I'll always love Bucky 'Bleeping' Dent...
It was 27 years ago today, when my hero, Bucky (great baseball name) Dent hit an epochal home run against the evil Red Sox in a one-game playoff to decide the American League East championship. In Boston, to this day, my hero is known as Bucky 'F*****G' Dent. Bucky's place in baseball history has a somewhat different cast in Boston than in NYC.
I was living in Brooklyn at the time, and working in Manhattan. The one-game playoff was played in the afternoon, and nobody in my office was paying any attention to work. We were all huddled around this 12-inch black and white TV someone smuggled into work. The emotions in that office, on a much smaller scale, were akin to the explosive exultation in the stands after the 'Music City Miracle' - the Titans entry in the lore of amazing sports moments.
But, it has been a bittersweet symphony of a sports weekend for me. As noted in an earlier entry, the Vanderbilt Commodores managed to lose another game they were supposed to win. The 'losing another game they were supposed to win' mantra and recurring motif are all too familiar to the Commodore faithful. Why we are not totally agnostic at this point is beyond me.
Thanks to my love of the Yankees and my somehow enduring love of Vanderbilt football, I can at least envision harmonic balance. The Yankees represent winning and Vandy represents futility.
Bucky's home run can be weighed against the blocked kicks and atrocious clock management of the 'Dores. Cheesy sports metaphors for life are often overworked and strained, but for a sports fan like me, Bucky's home run and Vanderbilt's multiple miscues are tangible touchstones for those wondrous moments when life is just unbearably wonderful or unspeakably cruel.
I was living in Brooklyn at the time, and working in Manhattan. The one-game playoff was played in the afternoon, and nobody in my office was paying any attention to work. We were all huddled around this 12-inch black and white TV someone smuggled into work. The emotions in that office, on a much smaller scale, were akin to the explosive exultation in the stands after the 'Music City Miracle' - the Titans entry in the lore of amazing sports moments.
But, it has been a bittersweet symphony of a sports weekend for me. As noted in an earlier entry, the Vanderbilt Commodores managed to lose another game they were supposed to win. The 'losing another game they were supposed to win' mantra and recurring motif are all too familiar to the Commodore faithful. Why we are not totally agnostic at this point is beyond me.
Thanks to my love of the Yankees and my somehow enduring love of Vanderbilt football, I can at least envision harmonic balance. The Yankees represent winning and Vandy represents futility.
Bucky's home run can be weighed against the blocked kicks and atrocious clock management of the 'Dores. Cheesy sports metaphors for life are often overworked and strained, but for a sports fan like me, Bucky's home run and Vanderbilt's multiple miscues are tangible touchstones for those wondrous moments when life is just unbearably wonderful or unspeakably cruel.
