with an ERA under 2.00. It was one of the best seasons ever for a Yankees starting pitcher.

It was a surprise, then, when Boston journeyman Mike Torrez outpitched Guidry through the first six innings. A Yankee the previous season, Torrez had been no better than Boston's third starter during the regular season. Yet there he was, pitching in the top of the seventh with a 2-0 lead.

What happened then, of course, has gone down in baseball lore. It has become one of the defining moments of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. The sites are unforgettable: Yankee shortstop taking his compact swing on a choked-up bat, Carl Yastrzemski drifting back, expecting to catch a short fly ball, Yastrzemski's knees buckling as the ball floated over the Green Monster, Fenway Park sitting in stunned silence as Dent crossed home plate.

Everything else that has happened in the game has become a footnote: Reggie Jackson's eighth-inning home run that seemed meaningless at the time; the two runs Boston scored in the eighth, followed by the two runners Boston left on in both the eighth and the ninth. All important, yet all almost completely forgotten. It was Bucky Dent's moment, his time to put his mark on the rivalry.

Postgame
Dent did more than put his mark on the rivalry. For the next decade and a half, he became one of the faces of the Yankees dominance over the Red Sox, the symbol of Boston futility, which for a time put him equal with Babe Ruth. It helped, of course, that the Yankees won the World Series that year, their second straight and their last until 1996. But it helped more that the Red Sox failed to win, that they failed to break the streak. At this point, the streak started to become the story. And it would stay that way until 2004.

The Rundown

5. N.Y. Yankees 5, Boston 4 (1978 AL East tiebreaker)
6. San Francisco 6, Los Angeles 4 (1962 National League playoff)
7. Chicago 1, Minnesota 0 (2008 AL Central tiebreaker)
8. N.Y. Yankees 5, Boston 3 (1949 American League)
9. Arizona 2, St. Louis 1 (2001 NLDS)
10. Chicago 4, New York 2 (1908 National League makeup game)
11. Boston 12, Cleveland 8 (1999 ALDS)
12. Boston 5, Minnesota 3 (1967 American League)
13. Minnesota 5, Oakland 4 (2002 ALDS)
14. Boston 4, Oakland 3 (2003 ALDS)
15. Cleveland 4, N.Y. Yankees 3 (1997 ALDS)
16. L.A. Angels 5, N.Y. Yankees 3 (2005 ALDS)
17. Texas 5, Tampa Bay 1 (2010 ALDS)
18. San Francisco 3, Atlanta 1 (2002 NLDS)
19. N.Y. Yankees 5, Oakland 3 (2001 ALDS)
20. Seattle 3, Cleveland 1 (2001 ALDS)
21. Chicago 5, San Francisco 3 (1998 NL Wild Card tiebreaker)
22. N.Y. Yankees 7, Oakland 5 (2000 ALDS)
23. Los Angeles 4, Houston 0 (1981 NL West Division Series)
24. Montreal 3, Philadelphia 0 (1981 NL East Division Series)
25. N.Y. Yankees 7, Milwaukee 3 (1981 AL East Division Series)
26. Seattle 9, California 1 (1995 AL West tiebreaker)
27. Chicago 5, Atlanta 1 (2003 NLDS)
28. Houston 12, Atlanta 3 (2004 NLDS)
29. N.Y. Mets 5, Cincinnati 0 (1999 NL Wild Card tiebreaker)
30. Cleveland 8, Boston 3 (1948 AL tiebreaker)
31. Houston 7, Los Angeles 1 (1980 NL West tiebreaker)

October 2, 1978: Bucky Bleeping Dent

BOSTON - The image is seared into the brains of Red Sox fans across New England: Carl Yastrzemski drifting back on a fly ball, looking up as he reached the Green Monster, then nearly collapsing, his knees buckling, as he watched the home run settle in to the netting atop the famous left field wall. The game wasn't officially over at that point, but it sure seemed that way to the fans, and based on Yastrzemski's reaction, the players probably felt that way, too.

