Page 267 - 1975 BoSox

260 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
Another unusual freshman was left- elder Rice — to the media, with Lynn “the Gold Dust Twins”—so strong he broke a bat checking a swing. In July he became the sixth player to clear Fenway’s center- eld back wall. Evans completed the best Sox out eld since Lewis, Speaker, and Hooper, saluted by “Dewey! Dewey!” Stockton felt Boston’s “right eld the toughest in the game. You’d be racing that way, and boom, [the wall] caught you by surprise. It was short [three feet high] and you could hurt yourself, even fall into the stands trying to catch a homer.”Tougher was Evans’ arm: as Bugs Baer called Lefty Grove, able to “throw a lamb past a wolf.” One day the Sox faced a one-out, bases-full jam. “ e heat is on,” said Dick. “Fly ball to right eld to Evans. e throw to Carlton Fisk at home. Right on the money!”— two for the price of one.
After putting space between themselves and the Orioles and Yankees, the Red Sox began to lose in late August. Worse, the runner-up O’s began to win. Checking the calendar, Orioles skipper Earl Weaver vowed to “gain one game a week” on the Red Sox. On September 1 Baltimore columnist John Steadman likened the “Boston Chokers” to the “Boston Strangler.” A disc jockey for WFBR Baltimore ew to Nairobi to ask a witch doctor to apply a hex, the shaman getting $200 and two cases of beer. On September 3 a 2-all road game entered the 10th inning. With Jim Palmer still pitching, Cooper hit a ball deep to right eld, where it hit over the wall, bounced back into play, and was called a homer. Sox win: 3-2. Eleven days later Lynn went 4-for-4, threw out Bobby Darwin at home plate, and clubbed his 21st and last regular-season homer: “Line drive, right eld!” said Stockton. “If it stays fair, it’s a home run! It is!” Sox rally, 8-6, vs. Brewers.
“When Luis goes out there [Fenway], it’s just di erent than any other man,” said Fisk. On September 16 El Tiante faced Palmer, beating him, 2-0, as Pudge and Petrocelli homered: Sox led by 51⁄2 games. Organist John Kiley played Stout-Hearted Men for Tiant. Looie! Looie! lled the ancient yard. It was among Luis’s greatest moments in his Red Sox suzerainty. e Magic Number, a mix of O’s defeats and Sox victories to
eliminate Baltimore, fell to seven games, with 11 left to play.“We’ve crawled out of more co ns than Bela Lugosi,” blustered Weaver, still incorrigible, his door closing September 27, the Birds losing twice to New York a day after the Sox twice blanked Cleveland, 4-0. Boston won its rst AL East title.
Next day the season ended, WSBK’s rookies noting how the last-month playing roster of 40, not the usual 25, made on- eld rookies as much as results the thing. Ex-Alabama quarterback Butch Hobson and Ted Cox were “two ne-looking third-base prospects,” Dick said. Hobson got “a base hit to right”— his rst — but struck out on a curve. “ at old Uncle Charlie has given a lot of youngsters problems,” said Hawk, whom one writer accused of “doing for instant replays what the ... [Boston] Strangler did for door-to-door sales- men.” e lineup rivaled the Junior Varsity. Bernie Carbo batted cleanup! — “he lines a single up the middle.” Indians rst baseman Joe Lis homered: to Stockton, “with muscles bulging from his uniform, rammed it out of here!” By fan ballot Lynn won the Tenth Player Award, his prize a Buick. “I don’t have a car,” said the Californian, “so this’ll come in handy.” e game peaked when ex-jock Hawk caught a foul one-handed in the booth,as he had on the eld.“With hands as bad as mine,” Harrelson reasoned, “I always gured one hand was better than two.”
Before 1975 Dick had barely called a game. Early on, some scored his lack of an easy rapport with Hawk — what Kirby called baseball’s “patter.” Each resented the critique. “Show me where I am wrong in a statement of fact, but don’t get into this stu about a ow of conversation,” Stockton said angrily, adding, “Hawk was incredibly popular as a person,” but after a few weeks of trying to mesh, Kirby and Dick O’Connell had a meeting and the station asked, ‘What’s going on?’” e Sox meant tradition. Yet “Hawk’d just say what he wanted, he was new to TV, and I was new to baseball.” It took a while to t. By mid-to-late 1975 they had begun to jell. Trained on TV, Stockton “was comfortable working with an ex- athlete analyst. Hawk got comfortable with me. We