...BUCKY DENT...:

The face is a harbormaster's face, or a potato farmer's, or a lobsterman's: sharp, prominent nose, articulate features, eyes meant for pinpointing danger. At 39, the body is aching but supple. As he enters the sepulchral clubhouse of the Boston Red Sox moments after their agonizing loss to the New York Yankees in the season-ending tie-breaker game, Carl Yastrzemski tokes hard on a Marlboro and sips from a paper cup of beer.

This afternoon, he made the last out of the season. It hurts to make the last out of a pickup whiffleball game at a picnic; this last out may have ended Yastrzemski's fondest dream. The one-game shoot-out came down to one pitch, and Yastrzemski lost. Now he stands red-eyed in a crowd of oddly silent reporters. Around him, the other players--knowing the season is over--still don't want to shower and change. They sit motionless in their uniforms, some crying, some immobile with grief.

First baseman George Scott sits at his locker, packing his bats into a duffel bag. A sportswriter approaches with a timeworn question: "George, is it going to be a long winter for you, looking back at what might have been?"

Scott is a huge, warm-hearted man, but he's been pushed to the edge of his gentleness. "Long winter?" he says. "I figure it'll go like November, December, January, 'less they puttin' some new months on the calendar they ain't told me about. Be about as long as ev'y otha winter. What kinda fool question is that?"

Across the room, pitcher Bill Lee shakes his head. "If the fans could've held off yelling, 'Yankees suck,' just one more inning, I think we might've won it."

Yastrzemski drags on his cigarette and then clears his throat. As he stands in the heat of the TV lights, the streaks of shoe polish under his eyes--painted there to cut the glare of the afternoon sun--begin to melt. His whole speech is a fight against tears.

"My insides are a bunch of knots. Defeat is heartbreaking, there's no way around it." He stares at the ceiling, then sighs explosively. "In a couple of weeks I guess I'll work it out. Right now I'm still numb.

"This year we had three months of joy, one month of frustration and then a great comeback, and then... I'll just remember the last week of the season--knowing you could not lose one game, and not losing." A few minutes later he succumbs and cries softly.

At 39, most ballplayers are warming the bench, coaching third base or opening bars called The Bat 'n' Glove. But in the late summer of 1978, Carl Yastrzemski, the team captain, sparked the Red Sox with key hits and miraculous catches, in open defiance of nature.

"He wants to win so much, the captain," said Jerry Remy, Boston's gifted second baseman. "More than any of us." Remy uses the term "captain" with reverence, as do many of the younger players, who see themselves as first mates to Yastrzemski. "You know how you pretend you're a major league star when you're a kid, playing stickball in the street?" Remy said. "Yaz hit .450 on my street one year--every time I swung, it was for him, so he got a lot of hits. And now I'm two lockers away from him."

The captain's dream is to win the World Series, and his desire is fueled by past frustrations. Twice in his career, in 1967 and 1975, he led the Sox into the last game of the Series, and twice he lost.

Near the end of this season, he was asked about reports that he's obsessed with the championship. His silence was so long it seemed he would never answer. He flicked ashes from this thermal underwear, studied his uniform and finally spoke.

"Playing this long, you'd like to be able to say 'I played on a World Champion once.' After it's over. Just once... All my All-Star rings have been given away, passed on to friends and relatives. But that's one ring I'd keep." Thirty seconds later, still peering into his locker, he added quietly: "Yeah, I'd keep that one."

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