Sparky Anderson was inconsolable.
The Reds manager was up until dawn Oct. 22, 1975, agonizing over one of the most crushing defeats of his career. How could he sleep? His team had been four outs from winning the World Series that night, and blew it in historic fashion.
It was about 5 a.m. Ray Shore, then an advanced scout for Cincinnati and a close friend of Anderson’s, sat with the manager all night, trying to calm him down and remind him that an emotional Game 6 loss would have no impact on Game 7.
Anderson wasn’t sold.
“Sparky was convinced they weren’t going to win it,” longtime Reds radio broadcaster Marty Brennaman told Sporting News, calling Anderson an alarmist.
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The Reds and Red Sox had just played perhaps the greatest game in baseball history. Cincinnati entered the game with a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series and, holding a three-run advantage in the eighth inning, was on the cusp of its first title since 1940.
But Boston survived in the most dramatic way possible. It started with Bernie Carbo’s pinch-hit, game-tying three-run home run in the eighth, and ended in the 12th with Carlton Fisk’s famous walkoff shot off the left-field foul pole.
Fisk willing the ball fair with his hands remains the lasting image from not only that game, but also that series. Still photos of that moment are hung in bars and restaurants throughout New England to this day. Forty years later, the legend of that night at Fenway Park remains unbreakable.
“I can remember Pete Rose coming over to me and going, ‘Dewey, can you believe this game? This might be the greatest game I’ve ever seen or played in,’” former Red Sox outfielder Dwight Evans told Sporting News.
However, lost in the annals of time is the fact that Fisk’s home run only tied the series. There was a decisive Game 7 to be played the next night, one that, as many involved recently recalled to SN, didn’t lack the drama and excitement of the night before. It was simply overshadowed by one iconic moment.
There was one distinct difference with Game 7: Everything was at stake for both clubs.
Cincinnati was the Big Red Machine, a 108-win juggernaut loaded with Hall of Fame talents such as Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, led by their dogmatic manager, Anderson.
The Reds were veteran-laden and experienced, but, haunted by World Series letdowns in 1970 and ’72, was notorious for coming up short. This season was their shot at redemption, and their final chance to uphold the nickname they took pride in. Anderson reminded his players of that before the series.
“We had the name the Big Red Machine, but if we lost this one we might lose that name because people don’t trust us anymore,” Perez recalled Anderson saying.
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No one felt that pressure more than Anderson, especially in the aftermath of Game 6. After the game he walked past a group of players, including Perez, in the clubhouse reflecting on the classic they just took part in. Their apparent lack of concern angered him.
"Sparky went by and said, ‘Are you guys crazy? We lost a chance to win it and you guys are talking about this game?’” Perez said. "We said, ‘Sparky, we know we lost but we’ve got another game tomorrow. We’re going to win it.'
"Sparky wasn’t too happy about it."
The Red Sox, meanwhile, were an up-and-coming team with young stars in Fred Lynn and Evans, veteran leaders in Carl Yastrzemski and Rico Petrocelli and a strong pitching staff led by Luis Tiant and Bill Lee. They won 95 games during the regular season and stunned the three-time defending champion Oakland A’s in an American League Championship Series sweep.
Boston may have been the underdog, but was under no less pressure. The Red Sox were without one of their best young hitters in Jim Rice, who broke his hand the last week of the season, and carried the weight of what was then a 57-year championship drought. They also had a respected owner in Tom Yawkey who they were desperate to win for.
“We wanted this for Mr. Yawkey,” Evans said.
Both teams arrived at Fenway that night believing Game 7 was theirs. Boston was riding the emotional high of Game 6, while Cincinnati was as calm and confident as it had been all season, erasing the night before from its memory.
What ensued was another thriller that included an ace gone wild, a game-changing slide into second base, a series-clinching run in the ninth and countless moments that 40 years later still leaves many, especially the Red Sox, wondering “what if?"
First inning
Carbo was in his own world in 1975.
The Red Sox outfielder said he was a drug addict and an alcoholic at the time. Each day he’d come to the ballpark under the influence, and with a productive .892 OPS at 27 years old that season remained a regular against right-handed pitchers.
Carbo’s Game 7 was no different. He got his fix and showed up for the game. Except on this night, while the team was taking batting practice, he didn’t have the wherewithal to know what was in front of him. Literally.
“Believe it or not I was in left field and I went to catch a ball and it came right off my chest,” Carbo said. “Fred Lynn came over and said, ‘That ball hit your chest.' I kind of chuckled.”
Lynn said he doesn’t remember the event, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise him.
