July 18, 1980: Red Sox rookie Dave Stapleton breaks scoreless tie with 10th-inning walk-off homer

It was quite a game at Fenway Park on July 18, 1980. Both starting pitchers worked into the 10th inning, and the game was won by a rookie’s walk-off home run.

Neither of the teams was in contention in midseason 1980. The hosting Boston Red Sox were fifth in the seven-team American League East Division, 12 games behind the first-place New York Yankees. The visiting Minnesota Twins were fifth in the AL West Division, 12½ games behind the first -place Kansas City Royals.

Boston manager Don Zimmer’s starting pitcher was 33-year-old Mike Torrez, in his 14th major-league season and in his third year with his sixth team. He’d sported identical records of 16-13 in each of the two previous seasons. He entered the game with a disappointing 4-10 record and an ERA of 4.80. He’d lost each of his last four starts. Fans booed when his name was announced just before the game.1

Roger Erickson started for Twins manager Gene Mauch. Also a right-hander, the 23-year-old Erickson was in his third major-league season. He’d been 14-13 (3.96) in his first year, but just 3-10 (5.63) in 1979. He was pitching distinctly better to this point in 1980, with an ERA of 3.21 coming into the game and wins in his last two decisions.

As had been the case for the past week, Boston’s starting second baseman was 26-year-old rookie Dave Stapleton. Selected in the 10th round of the June 1975 amateur draft from the University of South Alabama, Stapleton had been called up from Triple-A Pawtucket in late May with a .340 batting average and the Red Sox needing reinforcement with starting second baseman Jerry Remy hampered by a knee injury.2 Remy was now out for the season, with knee surgery impending, and the .290-hitting Stapleton was playing every day at second.3

The Twins got two one-out singles in the top of the first, but a 3-6-1 double play squelched any hope of a run. Erickson set the Red Sox down in order.

Both pitchers faced the minimum three batters in the second inning.

Each team got a man on after two outs in the third. Butch Wynegar singled for the Twins and Butch Hobson worked a walk for the Red Sox. In both cases, the runner got no farther since the next batter made an out.

Torrez retired the Twins in order in the fourth. In the bottom of the inning, center fielder Fred Lynn hit a one-out fly-ball double off the wall in left but was stranded at second.

Mike Cubbage singled to lead off the Twins fifth, then was erased when Stapleton turned right fielder Hosken Powell’s grounder into a 4-6-3 double play. A groundout ended their half of the inning. The Red Sox got another two-base hit in the fifth, a two-out double by Jim Dwyer. Hobson drew another walk, but nothing came of it.

It was three-up, three-down for the Twins in the top of the sixth. In the bottom of the inning, Stapleton – coming off back-to-back two-hit games against the Royals – led off with a single. Two fly-ball outs to right field followed before catcher Carlton Fisk singled to left. Stapleton moved up 90 feet, but first baseman Carl Yastrzemski flied out to left-center field, with a diving catch by center fielder Ken Landreaux preventing a near-certain two-base hit and ending the inning.

Neither team got a man on base on the seventh inning, and Torrez set down Minnesota in order in the top of the eighth. Lynn singled with two outs in the bottom of the eighth, but Erickson got Tony Pérez to pop up foul for the third out.

Both teams threatened in the ninth inning. Torrez got two outs but then the DH, Roy Smalley, singled to right field. Mauch sent in Dave Edwards to pinch-run, and second baseman Rob Wilfong’s single advanced Edwards to third, the first time in the game either team had gotten a runner that far on the bases. Cleanup hitter Landreaux was up next, but he grounded out second to first.

In their half of the ninth, the Red Sox got singles from both Lynn and Yastrzemski and thus had runners on first and second with nobody out. Dwight Evans attempted to sacrifice, but first baseman Cubbage fielded the ball and threw across the diamond to John Castino at third base, and Lynn was forced out.4 Dwyer flied out to center field, deep enough that Yastrzemski tagged and took third base. Hobson made the third out on a fly ball to right.

Torrez hadn’t walked a batter in nine full innings and was still under 100 pitches after nine. He didn’t dole out a walk in the 10th, either. Left fielder Rick Sofield popped up foul to Hobson at third base. Cubbage lined out to Hobson, who dove to his left and snared the ball just two inches off the ground. Powell doubled into left-center – the only extra-base hit of the game off Torrez – but Pete Mackanin’s fly ball to left was the third out.

