Page 270 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 263
Lee’s seventh-inning rhythm: Reds, 3-2. For a time Game ree was as drab as Cincy’s Riverfront Stadium: Reds, 5-1. In the ninth, Evans hit a two-run homer to tie the score at 5. Next inning Cesar Geronimo raced from rst to third base when Fisk threw away Ed Armbrister’s bunt. “Armbrister interfered [with a forceout]!” screamed Johnson. Plate umpire Larry Barnett answered, “Forget it!” unlikely when Morgan’s hit won the game. A day later Tiant used 163 pitches to throw a 5-4 complete-game victory. Game Five was Don Gullett’s, pitching, and Perez’s, dinging twice: Reds, 6-2.
Ending there, the Series might be as dimly recalled as, say, 1950’s Yankees-Phillies. Instead, play returned to Boston, raining for three days. Some felt the delay would curb interest. In fact, it upped pressure — e.g., October 21-22. “Writers said, ‘Let’s end this,’” said Stockton. “ e Series felt like it’d gone on forever. What helped is that Game Six was days after any action, therefore, had the spotlight, whether dud or masterpiece.” Lynn stunned the rst-inning crowd with a three-run titan: Sox, 3-0. e Reds tied, then led,Dick thinking,“It’s over.Boston’s blown the lead.’” Behind, 6-3, in the eighth, Lynn singled, Petrocelli walked, and pinch-hitter Bernie Carbo barely tipped a foul. He then drove a parabola. Future Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti later caressed “the evening, late and cold ... the sixth game of the World Series [as] perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last 50 years, when Carbo ... uncoiled.” Gowdy’s TV play- by-play: “Carbo hits a high drive! Deep center! Home run! [booth silence for 15 seconds] Bernie Carbo has hit his second pinch-hit home run of this Series! at was a blast up in the center- eld bleachers. It came with two out. ... And the Red Sox have tied it, 6 to 6!”
Before Game Six, NBC Sports head Carl Lindemann, aware of Gowdy’s familial past with the Red Sox and that his network would next month drop the Wyoming Cowboy from baseball altogether, told Stockton, “Look, we want Gowdy to nish the game”— possibly Curt’s last big-league telecast after a decade as base- ball’s network face and sound—“which means you go rst.” Before 1976 each home-team mikeman did
41⁄2 innings of a Series game. At the end of the tie game, Gowdy could have asked to do each extra inning. Instead,theCowboysaid,“Dick,let’salternateonTV. You do the tenth inning, I’ll do eleventh, you the twelfth,andsoon.”ItwasaskindasGowdy’sintroduc- tion in Game One. “Curt gave me a sendo that was beyond any expectations —‘Boston fans love this guy’s work.’”To Stockton,“both as a person and behind the mike, Curt Gowdy is the greatest broadcaster of all time.”
Inning by improbable inning, narrative unwound. In the ninth inning, Lynn hit a none-out bases-full pop to left eld. ird base coach Don Zimmer told the runner, Denny Doyle, “No, no!” Doyle thought Zim cried, “Go, go!” Gowdy, who had seen it all, hadn’t: “Here’s the tag. Here’s the throw! He’s out! A double play! [George] Foster throws him out!” In the 11th, Morgan pulled a one-out, one-on drive to right — a sure triple or home run. “Back goes Evans — back, back! And ... what a grab! Evans made a grab and saved a home run on that one!” Curt said. Stockton found the see-saw “heart-wrenching to watch, impos- sible not to. e nerves, the back and forth. Evans throwing to [ rst baseman] Yaz [after his great catch for a double play]. So much at stake, so magni cent.”
Midnight came, and left. At 12:34 A.M., Fisk drove Pat Darcy’s 12th-inning pitch toward Fenway’s Green Monster. “NBC had opened a wonderful door for me when it named me to TV on the Series,” Stockton later said. Now, xated, he said: “ ere it goes! A long drive! If it stays fair! ... home run!” Martin had refer- enced “numerous heroics tonight, both sides,” then Darcy’s “delivery to Fisk. He swings. Long drive, left eld!” Fisk employed hand signs and body English to push or prod or pray the ball fair. It caromed o the pole. Ned: “Home run! e Red Sox win! And the Series is tied, three games apiece!” Gowdy added: “Carlton Fisk has hit a one-nothing pitch. ey’re jamming out on the eld! ... And the Red Sox send the World Series into Game Seven with a dramatic 7 to 6 victory! is is one of the greatest games in World Series history.” In 2003 Stockton told the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand that Fisk’s blast re-