Let's take Bucky's homer out of the equation. Let's change Bucky's homer to a single, and see what happens:
Top of the 7th, 2 out, Chris Chambliss on 3rd base, Roy White on 1st, Sox lead 2-0, Mike Torrez pitching to Bucky Dent. So far, nothing has changed. Now...
Base hit up the middle for Dent. Chambliss scores. White makes it to 3rd. Dent to 1st. Sox 2, Yanks 1.
Next up, Mickey Rivers. No change: Base hit for Mick the Quick. White scores, Dent scampers to 3rd, Rivers on 1st. Sox 2, Yanks 2.
Since Willie Randolph is hurt, Thurman Munson is moved up from 3rd to 2nd in the Yankee batting order. No change: Double. Dent scores. Rivers scores all the way from 1st. Yanks 4, Sox 2.
Sox manager Don Zimmer has finally seen enough: He pulls Torrez and brings in Bob Stanley. Lou Piniella has been moved up in the order from 5th to 3rd. Stanley gets him out. End of the inning, but the damage is done.
Top of the 8th. Reggie Jackson, still in the 4th spot, leads off. Big blast to dead center. Yanks 5, Sox 2. It's over.
No, it's not. Remember what Yogi Berra said? "It ain't over 'til it's over."
Bottom of the 8th. Sox score 2 runs. Yanks 5, Sox 4.
Bottom of the 9th, 2 out. Rick Burleson on 3rd. Jerry Remy on 1st. Carl Yastrzemski up against Yankee closer Rich Gossage. Yaz vs. the Goose. One of the best fastball hitters ever against one of the fastest pitchers ever. A man who proved his clutch-hitting bona fides long ago against a man who hasn't yet proved his clutch-pitching bona fides, and will have to here. Low and away, ball one.
The Goose's next pitch is right over the plate. Yaz swings, but is jammed. He pops up to 3rd, Graig Nettles catches it. Ballgame over, American League Eastern Division over, Yankees win, theeeeeeee... Whew!... Yankees win.
Now, what has changed? Nothing, really. Except Bucky's homer is now a single. He didn't start the rally, nor did he finish it. He drove in the 1st run, but not the go-ahead run, or even the run that made the difference. He's just another step in a big Yankee victory. True, it was a clutch hit, one of several he got in his Yankee career -- he wasn't just about that one swing, or even that one beautiful month, October 1978.
But with this one small change, he no longer has New Englanders, and Sox Chowdaheads wherever they may be, giving him a new middle name.
Of course, Bucky did hit that home run... and it is the centerpiece of the Yanks-Sox rivalry. If you want to understand the rivalry, you have to understand 1978. Everything that went on. The injuries on both sides. The bickering on both sides. The messes surrounding the managers on both sides. The Boston Massacre. The mad dash both teams made at the end. And the Playoff game.
It may still be the greatest game ever played. After all, as great a moment as the Aaron Boone Game was, it didn't lead to the Yankees winning the World Series. The Bucky Dent Game did.
*
But... What if the Red Sox had won the game?
Any number of changes could have facilitated this. Let's go with the most obvious: The last play. Suppose that, as he did in the bottom of the 6th inning on October 1, 1967, Yaz had singled up the middle. Burleson scores the tying run. Remy is on 2nd with the winning run. Yaz is on 1st, but his run is meaningless.
The next batter would have been Carlton Fisk. He singles to left. Knowing that left fielder Roy White doesn't have a great arm, Yankee manager Bob Lemon has replaced him for defensive purposes, with Gary Thomasson. But Remy is fast, and scores before Thomasson's throw reaches Munson's glove.
Boston 6, New York 5. The Boston Red Sox are the 1978 American League Eastern Division Champions.
Pandemonium at Fenway. Sox fans treat this as the biggest hit of Fisk's career. After all, the home run that won Game 6 of the 1975 World Series only led to a Game 7 loss. And this was against the Yankees.
So the Sox get on a plane, and go to Kansas City. Do they beat the Royals in the AL Championship Series? In the history that we know, the Yankees did, but would the Sox?
Presuming that Zimmer stuck to his September rotation, it would have been Dennis Eckersley, Luis Tiant, and Torrez -- and the 4th slot, should it be necessary, was a hole. Bill Lee was not reliable at this point, but neither were Jim Wright, Bobby Sprowl or Mike Paxton. Zim had used Bob Stanley as a starter, but he wasn't really a starter. No, it would likely have been a 3-man rotation the rest of the way.
