July 5, 1977 – Yankees 5, Indians 4
- Sal Maiorana
- Jul 5, 2017
- 3 min read
NEW YORK – By beating the Indians for the 12th straight time dating back to 1976, the Yankees reached the halfway point of the season with a 46-35 record and a one-game lead in the AL East over Boston.
Given all that had happened in the first half, most of the trouble coming off the field, it was rather remarkable that the Yankees had managed to play through it well enough to sit stop baseball’s toughest division.
And it was really remarkable that the man in the middle of the majority of the tumult, the human lightning rod for controversy, Reggie Jackson, had performed the way he had in his first half-season in the Bronx.
Billy Martin was still irritating him to no end by pulling him out of games late for defensive purposes, and for not batting him in his preferred cleanup spot, but Jackson was beginning to show why George Steinbrenner was so desperate to bring him to the Bronx. After his early struggles, Jackson was now hitting .283, about 16 points above his career average to that point. Also, he led the AL with 26 doubles, and he led the Yankees with eight game-winning RBI, the latest coming in this victory over Cleveland when his third hit of the game, a double in the seventh, broke a 4-4 tie.
“My stroke has been raggedy, my head’s been (screwed) up, I’ve been in and out of the game in my mind,” Jackson said, indicating that while his numbers were improving, he still wasn’t in the groove he wanted to be in. “I’m thinking about things I shouldn’t be, and I’ve let them affect me.”
He went on to elaborate on what he meant. “Right now, I can’t hit the ball out of the ballpark,” he said. “It’s taken me this long to adjust. In 10 years, I’ve never hit one in the bleachers (in right at Yankee Stadium). Is that what they call the blue seats? But if I go to left field I run the risk of people saying, ‘He’s losing it, he’s over the hill, he’s losing his eyesight.’ At times, you let it get to you and you try and pull the ball.”
Jackson singled in the second and scored on Carlos May’s sacrifice fly as the Yankees opened a 3-1 lead against Jim Bibby. He doubled in the sixth which helped the Yankees regain the lead at 4-3. And in the seventh, after Chris Chambliss’ two-out double, Jackson lashed his opposite-field RBI double.
That made a winner out of Sparky Lyle, the indomitable reliever who churned out another 4.1 innings, raising his total to a somewhat ridiculous 75 through 81 games, covering 35 appearances. Mike Torrez lasted only eight outs as he was tagged for three runs on eight hits and a walk. Another over-worked reliever, Dick Tidrow, got through two innings, and then Lyle entered in the fifth and finished it off with a scoreless, one-hit effort that dropped his ERA to 1.80.
“I feel I could sit in my rocking chair and catch him,” said Cliff Johnson, who had not yet caught Lyle, but had to take over in the fifth when Thurman Munson suffered a nasty gash on his hand that required seven stitches. “He’s that easy. He’s always around the plate. Now I know why Sparky Lyle is Sparky Lyle.”
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