The 1978 American League East race was a thrilling one, with the defending champion Yankees chipping away at a large Boston lead all summer. On July 8, Boston was 10 games in front of Milwauke, 11.5 ahead of the Yankees. From there, the Yankees turned it on winning at a .675 clip to take the division lead in September. On September 23, the Yankees had a one-game lead on Boston, and New York finished the season 6-1. But the Red Sox went 7-0 to force a one-game playoff between the two long-time rivals.

The two teams met in Fenway Park on October 2 to decide the division championship. The Yankess sent Ron Guidry, he of the sublime 24-3 record, to the mound, with the Red Sox pitching Mike Torrez, he of the lukewarm 16-12 record. Despite the apparent pitching mismatch, the Red Sox took a 2-0 lead into the top of the seventh on the strength of a home run by Yastrzemski and an rbi single by Jim Rice.

With one out in the top half of the seventh, Chris Chambliss and Roy White hit back-to-back singles. When pinch-hitter Jim Spencer flied out, only light-hitting shortstop Bucky Dent stood between the Red Sox and the end of the threat. Dent was a .243 hitter and had hit only four home runs that year, so he wasn't seen as one of the least likely heroes in the Yankees lineup. The crowd was getting loud, imploring Torrez to get his light-hitting shortstop out so the Red Sox could be closer to a division title.

When Dent hit that ball into the Fenway Park netting, though, the crowd went silent, eerily so. Perhaps it was the decades of close calls and agonizing defeats, or perhaps it was that this game-changing home run was hit not by an all-star like Reggie Jackson or Thurman Munson but by Bucky Bleeping Dent. Whatever the reason, the Red Sox fans seemed deflated.

The players may have been, as well. After Dent's home run, Mickey Rivers walked and stole second, then came home on Munson's double. The Yankees had a 4-2 lead. They stretched that advantage to 5-2 on a monstrous home run by Jackson, which ended up being a very important run. The Red Sox got two runs in the bottom of the 8th to cut the lead to 5-4 before Yankee closer Goose Gossage got the last two outs with the go-ahead run on base.

In the ninth, the Red Sox threatened again, starting with a one-out walk by Rick Burleson. Jerry Remy followed with a line drive to right that Lou Piniella lost in the sun. Acting casual, like it was a routine flyball, Piniella didn't move until the last moment, when the ball bounced in front of him; he was able to somehow get a glove on it to keep it from going behind him. Piniella's acting job kept Burleson from advancing further than second base. That ended up being a huge play when Rice followed with a deep fly ball that would have easily tied the game if Burleson had been on third. As it was, the Red Sox were still down one, and they remained that way when Yastrzemski popped out to end the game.

While it was Jackson's blast that ended up being the official game-winning run, and Piniella's play in right that ended up saving the game, Dent's home run became the play that went down in baseball lore. It was surely the timing of the home run and the momentum swing it caused that has helped it live on, as well as the fact it was hit by one of the least likely players on the field to hit a clutch home run. While it has lived on in glory in Yankees history, it lives in infamy for the Red Sox fan base, a group that has forever since given Bucky Dent a new middle name, one that can't be said on TV.

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HONORABLE MENTION:
October 2, 1908: CLEVELAND - Ed Walsh was pitching brilliantly. At the end of a season in which he would win 40 games, in the heat of one of the tightest pennant races in American League history, Walsh had taken the mound for the White Sox in an absolute must-win game against Cleveland and had done everything his team had asked. Walsh struck out an amazing 15 batters, giving up only four singles. Somehow Cleveland had scratched together a run on a single, a two-base error on a pickoff attempt, and a wild pitch, but otherwise, Walsh was mowing them down. But it wasn't enough. Addie Joss wouldn't win 40 games like Walsh, but he led the league with a 1.16 era in 1908, and he was a big reason Cleveland was in the pennant race. Matched against Walsh, Joss did the only thing that could have given his team the victory: he threw a perfect game. Needing only 74 pitches, Joss cut down all 27 White Sox batters with stunning efficiency, striking out only three of them in throwing the fourth perfect game in baseball history. While Cleveland and Chicago both fell short of Detroit in 1908, nobody ever forgot that game, probably the only time a pitcher threw a perfect game but wasn't the best pitcher on the field.