“I don’t think he was feeling anything at that moment besides fear that he was going to start against a lefty,” he said.
Lynn and Carbo can both confirm that. Carbo made just 28 plate appearances against lefties in 1975, so he wasn’t expecting to start against Reds lefty Don Gullett. There’s no way he’d be more than a pinch hitter late in the game. He was convinced of it.
Then Lee approached him.
“Bill Lee comes over and says, ‘You’re starting today,’ and I said, ‘No, man, don’t be playing games with me. Don Gullet’s pitching,’” Carbo said. “So I went from left field to right field and Fred Lynn came over and said, ‘Look, man, you’re leading off.’ I said, ‘No way, why are you guys messing with me?’ So I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then there were several players who came up to me and said I was leading off. I thought this must be a joke; everybody is getting together to give me a hard time.”
Carbo went to the dugout and saw the lineup posted. He was leading off. He panicked.
“Oh my goodness, you’ve got to be kidding me. I’m leading off,” he remembered thinking. He took batting practice and then a cold shower, trying anything he could to prepare himself to play. But he couldn’t fathom why he was in the lineup against one of the best lefties in baseball.
The fact is Carbo was Boston’s best option with Rice out, even against a lefty. His pinch-hit heroics the night before proved that.
Carbo made manager Darrell Johnson look smart early on. After Lee tossed a 1-2-3 first, Carbo led off the bottom half with a hard-hit ball to left-center that he thought was a homer when it left the bat. One night after saving the Red Sox’ season, Carbo was once again going to be a hero.
But the ball missed by mere feet and he settled for a double.
“If it had been to straightaway center field it would’ve been a home run,” he said.
Denny Doyle followed with a fly ball to right field for the first out. Carbo recalls Don Zimmer yelling for him to tag up, but flashbacks from Game 1 of the 1970 World Series played in his head as it happened.
Carbo played for the Reds at the time and was on third in a 3-3 game in the sixth inning when Ty Cline chopped a ball in front of the plate. Orioles catcher Elrod Hendricks grabbed the ball and lunged back toward Carbo, who was sprinting home. Hendricks applied the tag with his glove hand and — controversially — Carbo was called out despite the ball being in Hendricks’ throwing hand.
Wrong call or not, Anderson chastised Carbo for the decision. Never again would Carbo let a baserunning blunder cost his team a World Series game.
Carbo thought of that moment as Ken Griffey caught Doyle’s fly in right. Carbo didn’t think the ball was hit far enough and hesitated, forcing him to stay at second. It looked like the wrong decision as shortstop Dave Concepcion missed Griffey’s throw to the infield.
“If I would’ve tagged up I probably would’ve made it to third base and then I probably would’ve scored a run on the next ball somebody had the opportunity to hit,” Carbo said.
Yastrzemski grounded out to second to advance Carbo to third and Fisk struck out to end the inning. The game remained scoreless.
Third inning
Gullett was just the guy the Reds wanted starting in Game 7.
The lefty had been Cincinnati’s best pitcher all season, and perhaps one of the best in baseball, sporting a 2.42 ERA and averaging 5.5 strikeouts per nine innings. Gullett, Brennaman said, was a power pitcher who rarely lacked strike zone command.
But the World Series was different. The stakes were raised. In Game 1, Gullett crumbled, allowing four runs over six-plus innings in a 6-0 loss. But he responded with a two-run, seven-strikeout performance over 8 2/3 innings to lead the Reds to a Game 5 win.
In the third inning of Game 7, Gullett lost control.
“Gullett was — not wild but rushing,” Evans said.
Gullett struck out Lee to start the inning, then walked Carbo and gave up singles to Doyle and Yastrzemski to score Carbo for the game’s first run. Gullett intentionally walked Fisk to load the bases with one out.
Gullett struck out Lynn for the second out, but walked Petrocelli on six pitches and Evans on four to extend Boston’s lead to 3-0.
Gullett gave up two hits and walked three — two of which came with the bases loaded — in the inning. He was done after four.
“It was shocking,” Brennaman said. “You might’ve said he was going to give up a couple home runs or they’re going to string three or four hits together for a run, but they’re not going to score runs off him because he can’t throw strikes.”
Anderson’s greatest fears had been realized. Game 7 was nearing disaster.
But the players weren’t concerned. They’d made comeback wins a habit during the regular season, using their bats and versatile bullpen to overcome greater deficits. Even when the Reds trailed in games, Brennaman said, the fans at Riverfront Stadium stayed until the end in anticipation of the inevitable late-game rally.
