Bucky Dent connecting for a three-run, seventh-inning home run off the Red Sox’ Mike Torrez that all but clinched a division title for the Yankees in a one-game regular-season playoff at Fenway Park. Dent had only four other homers all year. (AP Photo)
Generally we don’t know the names of most baseball umpires, which is as it should be. I think the best baseball umpires are the ones that fade into the background and let the game be the centerpiece.
Steve Palermo, from Worcester, MA, was one of the good ones and was popular with almost everyone.
But he may have made one really bad call.
Check out Joe Posnanski’s column, written yesterday when it was announced that Palermo died at the age of 67.
Let me know if you think Palermo made the right or the wrong call.
See: Steve Palermo’s Love of Baseball, by Joe Posnanski
Also, in case you don’t know much about it, or need a refresher, check out the NYTimes article about the game and the disaster that struck the Red Sox that day: Bucky Dent’s Improbable Clout b
Brian Steinbach said:
Can’t really tell from the murky clip. Have to say, first time I’ve seen the clip – I was living in Providence that fall beginning a one year judicial clerkship – the judge and all three clerks (the other two were Mass natives) were in their separate offices each listening to the game, so I only heard it. When it was all over the clerks went into the reception area and out came the judge very sadly as we all commiserated.
Chris Boutourline said:
Thanks for a great article. I’d forgotten all about Steve Palermo and the tragic outcome of his heroic effort. I wonder what Earl Weaver was like when he was at home? Here’s a link to the wikipedia page of the playoff game which brings up other memories, such as, Thurman Munson’s death and a Sox team that could only utilize Dwight Evans as a PH. As for Mickey Rivers, I was at a game when a guy two rows behind me kept throwing something at Rivers and laughing manically. He was a large man with a sort of Neanderthal aspect and looked like he’d just crawled out from under a sunken auto bay in Leominster. Turns out I probably wasn’t too far from the truth as the next day the Boston Globe reported 3 inch bolts had been thrown at Rivers. All the people who complain that Fenway has become too”sanitized” weren’t sitting in the bleachers at Boston vs NY in the 70’s when it was only after the fights peaked that “security” (aka BPD) showed up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_American_League_East_tie-breaker_game#Box_score