April 23, 1977 - Yankees 9, Indians 3
- Sal Maiorana
- Apr 23, 2017
- 3 min read
CLEVELAND – When Graig Nettles entered the clubhouse following the Yankees third consecutive victory, his first words to the media were, “I’ve never been so cold in my life.”
He easily could have been talking about his bat because the third baseman was still trying to extricate himself from a very cold start. Instead, he was referring to the miserable conditions in which the game was played; rain, 40-degree temperatures, and a wind that whipped in off Lake Erie which always made April games in Cleveland’s ancient Municipal Stadium a nightmare.
The weather was so lousy, the scheduled second game – a makeup from the previous day’s postponement – was called off and rescheduled as a doubleheader two days hence. Somehow, some way, the American League was determined to get all three games of this series in, but it wasn’t going to be much fun.
At least the Yankees could revel in a victory. They managed 13 hits in scoring a season-best nine runs, though six of those runs were unearned thanks to four errors by the bumbling Indians. All six of the gifted runs came in the third inning when Cleveland made three miscues, and the key hits were Nettles’ two-run single, followed by a two-run single by Carlos May.
“It was unplayable from the start,” Indians center fielder Rick Manning said of the conditions which featured visible puddles in the outfield. “We were just holding our breath and hoping nobody would get hurt. That wasn’t baseball.”
This from a guy who grew up on the other side of the lake in Niagara Falls. Manning is one of Western New York’s great baseball success stories. There haven’t been too many long-lasting major leaguers from the area – Sal Maglie, Warren Spahn, Johnny Antonielli, Joe Hesketh, and Orel Hershiser fir the bill - but Manning belongs in that group.
Here's a clip from Manning's induction into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame:
He was the second overall pick in the 1972 draft by the Indians and went on to play 13 years split between Cleveland and Milwaukee. Manning had a nice career with a .257 average over 1,555 games, and one of his 1,349 hits is part of baseball history. On Aug. 26, 1987, Manning laced a game-winning RBI single in the 10th inning to give the Brewers a 1-0 victory over his old team, the Indians. Of course, for his efforts, Manning was booed lustily by the hometown Milwaukee crowd.
What was the big deal? Well, in the on-deck circle was future Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, and his 39-game hitting streak was on the line. When Manning delivered the walk-off hit, Molitor was robbed of one last chance to extend his streak which remains the second-longest in American League history behind Joe DiMaggio’s record 56-game streak.
“It was strange to hear these fans cheer a strike against me,” Manning said in recalling the roar when he swung and missed at Cleveland relief pitcher Doug Jones’ first pitch to him. “I stepped out for a second and realized they wanted me to strike out. I felt very sorry for Paulie, but I had a job to do. I’ve been playing a long time, and I’ve never seen that happen before. They say you see something new every day, and this is strange. I’m not going up there to make an out for anybody. The manager gave me a job to do, and I did it. The fans wanted it to end movie style.”
For his part, Molitor was one of the first players to congratulate Manning. “I ran down to him and he said, ‘Sorry,’” Molitor recalled. “And I just said, ‘Sorry for what?’ You could tell that by the reaction of the crowd it just seemed that the streak was more important at that point. But it’s impossible not to pull for a teammate. I just can’t be disappointed when the guy in front of me gets a game-winning hit.”
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