Game 1 at Royals Stadium (now named Kauffman Stadium): The Yankees won this one, because Jim Beattie was brilliant, and they hit Dennis Leonard and Al Hrabosky hard. Eck would have been on only 2 days' rest, but maybe Andy Hassler mops up. Sox win.
Game 2 at Royals Stadium: This was the only game the Royals won in the series, but that was against Ed Figueroa, a righthander facing their lefty-heavy lineup. Knowing that Tiant is also righthanded, maybe Zim, knowing that he's already gotten no worse than a split, and is "playing with house money," decides not to risk Tiant on 2 days' rest. He throws the lefty Sprowl. He doesn't do well, but, like Billy Martin putting Catfish Hunter out for Game 2 of the World Series, it gets his staff the needed rest, sacrificing one game to win the series. Royals win. Series tied 1-1.
Game 3 at Fenway Park: Now, with the travel day, Tiant has a full 4 days' rest, and is his usual fabulous self. No 3 home runs for George Brett against the Cuban Corkscrew. Sox win, lead 2-1.
Game 4 at Fenway Park: Torrez has a full 4 days' rest, and, as Martin said, "Torrez is a hoss." There will be no bullpen meltdown today. The Red Sox win the Pennant.
*
So, what about the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers? Zim can throw Eck in Game 1 at Dodger Stadium, on 7 days' rest, or he can have him pitch a "simulated game" in the middle of it, to keep him fresh. But maybe he's not fresh enough. Or maybe the cross-country flight leaves the Sox a little off. Or maybe the Dodgers hit him the way they hit Figueroa in the real version of this game. Dodgers win.
Game 2 at Dodger Stadium: Tiant has had 4 days' rest, and the Dodgers, most of whom have never played in the American League, have never faced anything like Tiant. Sox win, Series tied.
Game 3 at Fenway Park: Torrez is on 5 days' rest, and has already gone the distance to beat the Dodgers in Games 3 and 6 of the previous year's series. But, in real life, the Sox kept slamming the ball down the 3rd base line. And Butch Hobson is no Graig Nettles. Nor is Jack Brohamer. Dodgers win, lead Series 2-1.
Game 4 at Fenway Park: Eck on 3 days' rest against Tommy John. TJ's sinkers give Yaz and Fred Lynn, both lefties, lots of problems. There's no setup for the "Sacrifice Thigh" that Reggie Jackson pulled off in this game. Dodgers win, lead Series 3-1.
Yikes, the Sox aren't going to go down quietly, are they? After all, this is Year 60 of the Curse of the Bambino. Surely, they're going to get back into it and tease their fans... Or maybe a Hobson error in Game 3 is their Johnny Pesky or Bill Buckner moment. Can they come back?
Game 5 at Fenway Park: Tiant on 3 days' rest against Burt Hooton. This time, just as the Yankees won 12-2, the Sox unload the lumber. Sox win, trail Series 3-2. At least the Dodgers won't clinch at Fenway.
Game 6 at Dodger Stadium: Torrez is on 3 days' rest, but maybe Zim relieved him before the 7th inning, and he's ready to go 9. His opponent is Don Sutton, and they hit him so hard his perm gets straightened out. Sox win, Series tied 3-3.
October 18, 1978. Game 7 of the World Series. Dodger Stadium. Dennis Eckersley vs. Tommy John. And I have no basis on which to judge this, since there was no Game 7 in real life, on which to judge the performance that day of John or anyone else. Here we go:
Burleson leads off the game with a push-bunt that sends a John sinker over the head of Ron Cey at 3rd base. Remy walks. Yaz hits one to the San Gabriel Mountains. Rice makes it back-to-back homers. 4-0 Boston.
Through 5 innings, Eck has a no-hitter going, and the baseball world is buzzing.
But Davey Lopes hits one out in the 6th. And that's enough to rattle Eck. He allows another run before getting out of it. 4-2 Boston.
Zimmer brings Stanley in, and he shuts the Dodgers down in the 7th and the 8th. But the pitcher's spot is up for the Dodgers in the bottom of the 9th, and Tommy Lasorda sends Manny Mota up to bat. Boom. 4-3 Boston. Oh no, here it is, a choke bigger than 1946, 1948, 1949, 1972, 1974, 1975 or 1977.
Zim plays a hunch. He brings in Tiant. Looie gets Lopes to ground out, and he strikes Russell out. Up next is Reggie Smith, a part of the 1967 Boston "Impossible Dream," now a more dangerous hitter at age 33 than he was then at 22. Tiant is a little too careful, and walks him. That brings up the winning run, Steve Garvey. Dodger Stadium is jumping as much as Ebbets Field ever did.
