Sept. 25, 1977 – Yankees 15-2, Blue Jays 0-0
- Sal Maiorana
- Sep 25, 2017
- 2 min read
TORONTO – When the Yankees arrived in Toronto for this three-game series, it was somewhat hard to believe that during the season-long series between the new AL East rivals, each side had won six times.
Yes, the World Series favorite Yankees had managed only a split against the expansion Blue Jays, and it was part of the reason why New York didn’t have a more comfortable lead in the division heading into the final week of the season. The Orioles were done with Toronto and has won 10 of 15, while Boston still had four to play, but it was 9-2 thus far (and would finish 12-3).
However, the Yankees finally had their way with the Jays on this rainy, miserable weekend north of the border. After a gritty victory in the first game of the series, completed a sweep by winning both ends of a doubleheader by the combined score of 17-0 to win the season series 9-6.
It was the first time since 1972 that the Yankees had won two games on the same day by shutout and it enabled them to move three ahead of the Red Sox and 3.5 up on Baltimore with seven games left to play. “It’s getting better,” Billy Martin said of the magic number which was now down to five.
In the opener, the Yankees bludgeoned four Toronto pitchers for 20 hits including two homers by Cliff Johnson and one each by Reggie Jackson, Dave Kingman and Lou Piniella. It was sweet revenge for what had happened a couple weeks earlier when the Blue Jays embarrassed the Yankees 19-3.
Guidry certainly didn’t need all that support as he pitched a seven-hitter while striking out 10. “Before the All-Star break I was still learning how to become a better pitcher,” Guidry said. “After the break, I started concentrating a lot more on mastering my control.”
It was working.
The second game was obviously a little more tenuous. Three singles and a walk produced a run in the fourth off Blue Jays starter Jim Clancy, and from then on, he matched zeroes with Ed Figueroa until the eighth. There, Toronto put two men on base with two out, so Billy Martin went to Sparky Lyle and he struck out Roy Howell to end the threat. In the ninth, a Toronto error allowed an insurance run to score, and Lyle worked a 1-2-3 bottom half to nail it down.
Of course, this being the Yankees, not even a great day like this could pass without something silly to bitch about.
When the players arrived in the clubhouse that morning, Willie Randolph, Bucky Dent and Roy White found new blue stirrup socks at their lockers. Apparently, George Steinbrenner thought their old pairs were a bit too high up the leg, so he ordered them to wear lower ones. Seriously.
“Who’d it come through?” Martin wanted to know. “It should come through me and I don’t like it. We can’t be worrying about socks in a pennant race. Maybe they do that in football.”
That, of course, was a direct shot at Steinbrenner who long ago had been a football coach.
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