Sept. 15, 1977 – Red Sox 7, Yankees 3
- Sal Maiorana
- Sep 15, 2017
- 3 min read
NEW YORK – Leave it to Bill “Spaceman” Lee, a man who had more hatred for the Yankees and their owner, George Steinbrenner, than any bar stool baron in South Boston, to sum up what happened at Yankee Stadium so eloquently.
“Justice, simple justice,” said Lee. “The way they had caught the shots we hit in the first two games here, I thought Steinbrenner had sold his pancreas to the devil.”
It was true. The Red Sox had mashed the ball in the first two games of the series, but almost every time it found a way into a Yankee glove. “I alone had five hits stolen and maybe six ribbies,” said slugger George Scott, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but the point was taken.
Thus, in a match between two outstanding clubs, it stood to reason that one wasn’t going to sweep the other. The Red Sox got the breaks in this one and salvaged the finale in front of another huge and often unruly crowd – “I hate coming to Yankee Stadium in September,” said Bernie Carbo – and pulled back within 2.5 games of New York.
“We’d have been all done,” Carl Yastrzemski said of what a loss would have meant. “Being 4 1/2 games back with just 15 to play is too much.”
For five innings, the game was hanging in the balance. Boston scored in the second off Mike Torrez when Jim Rice doubled and later came home on a wild pitch. The Yankees tied it in the fourth on a home run by Reggie Jackson off Luis Tiant.
Finally, in the sixth, the vaunted Red Sox offense showed up. It had been held to three runs over the first 23 innings of this series, but with Torrez out of the game and the normally reliable Sparky Lyle on the hill, Boston erupted for six runs on the strength of five singles, a walk, a passed ball, and a huge triple, an unusually tepid rally for the power-hitting Red Sox.
“I told the guys we were going to have to chink ‘em to death,” said Denny Doyle, the weakest Red Sox batter who delivered the biggest blow, a three-run triple that capped it off. “Don’t ask me how I did it. Those questions are for hitters. I just try to get the bat on it.”
More shocking than Doyle’s big hit was the implosion by Lyle. He had come on in the fifth because Torrez felt stiffness in his shoulder. Lyle worked a 1-2-3 fifth, but the wheels came off thereafter. He gave up five straight singles that produced three runs, and after a groundout and a walk, Doyle lined a rope down the right-field line that cleared the bases. Lyle’s ERA rose from 1.81 to 2.21 in the matter of 20 horrible minutes.
At that point, an already ugly crowd – a gathering that raised the series total to 164,852, largest for a major-league three-game set since 1958 – turned on each other as numerous fights broke out. You knew it was going to be a mean-spirited night when the crowd booed the National Anthem because the Yankees played a recording made by the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Torrez wasn’t the only casualty for the Yankees. Mickey Rivers left the game in the third when he turned his ankle trying to get back to first on a pickoff. And the team announced that Catfish Hunter wouldn’t pitch the rest of the regular season due to a hernia.
It had been a memorable three days, and when they were over, the AL East was still very much in play. And following a weekend where the Yankees would play three against the Tigers, and the Red Sox would play three against the Orioles – who were tied for second with Boston – the Yankees and Red Sox were back at it again for two more soap operas, this time at Fenway Park.
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