Garvey works a 3-2 count. But just when you think he's going to lace one down the 3rd-base line, and Hobson's going to throw it away, to tie the game and put Garvey on 2nd for Cey, Tiant throws what Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe calls "the greatest curveball ever thrown by mortal man, if you believe that Luis Tiant is, in fact, a mortal man, and not a Buddha-like god."
Strike three. The Boston Red Sox are the 1978 World Champions.
*
Now, how does this affect the Dodgers? Probably no more than the loss as we know it did. They still had a bad year in 1979, lost a Playoff for the National League Western Division title in 1980, and beat the Yankees in the 1981 World Series, before retooling and winning the Division in 1983 and 1985, and the World Series again in 1988.
How does it affect the Sox? Yaz gets into the Hall of Fame, of course, and so does Eck, but Fisk and Rice get in much sooner, and Tiant and Dwight Evans get in as well.
Of the 1978 players, the only holdovers to the 1986 team are Rice, Evans and Stanley. With the added boost of confidence that the '78 ring gives him, Stanley strikes Mookie Wilson out, and the Sox beat the Mets in the 1986 World Series.
Now, here's what Boston teams have done in calendar year 1986: The Patriots have been to their 1st Super Bowl, the Celtics have won the NBA title for the 3rd time in 6 years and the 16th time overall, and the Red Sox have won their 2nd World Series in 9 seasons. Thinking of Boston as "a city of losers" is ridiculous. And so, that great sitcom about losers in a Boston bar, Cheers, gets canceled in 1987.
But the writers and the producers aren't ready to give up. So they spin off a character, retconning his life so that he's from a dreary, depressing city where nobody ever wins, and sending him back there with his father and his brother, where he hosts a radio show based on his line of expertise.
Of course, it's not psychiatrist Frasier Crane in Seattle. It's accountant and financial expert, Norm Peterson in Cleveland. Norm! is a hit that runs until 1996, when it was decided not to continue after the death of McLean Stevenson, who played Norm's father, retired cop Marty.
This also followed the pattern of Cheers' cancellation, because it came right after the Indians' run to the 1995 World Series, when Norm's brother Ross, played by Cleveland native Drew Carey, delivers that classic line (from The Drew Carey Show that we know in real life), "Finally, it's everybody else's team that sucks!" Patricia McPherson, no longer Bonnie on Knight Rider, plays Norm's never-previously-seen wife Vera, making us wonder why he made so many jokes about her.
How does losing the 1986 World Series affect the Mets? They become known as the biggest letdown in the history of New York sports. (If the Rangers had lost Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals, it would not have been as big a letdown as this.) They finish 1st or 2nd every year from 1984 to 1990, but have only 1 Pennant and 1 other Division title to show for it, and no World Championship.
In 1989, on the 20th Anniversary of the 1969 "Miracle," Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News publishes The Curse of Amos Otis. Otis was the player the Mets traded after the '69 season to solve their 3rd base woes with Joe Foy, which didn't work, and they haven't won the World Series since.
Lupica can write this book because Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe has no reason to write The Curse of the Bambino, because nobody ever has a reason to think that up.
The 1980s Mets go down in history along with the 1990s Knicks and the 2010s Rangers and (so far) Yankees as New York teams that got their fans' hopes up so high, and ruined them. Gary Carter doesn't get into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The idea that Keith Hernandez should be in is ridiculous.
And it's Phil McConkey, one of the Giants heroes of Super Bowl XXI, who takes his championship ring and his mustache onto Seinfeld -- and it's his anti-abortion stance, not smoking like with Hernandez, that makes Elaine break up with him.
In real life, by 1986, Eckersley was already an alcoholic and no longer a Red Sock: He was the guy the Sox traded to the Chicago Cubs to get Buckner. But, with '78 having boosted his confidence, he helps the Cubs win the 1984 Pennant, although they still lose the World Series to the Detroit Tigers. Maybe he celebrates the Pennant too hard, or maybe being hungover hurts him in the '84 Series.
Maybe he gets sober sooner -- and stays with the Cubs, and doesn't become the great reliever for the Oakland Athletics. So the Red Sox beat the A's for the Pennant in 1988 and 1990, although they get surprised by the Dodgers in the former and in a rematch of 1975 with the Cincinnati Reds in the latter. But it hurts less than it would have, because they have '75 and '86.
