September 7, 1978, 40 years ago: The Yankees go into Fenway Park on this Thursday night for a 4-game series against the Boston Red Sox, who lead them by 4 games in the American League Eastern Division -- having led them by 14 games on July 20. This 1st game was a makeup of the rainout of July 4.
It is generally agreed at the time that, to really make it a race, the Yankees will have to win 3 out of 4. Sox fans are confident their boys can take 3 out of 4 and finish the hated Yankees off.
But, just as the Yankees had been riddled with injuries in June and July, their bench barely keeping their heads above water, now, it was Boston's turn to see if they could overcome injuries. Carlton Fisk was catching with bad ribs. Butch Hobson was playing 3rd base with bone chips in his elbow, leading the former rocket-armed University of Alabama quarterback to made an alarming 43 errors before he finally got benched.
1st baseman George Scott, known as Boomer for his usual heavy hitting, was playing with a bad finger. 2nd baseman Jerry Remy, a particular pain in the neck in games with the Yankees earlier in the season, was out with a hand injury.
And right fielder Dwight Evans having been beaned and having what we would now call post-concussion syndrome. This forced the moving of the Sox' Most Valuable Player candidate, Jim Rice from left field to right field, and the team's greatest legend among active players, Carl Yastrzemski, away from the 1st base-designated hitter platoon he'd been in with Scott, and back to his former position of left field. And he was wearing a back brace.
The Yankees' biggest star at the time, Reggie Jackson, said:
It's hard to explain, but, somehow, we all seemed to believe we would win up there. Sure, we had our work cut out for us, and we knew it wouldn't be easy. But there was something in the air which made everyone even more confident.
On the 2nd play of the game, Hobson makes a throwing error. This leads to the Yankees scoring 2 runs in the 1st inning, 3 in the 2nd, 2 in the 3rd, and 5 in the 4th, knocking out Mike Torrez, who'd signed with the Sox after being one of the Yankees' own heroes in the previous year's World Championship season.
But, just as the Yankees had been riddled with injuries in June and July, their bench barely keeping their heads above water, now, it was Boston's turn to see if they could overcome injuries. Carlton Fisk was catching with bad ribs. Butch Hobson was playing 3rd base with bone chips in his elbow, leading the former rocket-armed University of Alabama quarterback to made an alarming 43 errors before he finally got benched.
1st baseman George Scott, known as Boomer for his usual heavy hitting, was playing with a bad finger. 2nd baseman Jerry Remy, a particular pain in the neck in games with the Yankees earlier in the season, was out with a hand injury.
And right fielder Dwight Evans having been beaned and having what we would now call post-concussion syndrome. This forced the moving of the Sox' Most Valuable Player candidate, Jim Rice from left field to right field, and the team's greatest legend among active players, Carl Yastrzemski, away from the 1st base-designated hitter platoon he'd been in with Scott, and back to his former position of left field. And he was wearing a back brace.
The Yankees' biggest star at the time, Reggie Jackson, said:
It's hard to explain, but, somehow, we all seemed to believe we would win up there. Sure, we had our work cut out for us, and we knew it wouldn't be easy. But there was something in the air which made everyone even more confident.
On the 2nd play of the game, Hobson makes a throwing error. This leads to the Yankees scoring 2 runs in the 1st inning, 3 in the 2nd, 2 in the 3rd, and 5 in the 4th, knocking out Mike Torrez, who'd signed with the Sox after being one of the Yankees' own heroes in the previous year's World Championship season.
Yankee catcher Thurman Munson collects 3 singles and an RBI, and 2nd baseman Willie Randolph reaches base 3 times, all before Hobson, the 9th and last man in the Sox batting order, even comes to bat for the 1st time.
In spite of a 12-0 lead going into the bottom of the 4th, manager Bob Lemon, himself a Hall of Fame pitcher, takes Catfish Hunter out, due to a pulled groin muscle. Ken Clay relieves, and gets the win despite giving up a home run to Fisk. Yankees 15, Red Sox 3. The Yankees are now 3 games back.
What the heck, it's only one game, right? As Salant put it, imagining what a Sox fan would think, "After all, 15-3 losses were made to be laughed at. It couldn't happen again... "
*
September 8, 1978: Friday night at Fenway. The injury bug has hit the Boston pitching staff as well, as unheralded Jim Wright starts for the Red Sox. But the Yankee starter doesn't seem to be much better: Rookie Jim Beattie. But Sox fans are calm: Surely, the Yankees can't unleash another 15-3 beating like they did the next before.
