The outcome is different – it is, in fact, the exact opposite – but the site and the teams are the same and the circumstances are similar enough for the weekend’s series between the Red Sox and the Yankees to warrant the label of Boston Massacre II. Boston Massacre I occurred so long ago I don’t know how many of its witnesses are still around or remember it. It is so unforgettable to me – not necessarily all of the details but enough of them and certainly the results – that it has brought me back to the website sooner than I would have expected.
When the Red Sox slaughtered the Yankees, 19-3, last Thursday night, I immediately thought of Boston Massacre I. When the Red Sox took an early 7-0 lead the next night, then won 10-5, I began thinking of writing Boston Massacre II. Now that the Red Sox have won the third game of the series, 9-5, I am writing it.
Boston Massacre I occurred Sept. 7-10 in 1978. The Yankees had a four-games series at Fenway Park and began it four games behind the Red Sox. Not long before, in mid-July, they had trailed the Red Sox by 14 games. You might read in some publications that the Yankees’ largest deficit to Boston was 14 ½ games, but that is wrong. Fourteen it was. (A certain 69-year-old will attest to it.)
Anyway, the Yankees made up enough ground to be in position to tie the Red Sox for first place in the American League East with a sweep of that four-game September series. Let’s be realistic, though. How could the Yankees possibly expect to win all four games – in Fenway Park yet. But they did, beginning with a 15-3 romp and following with 13-2, 7-0 and 7-4 decisions.
The series began ominously for the Red Sox. Mike Torrez, with a 15-8 record, started for Boston, facing the team he had pitched for the previous season before leaving as a member of the second class of free agents. The big right-hander did not find his former teammates friendly. He allowed two runs in the first inning and faced only four batters in the second before Manager Don Zimmer removed him.
Willie Randolph drove in five runs with three hits for the Yankees, and Thurman Munson, batting behind him, also had three hits. Ken Clay, whom owner George Steinbrenner had once said “spit the bit” when he squandered an early lead, bore the brunt of the Yankees’ pitching, working six innings in relief of Jim (Catfish) Hunter.
It was only the next game that another Steinbrenner verbal victim pitched the Yankees to victory No. 2 in spite of his 3-7 record. Jim Beattie, whom Steinbrenner had once said “looked scared stiff,” in a game, pitched 8 2/3 innings and allowed no earned runs.
Reggie Jackson slugged a 3-run home run, and Lou Piniella, who would be the hitting star of the series, hit a bases-empty homer.
The Red Sox incredulously committed seven errors, leading to seven unearned runs. Two reliable defensive players, catcher Carlton Fisk and right fielder Dwight Evans, each made two of the errors while shortstop Rick Burleson, first baseman George Scott and pitcher Tom Burgmeier each made one miscue.
Despite the Yankees’ explosive offense in the first two games, the most interested game was the third. Ron Guidry was the Yankees’ starting pitcher, and he was left-handed. The prevailing theory was that left-handers didn’t fare well at Fenway. However, Manager Bob Lemon, a former right-handed pitcher, scoffed at that allegation and started Guidry, who with a 20-2 record was having the season of a lifetime.
Guidry continued that season’s success, pitching a two-hit shutout for his 21st victory and lowering his earned run average to 1.77. Burleson and Lynn had the only hits against Guidry, both singles. Dennis Eckersley, who would later become a closer and a Hall of Famer, was the losing pitcher, giving up all seven runs in 3 2/3 innings.
The Red Sox had one more chance to avoid a sweep and keep the Yankees off their backs, but they chose a highly controversial way to do it. Zimmer gave the ball to Bobby Sprowl, who had made his first major league start only several days earlier. He lasted only two-thirds of the first inning, giving up one hit, four walks and three runs.
The Yankees battered Sprowl and four relievers for 18 hits, including three each by Thurman Munson, Chris Chambliss, Graig Nettles and Roy White. Piniella had two hits, finishing the series with 10 hits in 16 at-bats, 8 runs scored and 5 runs batted in.
Three weeks later Piniella would show the Red Sox his defensive ability, which was always underrated. At a critical moment in the one-game playoff between the teams, Piniella decoyed a Boston baserunner, Rick Burleson, into thinking he was going to catch Jerry Remy’s fly ball in right field. The decoy forced Burleson to stop at second base instead of reaching third, from where he could have scored on a fly ball and tied the game the Yankees won, 5-4.
The teams were in the playoff because after the Yankees leapfrogged the Red Sox into first place the Red Sox caught up on the final day of the regular season, forcing what has since been known as the Bucky [“Blanking”] Dent game because Dent devastated the Red Sox with a three-run homer.
That game was also played at Fenway, and Guidry was the winning pitcher, allowing two runs in 6 1/3 innings. Rich Gossage, the Yankees’ closer, pitched the remaining 2 2/3 innings. Gossage had also pitched the last three innings of the last game of Boston Massacre I.
Those games were typical of Gossage’s relief work for the Yankees and were what has infuriated him when people praise Mariano Rivera as the greatest relief pitcher ever. Gossage makes no such claim for himself but ridicules comparisons between the two pitchers. Hall-of-Famer Rivera was asked to pitch one inning. When Gossage entered a game, it was often before the ninth inning and he was in it until it was over. That’s why he threw the last pitches in Boston Massacre I and the 1978 playoff.
Boston Massacre II, of course, is different from its 1978 predecessor because the teams massacring and being massacred are the opposite. However, should the Red Sox go on to catch the Yankees this series will take its rightful place in the history of the scintillating Yankees-Red Sox saga.
THANK YOU
Besides being back on the site, I am pleased to have the opportunity to thank all of the readers for writing such pleasant and flattering e-mail. I have always tried to respond to mail individually, but the amount of mail has made that impossible. But thank you, whether you have written or not, and I hope to be back on the site in the near future.