Five decades after the greatest drama ever staged at Fenway Park — Game 6 of the 1975 World Series — I still shake my head, smile and then laugh in disbelief at what I witnessed from my auxiliary press box seat overlooking the third base line.
That’s right. I was there at 12:34 a.m., on Wednesday, October 22, 1975 — 50 years ago today, sports fans — when Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk dug in at the plate against Cincinnati reliever Pat Darcy and with one swing of his Louisville Slugger entered the pantheon of Boston sports heroes.
Leading off the bottom of the 12th inning in a 6-6 game the Red Sox had to win to force the deciding Game 7, Fisk leaned into a 1-0 sinker and launched a high drive toward the left field corner. Flirting with the foul line, the ball sliced through the night until it caromed off the foul pole.
Home run!!
No, make that: HOME RUN!!
Red Sox 7! Reds 6!
Unbelievable.
Equally unbelievable was my being there. I was just a kid. Twenty-five years old. Five weeks on the job as sports editor of the Woonsocket Call, a small but respected afternoon newspaper in an old mill town upstream from Pawtucket and Providence.
I had secured credentials for photographer Tom Hunt and me by calling the president of the Boston chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Alas, I forget his name, but I remember he worked at the Quincy Patriot Ledger in suburban Boston.
I grew up in Methuen, 28 miles north of Fenway Park, and had gone to Red Sox games as a kid, sitting below in the grandstand and, occasionally, in the box seats. Until 1967 the Red Sox usually lost, but my brothers and I didn’t care. We were happy to eat Fenway Franks lathered with Gulden’s mustard, Hood ice cream bars, and popcorn in mini megaphones we yelled through to the annoyance of the grownups sitting in front of us.
I never thought that in less than a decade I would clutch a press pass that allowed me on the field during batting practice and in the clubhouse after the game. Cover the World Series? In Boston? Are you kidding?
But there I was, 34 minutes after the midnight hour, watching Fisk dance around the bases as Fenway’s 35,205 spectators exploded with a roar I could never imagine.
All around me in the old skybox seats hanging off the Fenway Park roof, reporters, sports writers, and columnists leaped to their feet and laughed and cheered. Mindful of the old axiom “No cheering in the press box”, I sat and scribbled notes. In the din I could hear strains of Handel’s Hallelujah chorus from organist John Kiley, the only man to play for the Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins.
I remember eventually retreating to the space beneath the grandstand that served as the post-game interview area. Pete Rose and his Reds, six outs from the World Series championship, had just lost. Rose, though, was almost giddy. He kept exclaiming what fun it was to play in that ball game.
Fisk’s epic home run was just the last dramatic moment in a game loaded with them.
In the bottom of the eighth inning, trailing 6-3, the Sox were in big trouble. Fred Lynn, the rookie phenom, was on second base and Rico Petrocelli, a hero of the 1967 Impossible Dream Team, was on first. Manager Darrell Johnson sent Bernie Carbo to pinch hit for pitcher Roger Moret. Carbo said later he did not expect to play and was not prepared to bat. But bat he did, against Rawly Eastwick, and looked terrible. He barely fouled off a two-strike pitch and looked like a Little Leaguer swinging a bat for the first time.
The baseball gods must have pitied Carbo because he swung at the next pitch and drove it into the center field bleachers.
Tie game. Fenway exploded. I scribbled notes.
In the bottom of the ninth the Red Sox loaded the bases with no outs. Victory was imminent, right? Not quite. Lynn lofted a fly ball to shallow left. George Foster made the catch near the grandstand wall. Denny Doyle tagged and started for home. Third base coach Don Zimmer shouted “No! No! No!” Doyle head “Go! Go! Go!” Foster threw home, and Johnny Bench tagged Doyle for the double play. The Red Sox did not score.
I remember the top of the 11th. Ken Griffey was on first. One out. Joe Morgan hit a drive toward the first row in deep right. His back to the plate, Dwight Evans sprinted on the warning track, glanced back, twisted his left hand behind his head and caught the ball as he banged into the waist-high fence.
Then Evans spun and threw wildly toward first. Carl Yastrzemski caught the ball on the fly near the Red Sox dugout and relayed to shortstop Rick Burleson, who had raced over the cover first. Double play. Inning over. Fenway exploded. I scribbled.
An inning later, Fisk stepped to the plate, and the rest is history. Only later did I see the footage of Fisk hopping toward first base and waving, waving, waving the ball fair. NBC had stationed a camera crew inside the left field scoreboard but the camera operator was distracted by a rat, he said, and failed to follow the flight of the ball, standard operating procedure at the time. That “mistake” produced an iconic image that will still produce goosebumps 50 years from now.
It was probably about 2 a.m. when Tom Hunt and I got into his white Call Pix VW bug for the ride back to Woonsocket. As we drove down Brookline Avenue by the Emmanuel College campus, streamers of toilet paper decorated the trees. What a celebration those students must have enjoyed. It was beautiful.
When I think of Game 6 now, I marvel at the coincidences. Had Carbo not homered in the eighth, had Doyle scored in the ninth, had Morgan homered in the 11th, we would not have had Fisk’s homer in the 12th. And if that rat had not distracted an NBC cameraman, we would not have that iconic footage of a dancing baseball hero.
As we all know, later on Wednesday night, October 22, 1975, the Reds rallied from a 3-0 deficit and won Game 7 and the World Series, 4-3. Morgan drove in Griffey with the winning run with a ninth-inning two-out bloop single to right. Critics blasted Johnson for sending rookie Jim Burton to the mound in that tense situation, but the lefty threw a good, tough-to-hit pitch that Morgan just got his bat on.
I was in my auxiliary press box seat overlooking the third base line for Game 7. But my memories aren’t as sharp as those from Game 6, the greatest drama ever staged at Fenway Park and the greatest game in any sport that I covered in five decades as a writer. That includes the U.S.hockey team’s 4-3 upset of the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics.
Carlton Fisk played 24 big league seasons for the Red Sox and White Sox and is in the Hall of Fame. He will turn 78 the day after Christmas. Dwight Evans played 19 seasons for the Red Sox and one for the Orioles. He retired after the 1992 campaign. He will be 74 on Nov. 3. Bernie Carbo played for eight teams in his 12-year career. He is 78.
Pete Rose, the MVP of the 1975 World Series, died in 2024. He was 83. Joe Morgan, elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990, died in 2020. He was 77. Pat Darcy was sent down to Indianapolis in June of 1976 and never returned to the big leagues. He is 75. Rawly Eastwick played for six teams during his seven-year career. He will turn 75 on Friday.
I, too, am 75 and still write about sports. I never covered another World Series game.