Close enough: The Yankees scored 2 runs in the 1st inning, and 6 in the 2nd. Wright is chased in the 2nd, and Tom Burgmeier is brought in to pitch. He gives up a home run to Reggie Jackson -- incredibly, the only home run the Yankees hit in this series, in which they instead singled and doubled the Sox to death.
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This was the Seventies. It wasn't yet considered permissible to say the word "sucks" in public. "Stinks" was the preferred term. Yet, whenever Mr. October came to the plate, the Fenway bleachers rang out with a chant of "Reggie sucks!" As Salant put it, "One of the more printable mouthings, I might add." Time would tell of the bleachers at Yankee Stadium countering the Fenway chant of "Yankees suck! by delivering "Boston sucks!" and considerably cringier chants.
As with the night before, a Yankee hitter, in this case Mickey Rivers, gets 3 hits before Hobson can make his 1st plate appearance. This time, Mick the Quick also does so before the 8th hitter, Scott, can do it.
Ordinarily quite the power hitter, Scott is in the middle of a slump that will eventually reach 0-for-36. When asked about it after the game, he says, "Some of these guys are choking, man." And the word "choke" becomes forever associated with the Red Sox. (Even the events of October 2004 couldn't remove them, as the events of September 2011 would prove.)
In contrast, Beattie cruises, pitching what turns out to be the best game of his life, allowing 2 runs, both unearned, and only needs Ron Davis to get the last out.
Yankees 13, Red Sox 2. The Yankees are now 2 games out, after being down 14 on July 20.
*
September 9, 1978: Red Sox fans weren't shaken up yet. They were up for this Saturday NBC Game of the Week. They were excited about the pitching matchup between the two leading winners in the American League that season, Ron Guidry (who came into the game with a record of 20-2) and Dennis Eckersley (16-6). As Salant put it:
The talk in Boston was that all the Sox had to do was win the next two, and the Yankees would have wasted all those runs and hits for nothing. Besides, today the "Eck" was on the mound, 3-0 against the Yankees in 1978. Sure, Guidry was tough, but he was a lefthander about to get his first start in Fenway, with that nice, close leftfield wall. And, the Sox were due to wake up with the bats, weren't they?
Well, for the 1st 3 innings, the game lived up to its billing: No runs. Then came the top of the 4th, and this might have been the decisive inning of the entire season, the one that showed the Sox and their fans that the 1st 2 games of the series were no fluke, and that there was no longer any reason for the Yankees to be afraid of even their ace.
Munson led off with a single. Then Reggie flew to left, and Carl Yastrzemski threw back to the infield, and doubled Munson off. It seemed as though the threat was over.
It wasn't. Chris Chambliss doubled. With 1st base open and 2 outs, Sox manager Don Zimmer ordered that Graig Nettles be intentionally walked. As Salant put it, "That made no sense, because the next batter was the Red Sox killer himself, Lou Piniella." Sweet Lou had already proven himself a big clutch hitter in the previous season, against the Sox in September, the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series, and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.
Now, he delivered the sequel. He took advantage of that big space in Fenway's right field, and of Jim Rice's inexperience out there (the usual left fielder, while the aging Yaz and Scott had platooned between 1st base and designated hitter, he was subbing for the injured Evans), and smacked one that the notoriously slow Rice could only hold to a double that scored Chambliss. (Salant blamed Lynn, for not moving with the crack of the bat.)
It could have been worse had Piniella not also been slow: Although always hustling, as Reggie put it, "Lou Piniella runs like a dump truck," And this was before he became a fat manager.
With 1st base again open, Roy White was intentionally walked. As Salant put it, "a good move because White is second to Piniella as a Sox-smasher." And because the next man up was the Yankees' good-fielding, but barely slap-hitting shortstop, Russell Earl "Bucky" Dent. Surely, he wouldn't cause trouble at Fenway Park. Little did they know...
Dent singled to left, scoring Nettles and Piniella, making it 3-0 New York. Given the emotional impact that this game had, this might have been the Yankees' most important hit of the season, never mind Dent's most important RBI hit of the season at Fenway Park. And Dent got to 2nd on an error. Rivers singled home White and Dent. 5-0. With Randolph up, Eckersley threw a wild pitch that advanced the runners. Randolph drew a walk. The Yankees had batted around. Munson singled Rivers home.
