June 14, 1977 – Yankees 4, Royals 2
- Sal Maiorana
- Jun 14, 2017
- 2 min read
NEW YORK – The word came down from American League President Lee MacPhail that Lou Piniella was being suspended three games and fined $200 for the incident with umpire Bill Deegan a few days earlier. Wow, $200 whole dollars!
Naturally, Piniella appealed the suspension, and given the ability to keep playing while the process ran its course, Piniella singled and scored New York’s first run, then drove in the last run with another single as the Yankees prevailed over Kansas City.
“It’s going to be hard to win,” Piniella said of his appeal, “but I do feel if they’re going to be fair about it I should win the appeal because I had no intention to throw the bat at the umpire or anyone else. I had been thrown out of the game, I had cracked the bat when I hit it on home plate so there was no sense taking it back to the dugout. As I was walking away from the plate, I flipped the bat back. I’d say it didn’t travel more than 10 or 12 feet. The umpire was in the general vicinity, but I didn’t know where he was. I was frustrated and I just wanted to get rid of the bat.”
Piniella’s rather lame explanation aside, the more interesting storyline coming out of this game was the continued improvement by Don Gullett who pitched a complete game, allowing just four hits and a walk to win for the sixth time in eight decisions.
His only blip came in the fifth inning when, in rapid fire, Al Cowens tripled and scored on Amos Otis’ sacrifice fly, and Darrell Porter launched a solo homer. That 2-0 deficit didn’t even last past the bottom of the fifth as Piniella and Paul Blair opened with singles off starter Andy Hassler, and George Zeber’s long fly ball to left enabled both runners to advance. Piniella scored on Bucky Dent’s sacrifice fly, and Blair came home when Royals shortstop Freddie Patek made a throwing error on a Willie Randolph grounder that should have ended the inning.
Gullett and Hassler dueled unscathed until the bottom of the eighth. Randolph and Mickey Rivers singled, each moved up on a wild pitch, and after Thurman Munson struck out, Chris Chambliss was walked intentionally to load the bases. Royals manager Whitey Herzog then made an odd decision. Hassler threw three balls to Roy White, so Herzog replaced him mid-batter with Larry Gura. With no safety net, Gura threw ball four to force in a run, then Piniella singled off third baseman George Brett’s glove to make it 4-2.
Far away from Yankee Stadium, in Petros, Tenn., James Earl Ray, the man who had assassinated civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, was back in his prison cell, captured 54 hours after his escape from the maximum-security facility.
Ray had escaped along with six other inmates, and they were eventually found about eight miles from the prison with 175 law enforcement officers involved in the manhunt.
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