The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of '78 (Hardcover)

by Richard Bradley (Author)
Key Phrases: fastball low, greatest game, breaking ball, Red Sox, New York, World Series (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Major league baseball was vastly different 30 years ago when free agency and the designated hitter were relatively new concepts, and most games were not televised. But one thing was the same: the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox were fierce rivals. In the 1978 season, it all came down to a roller-coaster ride of a pennant race that culminated in one Monday afternoon playoff game to decide the winner of the American League East. Bradley (American Son: Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr.) scores a solid hit with his first baseball book, recounting the sudden-death game and the season leading up to it. He deftly staggers chapters, alternating a pitch-by-pitch account of the playoff innings with the backstory of the season and most of the players and coaches. Two of the many compelling plot threads include the dramatics of meddling Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and the feisty, hard-drinking manager Billy Martin, and the touching son-finds-lost-father saga of Bucky Dent, the light-hitting infielder who hit a three-run home run that made him a hero. Many other heavyweight names in baseball lore move across these pages, including Lou Piniella, Don Zimmer, Reggie Jackson, Goose Gossage, Catfish Hunter, Mike Torrez, Ron Guidry and Thurman Munson. The latter chapters of the book are filled with vivid description, particularly of Dent's classic at bat and the slow advance of the evening shadow across the Fenway Park grass. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Carl Yazstremski, Goose Gossage, Bucky Dent, Carlton Fisk—the names resonate in the memories of every Yankees and Red Sox fan. And no single game did more to immortalize these names than the playoff between the Yankees and Sox in October 1978. Bradley captures the drama in a narrative electric with the excitement of Dent’s home run in the seventh and taut with the tension of Gossage’s two-out, two-on face-off with Yaz in the ninth. Fans watched the play on the diamond aware of subplots involving combative personalities, all explored in intercalary chapters supplying the context for the colorful play-by-play. The ghost of Babe Ruth haunts both dugouts; long-retired legends Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio cheer on their respective teams. The game delivered everything fans had hoped for, but many sensed the passing of an era for both winners and losers, as free-agency began shredding old loyalties. From first pitch to last out, Bradley taps into the deepest passions in sports. --Bryce Christensen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (March 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416534385
• ISBN-13: 978-1416534389
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #396,564 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Numerous Errors, July 10, 2008

By	Baseball Fan (Great Neck, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Trip to Copacabana was to celebrate Berra's 32nd birthday, not 22nd page 10).
Mickey Rivers hit .326 in his second season with the Yanks, not over his first two seasons with them (page 34).
Rivers also had 557 AB coming into the game, not 555 (to nitpick, I also wouldn't say he had "27 walks in 555 at bats", as walks don't count as an at bat - should have been 27 walks in 600 plate appearances)(page 34).
Reggie Jackson came into the game with 96 RBIs, not 90 (page 39).
From 1967 to 1975 is eight years between World Series appearances, not six (page 44).
Author quotes Ted Williams as saying the Sox lost to the Yankees on opening day in 1949 by a score of 11-10. Actually, they lost to the A's, 3-2. They lost their home opener to the Yanks 4-3, but only had a 1-0 lead early in the game. They did not lose any games by 11-10 that year (page 65).
Roy White was not "actually traded" to the Dodgers. He was assigned to the Dodger's AAA team as part of a trade involving other players. He was always property of the Yankees, and the Yankees did not have to "get him back" - they simply called him up from the minors, as they would have done with any of their other minor league players. The distinction is that he never became property of the Dodgers (page 92).
As noted elsewhere, Yaz would not have pulled the ball down the left field line. In addition, right fielder Piniella, noting that lefties were pulling Guidry, would have played closer to the right field line, not the left field line (page 99).
In the first paragraph of page 136, Jack Brohamer is described as hitting right. In the very next paragraph, he is correctly described as hitting left.
Also on page 136, it says Brohamer was signed for $100,000 a year. On page 41, it states he was signed for "about $110,000 a year."
Jim Spencer was a first baseman, not an outfielder (page 146).
The author seems to be very confused about which is right field and which is left. In addition to comments above, on page 150 he states that the Red Sox shortstop trotted "out into right field toward the third base line." The third base line marks the border of left field and foul territory.
On page 157, the author states that "Munson had never played outfield in the pros." Actually, he played one game in the outfield in 1971, two in 1975 and 11 in 1976.
On page 186, Lindy McDaniel is referred to as a starting pitcher. McDaniel played for the Yankees from 1968-1973, appearing in 265 games in relief and making three starts. The modern equivalent would be referring to Jorge Posada as a first baseman.
On page 208, Rick Cerone's name is misspelled with two "r"s.
On page 240, it states that Dwight Evans was beaned by Mike Parrot on August 29. He was actually beaned on August 28, and Mike Parrott's last name has two "t"s.

There may be more, but I leave that to other readers.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book On The Late 70s Rivalry In A LONG While!, March 18, 2008

By	Eric Paddon (Morristown, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Every time a new book comes out on the Yankee teams of the late 70s, which were the first ones I experienced as a child, I keep hoping that it will be a book with some fresh, new insights. Most of the time, the results are very disappointing. Roger Kahn, Maury Allen and Phil Pepe have weighed in with books of their own in recent years and I have found them lacking because for the most part these authors are either too much rooted in the nostalgia for 50s baseball to do justice to the subject of the late 70s (when you read Kahn and Allen you end up seeing more digressions about the 50s than about the later years for the most part!) or they just rehash stuff that was written in books that came out years ago (Pepe's new book was a letdown because there wasn't a single thing I hadn't already read in the autbios of Nettles and Reggie, not to mention the Bill Madden/Moss Klein book from 1990).

That's why Richard Bradley's book was such a breath of fresh air. *Finally* I felt like I was getting the story of 1978 told from a new angle and with some fresh insights on the players, and the race pennant race preceding the game. The alternating chapters of PBP of the game with the background details is not a new feature in baseball books (done with Game 7 of the 60 WS, and Buster Olney with Game 7 of the 01 WS), but it works magnificently here. It makes for a very entertaining and brisk read that I was sorry to see end.

My only tiny nitpick involves the fact that since Bradley did have access to the original telecasts of the game, it would have been nice if some more of the comments of the announcers had been interwoven into the narrative of the game action. And there are also some interesting stories about the broadcasts themselves too (Howard Cosell for instance, was officially part of ABC's baseball broadcast team, but deemed the playoff game taking place on a Monday insufficient reason to miss that evening's meaingless early regular season "Monday Night Football" broadcast). Also priceless was the moment where Phil Rizzuto found himself lingering in the Boston press room after finishing the 6th inning on radio, before heading back to the TV booth and letting out a burst of "Holy Cows!" when Dent homered....only to forget that he was still in the Boston press room, and telling Bill White on-air later that "I thought Frank Malzone was going to bite me on the ankle!" showing how much the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry played itself out in all corners of the ballpark that day!

Thanks again to Mr. Bradley for enriching the baseball literature on the Yankees-Red Sox of the late 70s by taking things to a new level. It gets my vote for what I know will be the best baseball book of the year for me.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book,but with one big mistake., March 17, 2008

By	G. Haneke (Freehold Township, New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Terrific recounting of a great game and an exciting season. The one big flaw is that the author gets the date of the game wrong. It was played on October 2, not on October 4 as the dust jacket claims. How could an editor or a fact checker get something so basic so wrong? You have to wonder what else they missed!