Finally, Zimmer took Eckersley out of the game. One of the best starters in baseball at the time -- he had pitched a no-hitter and gone 14-13 for an awful Cleveland Indians team the year before, but had to be traded for reasons that I won't get into here -- he had already developed a drinking problem that would nearly ruin him. Eventually, he would be turned into one of the best relief pitchers ever, finishing a Hall of Fame career with 197 wins and 390 saves. But now, he had to be removed.
Zimmer brought the lefthanded Burgmeier in, to face the lefty Reggie, and, if he got on base, the lefty Chambliss. A good reliever who would make the All-Star Team in 1980, here he was betrayed by the injury to Fisk, who allowed a passed ball that scored Randolph. That might have rattled him, because he walked Reggie. But he settled down, and got Chambliss to fly to center.
This inning was the Red Sox season in a nutshell: Seemingly getting into and out of trouble, and then, after there were already 2 outs, came 7 runs, on 5 hits, 3 walks (not counting the last, to Reggie), an error, a wild pitch, and a passed ball.
Meanwhile, Guidry cruised, pitching as well as he had all year. He allowed 2 singles in the 1st 3 at-bats of the game (to Rick Burleson and Rice), and then allowed no hits and just 4 walks the rest of the way.
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Yankees 7, Red Sox 0. The Yankees were now only 1 game back.
This game inspired 2 legendary quotes, for both which I was unable to find a source. Supposedly, a sportswriter wrote, "This was the first time that a first-place team had been eliminated from a pennant race."
And, supposedly, someone stood up in a Boston bar, and said, "They killed our grandfathers, they killed are fathers, and now, the sons of bitches are coming for us." Meaning the Yankees had taken the heart of the 1910s Red Sox champions for their own 1920s champions, they'd broken New England hearts in the 1949 AL Pennant race, and now, it was their own generation's turn.
*
September 10, 1978: Red Sox fans could have been forgiven for feeling like the narrator of Kris Kristofferson's 1969 country music classic, best known for its version by Johnny Cash:
Legend has it that, before the Sunday afternoon game, with a share of 1st place on the line for the Yankees, and perhaps the best chance at a World Championship for the Red Sox in 60 years, Yaz, as team captain, went into Zim's office, and begged him to start Bill Lee against the Yankees.
Lee, part pitching ace and part mad philosopher, was known as the Spaceman. He used a sinking fastball to go 12-5 vs. the Yankees in his career. And he was a lefthander, and, thanks to the Kansas City Royals in the previous year's AL Championship Series, the word had gotten around that, "The Yankees can't hit lefthanded pitching."
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It was also suggested that Luis Tiant, also with with a good record against the Yankees, start, but he was 37, and would have been on 3 days' rest.
Zim refused to start Lee, and, to explain why, reached into his desk, and showed Yaz a bunch of newspaper clippings he had saved, in which Lee had insulted him, calling him things like "the Designated Gerbil." Zim said he was sticking with his established choice for the game, Bobby Sprowl, a 22-year-old from Sandusky, Ohio with 1 major league game (7 innings) under his belt. To be fair, Sprowl was a lefthander. Zim said he was told by Sox scouts that Sprowl "has icewater in his veins."
Sprowl got knocked out of the box in the 1st inning, and the Yankees took a 5-0 lead. Ed Figueroa pitched well, and Goose Gossage stopped a Sox rally in the 9th. Yankees 7, Red Sox 4.
In 4 games, the Yankees had outscored the Red Sox 42-9. The sweep was completed, and the teams were tied for 1st place, with 20 games to go, including 3 more between them, the following weekend at Yankee Stadium.
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The series became known as the Boston Massacre, after the 1770 event outside what's now known as the Old State House in downtown Boston, that sparked the American Revolution.
What happened to Sprowl? The kid with "icewater in his veins" made 1 more appearance for the Sox in '78, was traded to the Houston Astros, made 3 major league appearances for them in '79, 1 more in '80, and 15 more in '81, spent the next 3 seasons in the minor leagues, and threw his last professional pitch before turning 30. He's now a college coach in Alabama.
It's become accepted Red Sox lore that Zimmer kept Lee out of the starting rotation out of spite, and that, if he'd started Lee instead, Lee would have beaten the Yankees. The truth? Rather than being the answer to the hole in the rotation that Sprowl couldn't fill, Lee was the hole in the rotation.
