Page 311 - 1975 BoSox

304 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
even with his speed.25 Yaz corralled Evans’s throw, tossed to Burleson, who cut across the diamond to cover rst, and the unlikeliest of double plays was complete. Inning over.
e Reds threatened again in the 12th, this time against Rick Wise, making his rst appearance since his Game ree start. Cincinnati got two men on with one out, but Wise escaped the jam. Pat Darcy took the mound for the bottom of the 12th,his third inning of relief. None of the other seven Reds pitchers had lasted more than two innings in the game. Darcy wouldn’t either.
Johnny Bench didn’t like Darcy’s decreased velocity in warmups that inning, but the rookie had retired all six batters he’d faced. Bench would try to coax him through the inning and Darcy would be leading o the 13th, so the Reds could pinch-hit. Two pitches into Carlton Fisk’s at-bat, that plan was history. So was the game.
Fisk crushed Darcy’s slider toward the Green Monster. “If it stays fair,” Dick Stockton called on NBC, waiting a beat until it clanged o the foul-pole screen. “Home run!” e crowd took over the audio from there, with organist John Kiley providing the music in the form of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” Fisk disappeared into a sea of jacketed Red Sox and assorted others at home plate.26
If this 4-hour, 1-minute game — second longest in time in World Series history to that point — was missing anything, it was a championship ceremony.
Game October 22, 1975, at
at would have to wait a night. On this night, though, the coda was NBC director Harry Coyle deciding to keep the camera inside the left- eld wall on Fisk because cameraman Lou Gerard had a rat on his leg and could not follow the ight of the ball. e resulting angle was the rst batter reaction shot: a digni ed All-Star catcher moving down the line waving his arms frantically to the right like a kid playing Wi e ball, as if his post-swing movements controlled the ball’s path. Fisk’s reaction along the rst-base line was not shown live, but in the afterglow of the dramatic ending the replay was shown over and over by producer Roy Hammerman. “And Carlton Fisk had a lot of little boy in him there,” Stockton told the audience as the replay showed the catcher’s memorable panto- mime and jump in the air when the ball hit the foul pole.27 Fisk’s iconic reaction was the cherry on top for the viewers captivated enough to keep watching after the game was decided and the time neared 1 A.M. on the East Coast. Game Six changed the way baseball was presented on TV and how folks at home experi- enced it. at’s some game.28
ose who went to bed with the Red Sox down 6-3 and missed all the joyful commotion could read all about it in the Boston Globe the next morning. e main article concluded with sportswriter Peter Gammons’s stunning seasonal pronouncement one month into autumn: “Summer has been brought back for one more day — for the seventh game of the World Series.”29 But it could never surpass Game Six.
Seven:
Fenway Park, Boston
Game Seven did not need to surpass Game Six for drama, it just had to produce a winner for a captivated country. And it didn’t hurt that Game Seven was quite dramatic in its own right.
e Red Sox wanted to win to claim their rst world championship since 1918, but the Reds might have
needed the trophy even more. e Red Sox had pe- riodically come through after bunches of downcast summers, winning the pennant and taking the World Series to seven games in 1945, 1967, and now 1975. e Reds had the pressure of having the greatest collection of o ensive talent in the majors, a solid pitching sta with an exceptional bullpen, a sage tactician in Sparky
Reds 4, Red Sox 3