“We knew we had time. We had to do it,” Perez said. “We knew over the years — that year and the year before — we came back so many times during the season in late innings.”
The Red Sox knew it too.
“I was not very comfortable,” Lynn said.
Sixth inning
The Reds were running out of time. They trailed 3-0 entering the top of the sixth and had yet to have an answer for Lee, who was working a four-hit shutout through five. If Cincinnati wanted to come back, it had to start now.
Perez was due to hit fourth that inning. As he went to grab his bat he saw Anderson pacing in the tunnel between the visitor’s dugout and clubhouse. He had his hat in one hand and was scratching his head with the other. He looked concerned.
“I came up to him and said, ‘What’s going on, Sparky? What happened?’” Perez said. “He said, ‘What happened? We’re down 3-0 in the sixth inning and we have to win this game.’ And I said, ‘Well, don’t worry about it. I told the guys to get on. I will hit something, I will hit one out.’”
Perez got his wish at first. Rose led off the inning with a single to right, but with one out Bench hit a grounder to short that looked like a sure inning-ending double play.
Rose, however, was Charlie Hustle. He was more than just baseball’s eventual hit king and one of its most enigmatic players. He was also considered one of the game’s most aggressive.
Sometimes that style of play got him in trouble, such as during Game 3 of the 1973 NLCS when he slid hard into Mets shortstop Buddy Harrelson to try to break up a double play. That ignited one of the game’s biggest brawls at the time.
But in Game 7 against the Red Sox, those tactics gave the Reds life.
Rick Burleson fielded Bench’s bouncer and flipped it to Doyle at second. Doyle received the ball and tried to make the final out with Rose coming hard at him. Doyle jumped to avoid Rose’s slide and airmailed a wild, off-balance throw that went out of play, allowing Bench to move to second with two outs and Perez at the plate.
“I came running in thinking, ‘Wow, this is a double play, we’re out of the inning,’” Carbo said. “We were still winning 3-0. He turns the double play, we’re out of the inning, and I see the ball go into the stands and I think, ‘Oh crap, we don’t get the double play.’”
Said Brennaman: “What Pete did was something we had grown accustomed to watching over all those years. Now you’ve got one of the great clutch players in the game coming to hit.”
Perez was one of the game’s most dangerous hitters, but Lee had been hard to beat to that point. He was a former All-Star who sported a 3.95 ERA over 34 starts that season, so the lefty’s success in Game 7 was hardly surprising.
But he wasn’t without flaws.
“Bill Lee had a habit,” then-Boston pitching coach Stan Williams said. “Not that he wasn’t a good pitcher, he was. But his best pitch was his sinker and he had a habit of getting cute at times.”
What Williams meant was Lee liked to use his blooper pitch, a slow curveball that started face-high and dropped through the zone. It often baffled hitters, but if poorly executed or too predictable could be crushed by any major leaguer.
Perez fell victim to that pitch twice in the series. The first time Perez swung at a pitch in the dirt. The second one, which came in an at-bat earlier that night, he watched it go by for a strike.
“Perez double-clutched on it but he saw it,” Lynn said. “I was thinking, ‘OK you threw that pitch but don’t do it again.’”
Perez said he noticed Lee stop his motion slightly before delivering the pitch the second time. If Lee threw it again, he would know it was coming.
“I knew what I had to do,” Perez said. “I had that in the back of my mind.”
Lee’s first pitch to Perez in the sixth was a fastball outside for ball one. He wound up for his second pitch, stopped his motion ever so slightly and delivered. Perez’s eyes widened. The blooper dropped right in the middle of the zone, he swung big and drove the ball well over the left-field wall for a two-run home run that cut the Red Sox’ lead to 3-2.
“I knew when I got to the dugout and saw the guys, saw the reaction of my teammates, I knew we were going to win it,” Perez said.
Boston was still leading, but couldn’t help but go back to the dugout disappointed.
“We could’ve been out of that inning still 3-0 with Lee pitching as well as he was,” Evans said.
Said Lynn: “That was when the game really turned.”
Seventh inning
Lee lasted just two hitters in the seventh. He got Concepcion to ground out to short and walked Griffey before a blister on his left thumb forced him out of the game.
He was replaced by Roger Moret, a tall, skinny lefty who in 1975 led the AL in winning percentage for the second time in his career. He was a borderline starter who didn’t have the stamina or control to stay in the rotation, so 20 of his 36 regular-season appearances came out of the bullpen.
This would be the biggest relief appearance of his career thus far. He was asked to hold a one-run lead with one on and one out. The good news for Boston was batters hit just .210 against him out of the pen that season.
Moret got the second out on a pop up to short by Cesar Geronimo. Up next was Ed Armbrister, whose defining moment in that series came in the 10th inning of Game 3 when he interfered with Fisk’s throw to second after laying a bunt in front of home plate, allowing Morgan to drive in the winning run three batters later. Now Armbrister was pinch hitting for pitcher Jack Billingham.
Griffey stole second on a 2-1 pitch from Moret. Armbrister walked two pitches later, putting two on with two outs for Rose. Rose lined a 1-0 pitch to center to score Griffey and tie the game at 3-3.
“Now it feels like an extra-inning game,” Lynn said. “Whoever scores next is going to win.”
Jim Willoughby got Bench to foul out to end the top of the inning.
“We came back in the dugout and guys started to say, ‘Let’s go, guys. Come on. We can win this ball game,’” Petrocelli said. “I remember that. We were trying to get a rally going.”
It wouldn’t happen in the seventh. Fisk struck out swinging, Lynn grounded out to first and Petrocelli grounded out to short to end the inning.
Ninth inning
Three straight days of rainouts put the World Series on hold between Games 5 and 6. When the players finally returned to the ballpark, the outfield was a mess.
Back then, Lynn said, players used leather-bottom shoes that absorbed water, so playing on the wet surface made their feet heavy and slow. Lynn had already ruined one pair of shoes in Game 6. His only other pair was still wet from the game before. Those are the ones he would wear in Game 7.
“That combined with the wet surface and the slow track, these are the things that I know contribute to making a play or not,” he said.
The Red Sox sent lefty Jim Burton to pitch the ninth. The 25-year-old rookie had been strong out of the bullpen all season, leading the team in ERA (2.89) and strikeouts per nine innings (6.6) over 29 appearances. He seemed the right choice for the situation.
Unfortunately for Burton, this became the defining outing of his career. He walked Griffey to lead off the inning. Then Geronimo laid a sacrifice bunt to move Griffey to second. Dan Driessen grounded to second to move Griffey to third, bringing Rose up with two outs.
Rose was Cincinnati’s best player all series. He had 10 hits, two of which came in Game 7, the latest a game-tying single in the seventh. Burton pitched carefully to Rose and walked him on six pitches.
Then came Morgan. The second baseman was coming off the first of two straight MVP seasons. He led the league with a .974 OPS and walked 132 times.
Unlike other members of the Big Red Machine, Morgan wasn’t a career Red to that point. He began his career with the Houston Colt .45’s before being traded to Cincinnati in November 1971.
After the trade, Anderson told general manager Bob Howsam, “You just won the pennant for the Cincinnati Reds.” The Reds did, in fact, win the pennant in 1972.
Now Morgan was at the plate with a chance to win Cincinnati a World Series.
Burton’s first pitch was a ball low and outside. Morgan fouled off the next three pitches and the count was 1-2.
Morgan may have been 5-foot-7, but he hit 17 home runs that season. Lynn had to respect that.
"You’ve got to give him a little bit of credit for power so I couldn’t play it tight,” he said.
Burton stared down Fisk, ball resting in his throwing hand against his backside. Morgan was calm and collected, swinging the bat back and forth as he awaited Burton’s next pitch.
Burton stopped briefly, then delivered — “It was a nasty breaking ball on the outer part of the plate,” Evans said. — but Morgan reached out and blooped it to center field.
Lynn ran in hard but couldn’t get there in time. The ball landed in the grass for a base hit. Griffey scored and the Reds took a 4-3 lead.
“Had it been a day game where the field was dry or had it been on their turf, maybe I get that ball,” Lynn said. “But under those conditions I just couldn’t get there.”
Reggie Cleveland replaced Burton, who, little did he know, had just completed the second-to-last appearance of his major league career. Bench walked and Perez flied out to end the inning.
Boston brought an underwhelming trio to the plate against Will McEnaney in the bottom of the ninth. Pinch hitters Juan Beniquez and Bob Montgomery proved easy outs. Yastrzemski was the Red Sox’ last chance to stay alive.
Yastrzemski had been an icon in Boston for over a decade. He and Petrocelli were the last remaining members of the 1967 Impossible Dream team that shocked baseball when the Red Sox won the pennant on the final day of the season. But for all he had achieved to that point, including MVP honors in ’67, Yastrzemski had yet to deliver Boston that long-awaited championship. At 35, there was little time left to do so.