On July 15, 1978, Lee was 10-3, and a big reason why the Sox had a big Division lead. From then until September 7, the start of the Boston Massacre series, he'd made 9 appearances, 48 1/3rd innings. He was 0-7. His ERA was 5.96 -- and that doesn't count 5 unearned runs during that stretch. And 3 of those losses were by 1 or 2 runs. Had Lee been just a little bit better in any one of those games, there never would have been a Bucky Dent Game.
And if Zim was keeping Lee out of games due to spite, why would he have brought him in to relieve in Game 2 of the Massacre series, the 13-2 Yankee win? He went 7 innings, and allowed only 1 earned run -- although he allowed 4 others that were charged to starter Jim Wright. If you had a must-win game, would you trust the start to a guy who pitched 7 innings only 2 days ago, no matter how
good he was? I wouldn't. Don Zimmer didn't.
By the way, Zim did bring Lee in during that September 10 game. He pitched 2 1/3rd innings, allowing no runs -- but the game was already lost. And pitching 2 1/3rd innings effectively isn't the same as pitching 7 or more. There's no guarantee that Lee would have been the right choice to start. So, obviously, Zim was willing to put his personal feelings about Lee aside.
*
The Yankees also took the 1st 2 games of the next weekend's series, to rise to 3 1/2 games ahead. In just 2 months, they'd gained 17 1/2 games. But the Sox won the Sunday game, with Eckersley beating Beattie.
And that's when things turned around again. The Sox won 10 of their last 12, including their last 8. The Yankees won their next-to-last game, against the Indians, with Figueroa becoming the 1st (and still only) Puerto Rican-born pitcher to win 20 games in a season. But on October 1, they lost the season finale, to one of those lefthanded pitchers they supposedly couldn't hit. The Fenway scoreboard put up, "THANK YOU RICK WAITS." The Sox beat the Toronto Blue Jays, and there would be a Playoff game the next day. The Red Sox won a coin flip, and it would be at Fenway Park.
The Sox felt like everything they'd done from April 8 to September 6 was wasted. The Yankees must've felt the same about everything they'd done from July 20 to September 30. Now, the regular season was over, and both teams had 99 wins... and neither team was guaranteed a berth in the postseason proper.
It would come down to 9 innings on an Autumn Monday afternoon at Fenway Park. And the story would get no less wild than it had already been.
Close enough: The Yankees scored 2 runs in the 1st inning, and 6 in the 2nd. Wright is chased in the 2nd, and Tom Burgmeier is brought in to pitch. He gives up a home run to Reggie Jackson -- incredibly, the only home run the Yankees hit in this series, in which they instead singled and doubled the Sox to death.
As with the night before, a Yankee hitter, in this case Mickey Rivers, gets 3 hits before Hobson can make his 1st plate appearance. This time, Mick the Quick also does so before the 8th hitter, Scott, can do it.
Ordinarily quite the power hitter, Scott is in the middle of a slump that will eventually reach 0-for-36. When asked about it after the game, he says, "Some of these guys are choking, man." And the word "choke" becomes forever associated with the Red Sox. (Even the events of October 2004 couldn't remove them, as the events of September 2011 would prove.)
In contrast, Beattie cruises, pitching what turns out to be the best game of his life, allowing 2 runs, both unearned, and only needs Ron Davis to get the last out.
Yankees 13, Red Sox 2. The Yankees are now 2 games out, after being down 14 on July 20.
*
September 9, 1978: Red Sox fans weren't shaken up yet. They were up for this Saturday NBC Game of the Week. They were excited about the pitching matchup between the two leading winners in the American League that season, Ron Guidry (who came into the game with a record of 20-2) and Dennis Eckersley (16-6). As Salant put it:
The talk in Boston was that all the Sox had to do was win the next two, and the Yankees would have wasted all those runs and hits for nothing. Besides, today the "Eck" was on the mound, 3-0 against the Yankees in 1978. Sure, Guidry was tough, but he was a lefthander about to get his first start in Fenway, with that nice, close leftfield wall. And, the Sox were due to wake up with the bats, weren't they?
Well, for the 1st 3 innings, the game lived up to its billing: No runs. Then came the top of the 4th, and this might have been the decisive inning of the entire season, the one that showed the Sox and their fans that the 1st 2 games of the series were no fluke, and that there was no longer any reason for the Yankees to be afraid of even their ace.
Munson led off with a single. Then Reggie flew to left, and Carl Yastrzemski threw back to the infield, and doubled Munson off. It seemed as though the threat was over.
