Nobody can possibly know if it was the greatest baseball game ever. A few players, including Dwight Evans who was there, in right field, compared it with the sixth game of the 1975 World Series when Carlton Fisk hit his famous home run. Whatever, Boston`s 7-6 victory over the California Angels Sunday was a game not likely to be lost in the fog of time.
Or as Tom Seaver said, ”These people (64,223 at Anaheim Stadium) could have paid a thousand bucks a ticket and gotten their money`s worth.”
An implausible game, with a surprise and suspenseful finish that prevented, or at the very least delayed the California Angels from winning the American League pennant and advancing to the World Series.
For the second time in less than 24 hours, the Red Sox and Angels played 11 innings. More remarkable, the losing team in these two games had been within one strike of winning in nine innings.
Fueling the drama was an even greater coincidence: once again the goat turned out to be the hero. Sunday, it was Boston`s Dave Henderson, a substitute outfielder whom the Red Sox acquired from Seattle in a late-season deal. Saturday, it was Bobby Grich, the Angels` second baseman.
Grich, 0-for-5 and charged with an error, lifted the Angels to their victory with his 11th-inning single. The Dave Henderson story was also superb theater but even more dramatic.
Henderson entered the game in the fifth inning, a replacement for the injured Tony Armas. In the sixth, while trying to catch Grich`s towering drive in left center, Henderson tipped the ball over the fence–similar, in a sense, to a basketball player trying to block a shot and sinking the basket.
Instead of a double off the wall, Henderson`s tip-in gave Grich a two-run homer and California the lead for the first time at 3-2. The Angels increased this edge to 5-2 with two more runs in the seventh and were still three runs to the good with one out in the ninth.
Don Baylor, who had been having a poor series, responded with a two-run homer that helped knock out Mike Witt, the California pitching ace, and cut the Angels` lead to 5-4. Prior to this Witt seemed destined to be the first pitcher in playoff history to record two complete-game triumphs.
Gary Lucas relieved, hit Rich Gedman with a pitch and was succeeded by Donnie Moore, the former Cub who has since become the king of the California bullpen. All Moore had to do was retire one batter and the Angels would win this best-of-seven pennant playoff in five games.
The batter was, of course, Dave Henderson, the Boston goat. The count went to 2-2; Henderson looked awful. He fouled off the second strike with a lurching, off-balance swing. But Henderson followed with a line-drive home run, the ball clearing near the 370-foot mark–about the same spot that he had tipped in Grich`s home run.
This put the Red Sox ahead 6-5. The Angels tied the score in their half of the ninth to send the game into extra innings. The Bosox loaded the bases in the 11th and Henderson then came up and drove in the winning run with a sacrifice fly. Calvin Schiraldi, Saturday`s loser, protected the lead with a perfect 11th.
Later, in a joyous Boston clubhouse, Henderson was asked why he tried for Grich`s sixth-inning drive instead of playing it safe and taking it off the wall.
”I don`t know why,” Henderson replied. ”I thought I had it. I should have caught it. But my wrist hit the top of the wall and knocked the ball over the fence.”
Baylor, a 17-year major league veteran whose ninth-inning home run set the table for Henderson, insisted it was the greatest game he ever played in. ”I go back more than 2,000 games and this one was simply incredible. Today, they were one pitch away from winning; yesterday we were one pitch away from winning. Incredible.”
Asked what he was thinking when he came to the plate against Witt in the ninth, Baylor said, ”I was thinking it was my last at-bat for the year and I wanted to make it a good one.”
”Baylor`s home run woke us up,” said pitching coach Bill Fischer.
”When Henderson hit his it was like an earthquake.”
Three hours after the game, when the Red Sox were leaving the clubhouse and beginning the trip back to Boston, a spry, old man fell in step alongside Evans. He patted Evans on the back with his scorecard and told him it had been a great game.
”Thank you,” Evans replied, stopping. ”Something special is going on.”
