The 1978 one-game playoff between the Yankees and the Red Sox was one of the greatest, most dramatic games ever played. They were unquestionably the best teams in baseball that year.Each team would have certainly won well over 100 games but for the waves of injuries that afflicted them, the Yankees early in the season and the Sox late in the season. The Yankees were the defending world champions. The two teams had battled until the last week of the season in the AL East the prior year. And then there was The Rivalry, nearly 60 years of bad blood and history borne of the Sox's sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920.

The game started with Ron Guidry on the mound for the Yankees, on his way to one of the greatest pitching seasons in baseball history. The Sox countered with Mike Torrez, who had been one of the heroes of the Yanks' world championship the year before. It finished with Hall of Famer Goose Gossage inducing Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski to pop-out to end the game. In between Yaz homered, Jim Rice knocked in a run to give the Sox a 2-0 lead, and Reggie Jackson homered for the Yanks' critical 5th run. Baseball legends abounded in this game, and each seemed to rise to the occasion.

And then of course there was Bucky Dent.

Given the history of the rivalry between the two teams, the Yanks' historic comeback from 14 games back, the Sox's gutty dash at the end of the season to catch the Yankees after being given up for dead in the wake of the Boston Massacre, and with numerous Hall of Famers playing critical roles in the game, it's difficult to imagine a more compelling game in the long history of baseball. Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post dubbed it the "greatest game ever played." He just might be right.