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Message: [QUOTE="Hans Sprungfeld, post: 4052199, member: 181"] Is oko Watched the Bucky Dent home run from the right field bleachers, and it was obvious it was gone at the point of contact. A few years ago, I digitized a slide carousel and noted a single photo from those seats at that game, a few innings earlier. In 1975, I got right field bleacher seats via ticket lottery for Games 1 & 2. In the 6th or 7th inni g of game 2,my college roommate came and got me to follow him to prime seats 8 rows back from home plate. His brother-in-law was Monte Irving's assistant in Bowie Kuhn's Office of the MLB Commissioner. The Sox were on their way to a 2-0 lead when manager Darrell Johnson pulled Bill Lee for Dick Drago in the 9th inning. Lee's disappoibted objections were overruled. I screamed. I groaned. My heart sank. The prior season, I'd lived in Boston, saw half the home games from the bleachers, and went back to college with the Sox in first place by 7 games;they did not play in the post season. When Lee came out, I knew the Sox would lose the Series. Fisk's home run, thrilling as it was, represented a miraculous temporary digging out of a hole they shouldn't have ever been in. The following season I found myself rooting for the Reds over the Yankees, and watched Games 1&2 at Riverfront Stadium, courtesy of roomie's BiL. I most remember terrific ice sculptures surrounded by unlimited shrimp at elaborate buffets in the parking garage, walking over a Roebling-designed bridge to our cylindrical hotel in Covington, KY, and Bowie Kuhn famously wearing a sweater as he waved off criticism of a night game scheduled for play in chilly autumn air. My 1986 story is even more wrenching because I'd spent the entire season rooting for the Mets while I lived in Suffolk County Long Island and my local cable company stopped carrying WSBK that year. After the epic win against the Astros (mentioned elsewhere in this thread), I went back to CT and told my father I was a Mets fan this time around. He gave me a skeptical, arched-eyebrow look that instantly consigned me to cheering for Boston, agonizing over Buckner's error, and having utter certainty in a Game 7 loss, irrespective of an early lead that had all of my co-workers and townspeople anxious that the Mets would lose. I think it was after a later post-season meltdown by Calvin Schiraldi that I was so beaten down that I functionally stopped watching baseball except for tbe post-season, which usually didn't have Red Sox. As my lack of interest solidified, I was too fearful after the Yankees were up 3-0 to watch the 2004 comeback, except for the extra innings and the late rallies. By then, the World Series sweep was pure anti-climax that robbed me of the joy I wished for since the mid-1960s when I go my first clock radio with a sleep timer. Nearly a decade later, a friend gave me a deeply discounted DVD of the 2004 season, and I got to see a professionally produced accounting of what I'd missed. Loss aversion killed my fandom, and baseball is now simply a beautiful game that I watch starting in October, mostly to see great defense and whether there's an exciting and dramatic matchup. I'm too tired to edit this. My hope is that the typos and autocorrect are amusing. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach