Red Sox Take Series on Lynn Slam

Sunday, October 19, Fenway Park, Boston--It's been nearly 24 hours now since the last of the cameras departed from the Red Sox locker room, the victorious Red Sox locker room, the victorious locker room of the 1975 World Champion Boston Red Sox.

Signs that a celebration had occurred here yesterday are very much in evidence. The walls are still echoing the victorious chants of Ken Harrelson singing "I Told You They'd Win In April, Now Didn't I."

The ghosts of Curt Gowdy, Joe Garagiola, and the remainder of the NBC entourage stand on a raised platform in the middle of the room. Curt asks Yaz about the turning point in the Series. Joe asks Darrell Johnson how it feels to be a winner. Bill Lee asks Curt and Joe why they're asking such stupid questions.

The Immortals Cry

In the Reds' dugout, that gloomy atmosphere which predominated yesterday remains unchanged. The puddle in the middle of the room, the result of a tearshedding session conducted by Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, and the rest of the immortals from Cincinnati, has yet to be cleaned up.

This Series will no doubt be regarded someday as one of the greatest sporting spectacles since the Burr-Hamilton duel. People will talk about those upstart Bostonians, who handled the mighty Redlegs with the ease of Claudell Washington catching a fly ball.

When the Reds split the opening games in Boston, we all knew that they would return to Cincinnati and sweep the Sox in three games, right. Wrong. First it was Rick Wise limiting the Reds to two runs in game three. "He really was hitting that outside corner," Carlton Fisk said afterwards. The Sox take a 2-1 lead.

Don Gullett was the star of game four, but in the crucial fifth contest, Denny "whatever-became-of-Doug-Griffin" Doyle. Doyle doubled with the bases full of good guys in the ninth to produce a 7-5 Sox victory. Rogelio Moret struck out the side in the bottom of the inning to preserve the triumph.

And then the return to good old Fenway, where the Sox needed but one win to become undisputed champs for the first time since 1918, or a lot of foul balls ago. Once again, Rick Wise was called upon to pitch "the most important game of his life" as Dick Stockton likes to say, the fifth most important game of his life in the last month, that is.

Wise's opponent was Gary Nolan, and after three innings, there were nothing but zeroes on the scoreboard. With Joe Morgan batting in the top of the fourth, the game had to be stopped because some unruly fans were descending from the aisles onto the Reds' dugout. They apparently misunderstood the meaning of standing room only tickets.

Play resumed, and Morgan tripled down the line in right. Bench's single accounted for one run, and a two-run homer by Tony Perez (his first hit in the series) gave the Reds a 3-0 advantage.

So It Goes

And on it went. Through the fifth inning, past an aborted Sox rally in the sixth, by the seventh inning stretch, and before Tony Kubek could say "the Red Sox are down to their final three outs," the bottom of the ninth had arrived.

First came Cecil Cooper, who hit one deep into the short-stop hole, so deep that even the rangy Dave Concepcion could barely reach it. Bernie Carbo, pinchhitting for Wise, then walked on four pitches. Goodbye Nolan, and hello Pedro Borbon.

Juan Beniquez greeted Borbon with a single over second, and now the bases were loaded. Could it be? No, says Borbon, as he fans Doyle. No again, says Borbon, as he induces Yaz to fly to shallow center.

And now the stage was set for Fred Lynn, wonderful Fred Lynn, everybody's favorite rookie, Fred "it rhymes with win" Lynn. The count ran full, and the fans were dropping like flies in the stands, each and every one the victim of one too many Fenway franks and a belly full of butterflies.

Suddenly, Lynn's bat launches the ball in the direction of Chelsea. It lands instead in the Sox bullpen. Fifty-seven years later, the Sox rule the world...

And that's what it is in sports, Tony.