There was never a doubt, was there? Of course Bucky Dent was getting the ball. Of course he would trot out to the pitcher’s mound bedecked in a No. 20 jersey — it was his long before Jorge Posada put it on the wall of retired numbers, remember — and throw a strike for the ceremonial first pitch.

(No cheating, either: His throw traveled the whole 60 feet, six inches.)

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This was October 2, after all, and this was a winner-take-all Yankees-Red Sox game, and so Dent was going to be there, exactly 47 years after drilling that Mike Torrez pitch into the netting at Fenway Park, making sure the Yankees completed one of the greatest in-season turnarounds in history.

Hell, if they could’ve, the Yankees would’ve had Tommy Henrich, Ol’ Reliable, out there with Dent, catching his pitch, maybe throwing one alongside him, because it was Henrich’s home run on Oct. 2, 1949 — exactly 76 years earlier — that fueled the Yankees on their way to a do-or-die 5-3 win over the Red Sox that clinched that pennant.