Second up for Boston in the bottom of the 10th, following Rick Burleson’s groundout, was Dave Stapleton. He’d doubled in his first game, on May 30, then hit two solo home runs in a 19-8 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers a day later. He had two other home runs, one just the day before on July 17, a solo homer in a 12-4 win over Kansas City.

In the 10th inning of this game, he popped up Erickson’s fifth pitch in foul territory – a ball Wynegar almost caught before his glove rammed into a fan in the stands.5 The count was 2-and-2.

On the next pitch, Erickson threw a slider. Stapleton swung and connected – a walk-off home run to left field.

It was a fly ball that “dropped into the screen in left field. … [I]t would have been short of the warning track in Minnesota,” according to left fielder Sofield, who said, “That ball is not even out of the [Seattle] Kingdome. Only in Fenway. …”6

“I didn’t think it was going to go out,” Stapleton said. “It may even have scraped the wall and been helped over by the little wind.”7 He joked, “I had to blow on that one tonight to get it into the screen.”8

Mauch said, “That’s the best game we’ve had pitched for us in Fenway Park in a long time. Unfortunately for Roger, this was a night when Torrez came up very sharp. … It was as clean a game of baseball as you’ll ever see.”9 The boos for Torrez, of course, had turned to cheers as the game progressed.

“It was a hell of a game just to be in,” said Yastrzemski. “Both pitchers were working fast, and you had to be on your toes. They were making good pitches, and you knew you had to bear down.”10

A walk-off hit to win a 1-0 game is a rare occurrence. It did not happen again for the Red Sox until April 29, 2008, when Kevin Youkilis singled home David Ortiz with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. 11

Stapleton played in 106 games in his rookie season, batting .321 with 7 homers and 45 RBIs. Often batting second, he scored 61 runs, and he came in second in the AL’s Rookie of the Year voting behind Joe Charboneau of the Cleveland Indians.

But Remy regained his starting job in 1981, and Stapleton spent the rest of his seven-season career in Boston in a utility role, appearing in six different defensive positions. His batting average dropped each year, falling to just .128 in 39 games for the 1986 Red Sox. He did make the ’86 postseason roster, however, entering seven games as a pinch-runner or replacement player later in the game. In five plate appearances, he singled twice and drew a base on balls.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Dave Stapleton, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Stew Thornley for providing newspaper coverage from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune archives.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS198007180.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1980/B07180BOS1980.htm

Notes

1 Joe Giuliotti, “Stapleton’s HR in 10th Gives Sox, Torrez Win,” Boston Herald American, July 19, 1980: B1.

2 Larry Whiteside, “Stapleton Gets the Call,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1980: 26.

3 Peter Gammons, “Surgery Ordered for Remy,” Boston Globe, July 16, 1980: 55.

4 Jim Fox, “Hi, Green Monster,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, July 19, 1980: 9.

5 Wynegar said, “The ball fell and now I’ll probably think about it all night. Could I have caught it or not? It was just one of those things.” Bill Modoono, “Torrez Shuts Mouth; Wins Game,” Worcester Evening Gazette, July 19, 1980: 11.

6 Patrick Reusse, “Twins Lose 1-0 on 10th-Inning Homer,” St. Paul Pioneer Press/St. Paul Dispatch, July 19, 1980: 13. The Twins had now lost 16 of their last 18 games at Fenway Park.

7 Giuliotti, “Stapleton’s HR in 10th Gives Sox, Torrez Win.” Stapleton said he was glad his parents had been there to see the game, and his homer in the previous game as well. He said he was going to try to keep them there the rest of the year: “They’ve brought me luck, haven’t they?”  

8 Tom Briere, “Red Sox Tip Twins in 10th,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 19, 1980: 11.

9 Reusse.

10 Larry Whiteside, “Torrez, Stapleton Win it, 1-0,” Boston Globe, July 18, 1980: 21. Neither pitcher would talk to the media afterward; both had been feuding with their respective press corps.

11 Nick Cafardo and Amalie Benjamin, “After Nicking Halladay, Youkilis Tips His Cap,” Boston Globe, April 30, 2008: D5.