Yastrzemski stepped in the batter’s box amidst a standing ovation from the crowd. McEnaney’s first pitch was a ball low and outside. He followed with a low curveball for ball two and a fastball down the middle for a strike.
The next pitch was the last. Yastrzemski lifted a fly ball to center field. Geronimo camped underneath it, made the catch and leapt into the air, raising both arms as the Reds celebrated on the field. McEnaney was met by teammates on the mound. The Big Red Machine finally had its championship.
“That was a great feeling because it was our first World Series win,” Perez said.
While the Reds were jubilant, the mood in Boston’s clubhouse was somber.
“You could hear a pin drop,” Lynn said.
“It was very disappointing when we lost it,” Petrocelli said. “People say, ‘Well, the Red Sox, Game 6 was remembered.’ It was. It was a great game. But the fact is that you lost the series.”
There was reason for the Red Sox to be encouraged, however. Boston had a young nucleus of players expected to play together for the next few years. It came this close to winning it all against a team that was far superior on paper. They were bound to return.
“We saw (the Reds) celebrate and we all felt with the players that we had there wasn’t any way we weren’t going to be in another World Series in the next three or four years, maybe two or three of them, and be world champions,” Evans said. “We all felt that way.”
The Red Sox’ core remained intact through the rest of the ‘70s, but they wouldn’t return to the World Series again until 1986. By then most of the ’75 team was gone. Cincinnati, meanwhile, repeated as champions in 1976.
Left to wonder
Evans references David Halberstam’s “Summer of ’49” to compare the Red Sox and Reds in 1975.
Halberstam’s popular book chronicles the 1949 pennant race between the Sox and Yankees, a race that culminated in New York winning the AL in the final weekend of the season.
The longtime rivals squared off for a two-game series at Yankee Stadium to close out the regular season. Boston needed a split to win the pennant; the Yankees needed a sweep.
The Red Sox led the first game 4-0 early, but one advantage New York had was experience. The Yankees didn't fret. They slowly chipped away at the lead to take the first game and won again the next day on a blooper by second baseman Jerry Coleman in the ninth.
The difference, Evans said, was that New York knew what it took to win the big game, such as the Reds did in '75.
“There was that element there,” Evans said. “It’s what the Reds had and what we wanted to have. We tried, but they got the job done. The Reds did the job, and we didn’t.”
There were many factors that contributed to Game 7’s outcome in 1975. Perhaps most problematic for the Red Sox was the way their offense vanished after the third, collecting just two hits off four different pitchers in the final six innings.
“I think we started pressing a little bit more,” Petrocelli said.
Said Lynn: “Back in those days, none of the young guys had seen those pitchers before. You don’t know what to expect.”
But of all the “what ifs?” for the Red Sox — in fact it was referenced by both sides — none looms larger than Rice’s absence.
Rice was the other half of Boston’s dynamic rookie tandem with Lynn known as the “Gold Dust Twins.” At 22, the outfielder was a presence in the middle of the Red Sox order. He hit .309 with an .841 OPS, 22 home runs and 102 RBIs, finishing second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting and third for MVP, both won by Lynn.
Rice broke his hand the last week of the season when he was hit by a pitch in Detroit, knocking him out of both the ALCS and World Series. A seemingly overmatched Red Sox team was now undermanned.
To this day, former Boston players believe Rice’s absence in the lineup was the difference between winning and losing the World Series.
“I think we win it outright in six games,” Lynn said. “We don’t even need a seventh game. That’s like (Cincinnati) trying to beat us without Tony Perez.”
Said Petrocelli: “In seven games, even if he didn’t have a great World Series, (he) was going to do something to help the club out. Let’s face it, he’ll knock in a few runs in there, maybe hit a home run. Maybe not hit for a high average, but maybe produce some runs because he’s done it all year.”
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The Red Sox, their fans and baseball history will always have Game 6. It’s what gives Carbo, 21 years clean, the platform to preach his faith; it’s the night that changed television history ; it’s the game that lives eternally in pop culture after its reference in “Good Will Hunting.” Boston has won three World Series since that night, but Fisk’s home run remains the team’s most iconic moment .
However, for those involved, Game 7 still lingers.
“It wasn’t forgotten in my mind that’s for sure,” Williams said. “That’s the one that counted.”
Boston had its moment. But the Reds got their validation. It didn’t matter if people remembered the series-clinching game or not. They achieved their goal, one that was countless seasons of disappointment in the making. History, even if buried well below Fisk’s heroics, will always award them that.
“Looking back, if someone asks who won this series,” Perez said, “they have to say the Cincinnati Reds.”