It wasn't. Chris Chambliss doubled. With 1st base open and 2 outs, Sox manager Don Zimmer ordered that Graig Nettles be intentionally walked. As Salant put it, "That made no sense, because the next batter was the Red Sox killer himself, Lou Piniella." Sweet Lou had already proven himself a big clutch hitter in the previous season, against the Sox in September, the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series, and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.
Now, he delivered the sequel. He took advantage of that big space in Fenway's right field, and of Jim Rice's inexperience out there (the usual left fielder, while the aging Yaz and Scott had platooned between 1st base and designated hitter, he was subbing for the injured Evans), and smacked one that the notoriously slow Rice could only hold to a double that scored Chambliss. (Salant blamed Lynn, for not moving with the crack of the bat.)
It could have been worse had Piniella not also been slow: Although always hustling, as Reggie put it, "Lou Piniella runs like a dump truck," And this was before he became a fat manager.
With 1st base again open, Roy White was intentionally walked. As Salant put it, "a good move because White is second to Piniella as a Sox-smasher." And because the next man up was the Yankees' good-fielding, but barely slap-hitting shortstop, Russell Earl "Bucky" Dent. Surely, he wouldn't cause trouble at Fenway Park. Little did they know...
Dent singled to left, scoring Nettles and Piniella, making it 3-0 New York. Given the emotional impact that this game had, this might have been the Yankees' most important hit of the season, never mind Dent's most important RBI hit of the season at Fenway Park. And Dent got to 2nd on an error. Rivers singled home White and Dent. 5-0. With Randolph up, Eckersley threw a wild pitch that advanced the runners. Randolph drew a walk. The Yankees had batted around. Munson singled Rivers home.
Finally, Zimmer took Eckersley out of the game. One of the best starters in baseball at the time -- he had pitched a no-hitter and gone 14-13 for an awful Cleveland Indians team the year before, but had to be traded for reasons that I won't get into here -- he had already developed a drinking problem that would nearly ruin him. Eventually, he would be turned into one of the best relief pitchers ever, finishing a Hall of Fame career with 197 wins and 390 saves. But now, he had to be removed.
Zimmer brought the lefthanded Burgmeier in, to face the lefty Reggie, and, if he got on base, the lefty Chambliss. A good reliever who would make the All-Star Team in 1980, here he was betrayed by the injury to Fisk, who allowed a passed ball that scored Randolph. That might have rattled him, because he walked Reggie. But he settled down, and got Chambliss to fly to center.
This inning was the Red Sox season in a nutshell: Seemingly getting into and out of trouble, and then, after there were already 2 outs, came 7 runs, on 5 hits, 3 walks (not counting the last, to Reggie), an error, a wild pitch, and a passed ball.
Meanwhile, Guidry cruised, pitching as well as he had all year. He allowed 2 singles in the 1st 3 at-bats of the game (to Rick Burleson and Rice), and then allowed no hits and just 4 walks the rest of the way.
Despite it being September 9, he wore long sleeves in this game,
and short sleeves in the Playoff game, 23 days later.
Yankees 7, Red Sox 0. The Yankees were now only 1 game back.
This game inspired 2 legendary quotes, for both which I was unable to find a source. Supposedly, a sportswriter wrote, "This was the first time that a first-place team had been eliminated from a pennant race."
And, supposedly, someone stood up in a Boston bar, and said, "They killed our grandfathers, they killed are fathers, and now, the sons of bitches are coming for us." Meaning the Yankees had taken the heart of the 1910s Red Sox champions for their own 1920s champions, they'd broken New England hearts in the 1949 AL Pennant race, and now, it was their own generation's turn.
*
September 10, 1978: Red Sox fans could have been forgiven for feeling like the narrator of Kris Kristofferson's 1969 country music classic, best known for its version by Johnny Cash:
Well, I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt.
Then I washed my face and combed my hair, and stumbled down the stairs to meet the day...
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt.
Then I washed my face and combed my hair, and stumbled down the stairs to meet the day...
On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
that makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short of dying
that's half as lonesome as the sound
of a sleeping city sidewalk
and Sunday morning coming down.I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
that makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short of dying
that's half as lonesome as the sound
of a sleeping city sidewalk
Legend has it that, before the Sunday afternoon game, with a share of 1st place on the line for the Yankees, and perhaps the best chance at a World Championship for the Red Sox in 60 years, Yaz, as team captain, went into Zim's office, and begged him to start Bill Lee against the Yankees.