And, with a sober and hard-slider-throwing Eck helping out, the Cubs beat the Giants for the Pennant in 1989. And when the earthquake hits right before Game 3 of the World Series, the teams are at Wrigley Field, far from the devastation. Game 3 is played as scheduled, before anybody has any idea of the severity of the quake.
Game 4 is pushed back a night in memory of the victims, but the Cubs beat the A's. Their fans, instead of truly being able to enjoy their 1st title in 81 years, whine that, because of the tragedy, they can't really celebrate. They can, however, celebrate in 2003, because, with the Curse of the Billy Goat broken in '89, they don't fall apart, and Steve Bartman becomes a footnote. Though maybe the lack of hunger helps the Cleveland Indians beat the Cubs in 2016.
And what about the Yankees? How does losing the 1978 Playoff affect them?
The breakup happens immediately, but it isn't an angry George Steinbrenner who starts it. No, no, really, he means it this time: Thurman Munson demands to be traded to his hometown Indians, or he will retire immediately. So George trades him there, for catcher Ron Hassey (whom the Yankees eventually got anyway) and, because George loves him some reclamation projects, troubled pitchers David Clyde and Wayne Garland. Neither helps much.
The Indians were not scheduled for August 2, 1979, but, since he's back home, Thurman has less of a desire to fly, and doesn't practice takeoffs and landings that day. He does not die in a plane crash.
0He continues to play as the Indians' designated hitter or 1st baseman through the 1981 season, and retires. He joins the Indians' coaching staff, then George brings him back as a Yankee coach, and eventually hires him as manager. Twice. And, not winning, fires him twice.
The Yankees still don't have a good season in 1979, and lose the Division title to the Baltimore Orioles in 1980. The Orioles lose the ALCS to the Royals. The Yankees don't win the Division in 1981. Instead, the Milwaukee Brewers do, and beat Billy Martin's A's in the ALCS, before losing to the Dodgers in the World Series.
George does not re-sign Reggie after the 1981 season. In spite of his 1977 heroics, Reggie is shown wearing an A's cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. So is Catfish Hunter. In the minds of Yankee fans, Reggie is just another veteran who signed with the Yankees after his best years, like fellow Hall-of-Famers Joe Sewell in the 1930s, and Johnny Mize and Enos Slaughter in the 1950s.
George's paranoia gets the better of him the same way we know. Now, history reasserts itself: Gene Michael rebuilds the Bronx Bombers. 1996 and 1998 World Champions. And then...
Well, with the 1978 victory over the Yankees, and the 1986 title as well, Red Sox fans still hate the Yankees, but it's not the same. It's no more of a hate of the Yankees than fans in Baltimore, Kansas City or Seattle have. Certainly, they don't hate the Yankees as much as Met fans do.
So the blood between them isn't nearly as bad. The Yankees win the 1999 ALCS, but the ugliness from the Fenway fans doesn't happen. They face each other again in 2003 and 2004. But there's no beanballs from Pedro Martinez, and no Game 3 brawl, because there simply isn't the sense of urgency: In 2003, the Sox title drought is 17 years, not 85 years.
Aaron Boone doesn't become the next Bucky Dent, he becomes the first Aaron Boone. Or maybe the next Bobby Thomson, if you want to go outside the Yanks-Sox rivalry. They still lose the 2003 World Series, but it's to the Cubs, not the Florida Marlins.
And 2004? Without the fact of not having won the World Series since 1918, and the urgency of that season, the thought of, "If it doesn't happen now, it never will, so it better happen now," it doesn't happen. The Yankees beat the Sox, and then beat the St. Louis Cardinals to win Title 26.
The Red Sox still win the World Series in 2007, and do it for the stricken City of Boston in 2013. The Yankees win it all in 2009, taking Title 27 in the first season of the new Yankee Stadium, and Pedro, not a part of the 2007 Sox titlists, retires without a ring. As of 2018, he's still waiting for his election to the Hall of Fame. Munson dies shortly after the 2009 World Series, his high-strung nature giving him a stroke at age 62.
Yankees World Series wins from 1962 onward: 1977, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2009. 7, as many as we know in our world.
Red Sox World Series wins from 1918 onward: 1978, 1986, 2007, 2013. 4, 1 more than we know in our world.
Yanks-Sox is still a rivalry, but not one where half the NYPD needs to be on duty in the South Bronx.
So everybody's happier. Except for fans of the Mets. And the Marlins. And the San Diego Padres, losers to the Cubs in the 1984 Playoffs, although they still win the Pennant in 1998.
But wouldn't the world be better off without the hate we know between the Yankees and the Red Sox?
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