If you're superstitious, look away. The Massachusetts State Lottery's numbers drawing on Monday night could be a bad sign for the Red Sox ahead of Tuesday's Wild Card Game against the Yankees.
The four balls that popped up read as follows: 1-9-7-8.
The year 1978, of course, was one of the most significant in the history of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. That season, Boston and New York finished tied for the division title. With no wild card back then, the two met in a one-game tiebreaker at Fenway Park to determine who would advance to the American League Championship Series.
The Red Sox led 2-0 in the seventh, but then light-hitting Yankees shortstop Bucky Dent, who had just four home runs all season, hit a shocking three-run homer that gave New York the lead. The Yankees went on to win the game 5-4 and ultimately win the World Series. In Boston, Dent has had the middle name [Bleeping] ever since.
If the lottery numbers weren’t bad enough, there’s also the news that Dent himself will be at Fenway Tuesday night.
That 1978 tiebreaker was the first true win-or-go-home game ever played between the rivals. Tuesday night’s Wild Card Game will be the fourth. The other two were Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS (won by the Yankees) and Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS (won by the Red Sox).
Boston and New York have also met in series that didn’t go the distance in the 1999 ALCS (Yankees) and 2018 ALDS (Red Sox). The winner of all five Red Sox-Yankees playoff series/tiebreaker games has gone on to reach the World Series, and four of the five won it all (the 2003 Yankees lost to the Marlins).