Lee, part pitching ace and part mad philosopher, was known as the Spaceman. He used a sinking fastball to go 12-5 vs. the Yankees in his career. And he was a lefthander, and, thanks to the Kansas City Royals in the previous year's AL Championship Series, the word had gotten around that, "The Yankees can't hit lefthanded pitching."
Zim refused to start Lee, and, to explain why, reached into his desk, and showed Yaz a bunch of newspaper clippings he had saved, in which Lee had insulted him, calling him things like "the Designated Gerbil." Zim said he was sticking with his established choice for the game, Bobby Sprowl, a 22-year-old from Sandusky, Ohio with 1 major league game (7 innings) under his belt. To be fair, Sprowl was a lefthander. Zim said he was told by Sox scouts that Sprowl "has icewater in his veins."
Sprowl got knocked out of the box in the 1st inning, and the Yankees took a 5-0 lead. Ed Figueroa pitched well, and Goose Gossage stopped a Sox rally in the 9th. Yankees 7, Red Sox 4.
In 4 games, the Yankees had outscored the Red Sox 42-9. The sweep was completed, and the teams were tied for 1st place, with 20 games to go, including 3 more between them, the following weekend at Yankee Stadium.
Zimmer, Fisk and Burleson
The series became known as the Boston Massacre, after the 1770 event outside what's now known as the Old State House in downtown Boston, that sparked the American Revolution.
What happened to Sprowl? The kid with "icewater in his veins" made 1 more appearance for the Sox in '78, was traded to the Houston Astros, made 3 major league appearances for them in '79, 1 more in '80, and 15 more in '81, spent the next 3 seasons in the minor leagues, and threw his last professional pitch before turning 30. He's now a college coach in Alabama.
It's become accepted Red Sox lore that Zimmer kept Lee out of the starting rotation out of spite, and that, if he'd started Lee instead, Lee would have beaten the Yankees. The truth? Rather than being the answer to the hole in the rotation that Sprowl couldn't fill, Lee was the hole in the rotation.
On July 15, 1978, Lee was 10-3, and a big reason why the Sox had a big Division lead. From then until September 7, the start of the Boston Massacre series, he'd made 9 appearances, 48 1/3rd innings. He was 0-7. His ERA was 5.96 -- and that doesn't count 5 unearned runs during that stretch. And 3 of those losses were by 1 or 2 runs. Had Lee been just a little bit better in any one of those games, there never would have been a Bucky Dent Game.
And if Zim was keeping Lee out of games due to spite, why would he have brought him in to relieve in Game 2 of the Massacre series, the 13-2 Yankee win? He went 7 innings, and allowed only 1 earned run -- although he allowed 4 others that were charged to starter Jim Wright. If you had a must-win game, would you trust the start to a guy who pitched 7 innings only 2 days ago, no matter how
good he was? I wouldn't. Don Zimmer didn't.
By the way, Zim did bring Lee in during that September 10 game. He pitched 2 1/3rd innings, allowing no runs -- but the game was already lost. And pitching 2 1/3rd innings effectively isn't the same as pitching 7 or more. There's no guarantee that Lee would have been the right choice to start. So, obviously, Zim was willing to put his personal feelings about Lee aside.
*
The Yankees also took the 1st 2 games of the next weekend's series, to rise to 3 1/2 games ahead. In just 2 months, they'd gained 17 1/2 games. But the Sox won the Sunday game, with Eckersley beating Beattie.
And that's when things turned around again. The Sox won 10 of their last 12, including their last 8. The Yankees won their next-to-last game, against the Indians, with Figueroa becoming the 1st (and still only) Puerto Rican-born pitcher to win 20 games in a season. But on October 1, they lost the season finale, to one of those lefthanded pitchers they supposedly couldn't hit. The Fenway scoreboard put up, "THANK YOU RICK WAITS." The Sox beat the Toronto Blue Jays, and there would be a Playoff game the next day. The Red Sox won a coin flip, and it would be at Fenway Park.
The Sox felt like everything they'd done from April 8 to September 6 was wasted. The Yankees must've felt the same about everything they'd done from July 20 to September 30. Now, the regular season was over, and both teams had 99 wins... and neither team was guaranteed a berth in the postseason proper.
It would come down to 9 innings on an Autumn Monday afternoon at Fenway Park. And the story would get no less wild than it had already been.