In this spellbinding book, Richard Bradley tells the story of what was surely the greatest major league game of our lifetime and perhaps in the history of professional baseball. That game, played at Fenway Park on the afternoon of October 4, 1978, was the culmination of one of the most tense, emotionally wrought seasons ever, between baseball's two most bitter rivals, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Both teams finished this tumultuous season with identical 99-64 records, forcing a one-game playoff. With a one-run lead and two outs, with the tying run in scoring position in the bottom of the ninth, the entire season came down to one at-bat and to one swing of the bat.

It came down, as both men eerily predicted to themselves the night before, to the aging Red Sox legend, Carl Yastrzemski, and the Yankees' free-agent power reliever, Rich "Goose" Gossage.

Anyone who calls himself a baseball fan knows the outcome of that confrontation. And yet such are the literary powers of the author that we are pulled back in time to that late-afternoon moment and become filled anew with all the taut sense of drama that sports has to offer, as if we don't know what happened. As if the thoughts swirling around in the heads of pitcher and hitter are still fresh, both still hopeful of controlling events.

That climactic game occurred thirty seasons ago and yet it still captures our imagination. In this delightful work of sports literature, we watch the game unfold pitch by pitch, inning by inning, but Bradley is up to something more ambitious than just recounting this wonderful game. He also tells us the stories of the participants — how they got to that moment in their lives and careers, what was at stake for them personally — including the rivalries within the rivalry, such as catcher Carlton Fisk versus catcher Thurman Munson,and Billy Martin versus everyone. Using a narrative that alternates points of view between the teams, Bradley reacquaints us with a rich roster of characters — Freddy Lynn, Ron Guidry, Catfish Hunter, Mike Torrez, Jerry Remy, Lou Piniella, George Scott, and Reggie Jackson. And, of course, Bucky Dent, who craved just such a moment in the sun — a validation he had vainly sought from the father he barely knew.

Not a book intended to celebrate a triumph or lament a loss, The Greatest Game will be embraced in both Boston and New York, with fans of both teams recalling again the talented young men they once gave their hearts to. And fans everywhere will be reminded how utterly gripping a single baseball game can be and that the rewards of being a fan lie not in victory but in caring beyond reason, even decades after the fact.

"Russell Earl Dent, better known as Bucky, played shortstop for the New York Yankees in 1978 and hit only four home runs during the regular season. But on Oct. 2, with his team facing the Red Sox in a one-game playoff for the division championship, Dent smacked a three-run homer in the seventh inning to seal a 5-4 Yankee victory.

Almost 30 years later, fans still approach Dent and... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) tell him what they were doing on that day. I've never met the man, so here's my story. Oct. 2 was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and that morning, coming out of services, I met an old friend who knew I was a huge Yankees fan. What, he asked, are you doing here? Today's the big game. What, I replied, do you think I was in there praying for?

I doubt if my feeble plea for divine intervention steered Dent's ball over the Green Monster, the famous left field wall in Boston's Fenway Park. But the mere fact that baseball was in my prayers that day demonstrates how deeply fans on both sides felt about 'the greatest game,' as author Richard Bradley describes it. 'Going back to the turn of the twentieth century,' he writes, 'the competition between the Red Sox and the Yankees wasn't just about two teams, but also about two cities, two regions, two cultures, two different ways of looking at the world.' That's why the Yankees and the Red Sox are the best rivalry in sports. The only contests that come close are on the collegiate level: Michigan and Ohio State in football, say, or Duke and North Carolina in basketball. But those teams play each other only once (football) or twice (basketball) every year. The Yanks and the Sox tussle nearly 20 times a season, not including the playoffs, and that reinforces a pet theory of mine. Fans retain the baseball loyalties of their youth because their teams play almost every day for six months. A baseball game is a common occurrence, not a special occasion, and that very ordinariness breeds a fierce loyalty to the hometown heroes no other sport can match.

Bradley, whose other books include 'American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr.,' is at his best when he takes us inside the game, pointing out tiny details that don't show up in box scores but often determine the outcome. For example: With the Sox threatening to tie the game in the ninth inning, shortstop Rick Burleson failed to go from first to third on a hit to right field, and therefore was not in a position to score when the next batter, Jim Rice, lofted a fly to the warning track.

The book is less successful when Bradley strains for larger meanings. He writes that the advent of free agency in the '70s, allowing players to switch teams after their contracts expired, meant that 'local fans had no emotional connection' with the changing cast of mercenaries who chose to play for the highest bidder. But that's clearly not true. Baseball is more popular than ever. Fans root for their towns and their teams — no matter who's wearing their uniforms.

Moreover, this book feels a bit dated. For more than 80 years, the dramatic fulcrum of the Yankee-Red Sox soap opera was Boston's sale of Babe Ruth to New York in 1920. After that, the 'curse of the Bambino' condemned the Beantowners to eternal purgatory. No matter how good their team was, somehow, some way, the Bosox would find a way to blow it. And Dent's home run stood as an iconic moment for a generation of New Englanders, a bitter symbol of blasted hopes summed up by Sox Manager Don Zimmer, who immortalized the Yankee shortstop as 'Bucky (expletive) Dent.'

But in 2004, the Sox pulled off a miracle of their own, coming back from a three-game deficit to trounce the Yankees in the playoffs and then win the World Series. Last year they won again. No longer are they defined by the image of Carl Yastrzemski, their great left fielder, who, as he watched Dent's blow clear the fence, 'bent both knees and fell forward for a fraction of a second, as if he'd been punched in the gut.' Now they are the Sox of David 'Big Papi' Ortiz, joyfully slamming home runs of their own. It's not Bradley's fault, but the Red Sox are no longer lovable losers, tragic victims of the baseball furies. They're the best team of the decade. And we're supposed to feel sorry for these guys? Gimme a break. I say, thank God for Bucky Dent."

Reviewed by Steven V. Roberts, who teaches at George Washington University and wrote 'My Fathers' Houses,' a memoir of his childhood in Bayonne, N.J., Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"The Greatest Game is a spellbinding, page-turning re-creation of a great rivalry, a great season, and a great game, which makes it a great sports book. But it is also on a micro level an often moving exploration of the men who played the game and on a macro level an incisive examination of baseball in the 1970s and, to the extent that baseball is the national pastime, of America generally at a time of change — which makes it a terrific cultural history." — Neal Gabler, author of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

"The Greatest Game is a rare and much-needed addition to the Yankee-Red Sox catalog. Richard Bradley's reporting is full of emotion but nonpartisan, precise but passionate. He transforms the story of a game, and the men who played in it, into the best kind of history lesson, as meticulous as it is entertaining." — Mark Kriegel, author of Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich; national columnist, FOXSports.com

"We've seen it, the implausible Bucky Dent home run. Now we get to live it. Such is Richard Bradley's mastery of biography and baseball that I found myself hoping Dent's fly ball fell into Yaz's glove even as I hoped it disappeared behind the Green Monster. This is baseball history at its vivid best." — Dave Kindred, author of Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship, a dual biography of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell

CONTENTS

Introduction One: The Yankee Spring Two: The Top of the First Three: The Boston Spring Four: The Bottom of the First Five: The Season Begins Six: The Second Inning Seven: The Origins of a Rivalry Eight: The Third Inning Nine: Billy Martin Feels the Heat Ten: The Fourth Inning Eleven: Good-Bye for Now Twelve: The Fifth Inning Thirteen: August Fourteen: The Sixth Inning Fifteen: Massacre Sixteen: The Pope Dies, the Sox Live Seventeen: B.F.D. Eighteen: The Eighth Inning Nineteen: Sunday Night Twenty: The Ninth Inning Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments Index