July 4, 1977: Barrage of 8 home runs rallies Red Sox to win over Blue Jays

George Scott. Fred Lynn. Butch Hobson. Bernie Carbo. Lynn again. Jim Rice. Carl Yastrzemski. Scott again.

Every one of these Red Sox players hit a home run in the July 4, 1977, game at Fenway Park against the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Red Sox came into the game having lost nine in a row. They had won seven straight from June 17 to June 23 to surge into first place in the American League East Division, but an 11-inning walk-off loss to the New York Yankees on June 24 started the losing streak that had dropped them into second, one game back of New York.

For a while, it looked as if the Red Sox might be headed for a 10th loss in a row against the Blue Jays, a first-year expansion team playing its first-ever game at Fenway Park. Toronto was last in the AL East and 13 games behind the Yankees.

It was a game in which the Red Sox didn’t score at all in the first four innings. They didn’t get a base hit in the first four, didn’t get a base on balls, didn’t reach on an error. Toronto rookie left-hander Jerry Garvin had a perfect game going. He faced 12 batters and retired them all.

In his first major-league season, the 21-year-old Garvin had come into the game with a record of 7-7 and an ERA of 3.84. He’d lost his last four decisions. In three of them combined, his teammates had produced a total of two runs. In this start, all seemed to be going well until the bottom of the fifth.

Meanwhile, the Jays had put a couple of runs on the Fenway Park scoreboard. Fergie Jenkins was manager Don Zimmer’s choice to start for the Red Sox. Jenkins, a future Hall of Famer, was in his 13th major-league season and second and final year in Boston. He had a 7-5 record and a 3.04 ERA.

Toronto first baseman Ron Fairly drove in the first Blue Jays run with a double in the first inning. In the second, after third baseman Doug Rader doubled, catcher Alan Ashby singled Rader home. It was 2-0, Jays.

Red Sox left fielder Yastrzemski singled to lead off the bottom of the fifth. The perfect game was gone, and the Red Sox home-run derby was about to begin. First baseman Scott – “The Boomer” – homered into the center-field bleachers, and the score was tied. His 22nd homer of the season broke an 0-for-24 slump.

The first two Blue Jays batters in the top of the sixth restored their two-run lead. Designated hitter Sam Ewing singled and right fielder Otto Vélez homered into the bullpen in right.1

In the bottom of the sixth, Red Sox center fielder Lynn hit a solo homer into the netting above the left-field wall, making it a 4-3 game. Rico Petrocelli – who had retired as a player a year earlier after 13 seasons with the Red Sox – wrote in a column in the Boston Herald, “[I]t was appropriate that the eight-homer explosion came on the Fourth of July. Every homer was a rocket.”2

Jenkins departed in the top of the seventh after a fly ball to right, a double, an error, and an RBI single by Fairly. Reliever Ramon Hernandez pitched to one batter, Doug Ault, who bunted safely, driving in another run. Reggie Cleveland relieved Hernandez and finished the inning, as Hobson fielded Rader’s grounder to third and threw home to start a 5-2-3 bases-loaded double play. It was Toronto 6, Boston 3.

Blue Jays manager Roy Hartsfield had Chuck Hartenstein relieve Garvin as the Red Sox prepared to bat in the bottom of the seventh. With two outs, Hobson hit a solo homer into the seats in center and Carbo, batting for DH Tommy Helms, hit one off the left-field foul pole.3 The Red Sox had crept back to within one run, down 6-5.

Between Cleveland and then Bill Campbell, Red Sox relievers once again kept the Jays from increasing their edge in the eighth. Again Toronto loaded the bases with one out, but this time Campbell fielded the ball, threw home for the first out, and catcher Carlton Fisk threw to first, a 1-2-3 double play.

The Red Sox then really broke out the long-ball bats. After one out, Lynn homered again – into the stands down the right-field line. The next batter was Rice and he also hit a solo homer to right. Boston 7, Toronto 6 – the first Red Sox lead of the game.

Mike Willis relieved Hartenstein, who had retired the first two batters he had faced but then had given up homers to four of the next six.4 The first batter he faced was Yastrzemski, and he too hit a solo home run “far up into the right-field bleachers.”5

It was three homers in a row. The last time the Red Sox had done that was on September 7, 1959 – by the unlikely trio of Don Buddin, pitcher Jerry Casale, and Pumpsie Green. After Fisk grounded out, Scott was up again, and he hit his second home run of the afternoon. Red Sox 9, Blue Jays 6. The Yastrzemski home run went 10 to 12 rows over the Red Sox bullpen. Rice’s went into the Boston pen.6 Scott’s second homer went over the screen and everything in left.7

Jerry Johnson replaced Willis. He gave up a single and walked the next batter, but finally got the third out, whiffing second baseman Denny Doyle. It was Hobson who hit the single, and giddy Fenway Park fans booed him for not hitting another homer.8

Campbell closed out the game with a strikeout, hit batsman, force play at second, and another strikeout.

After the game, Hartsfield said of the home-run barrage, “They aren’t paid to bunt.”9 Yastrzemski said, “The home runs were just jumping out of here. But if we didn’t get those two double plays two innings in a row when they had the bases loaded, all the home runs wouldn’t have meant a thing.”10

The Blue Jays outhit the Red Sox, 14-11. Red Sox fielders committed three errors to none by the Blue Jays. (Two of the Toronto runs were unearned.) Each team drew two bases on balls.

The eight home runs hit by Red Sox batters11 – every one of them a solo shot after Scott’s two-run homer in the fifth – included a major-league record seven with no one on base.12

For the 1977 Red Sox, this game was the seventh time they had homered five or more times in a game.13 In a 10-game stretch in June, they had hit 33 homers.

“I’m having a beer, men,” said Zimmer after the game. “To hell with that soda. This has been a long time coming. But we still have to pitch better. We’re right back now to the days when we were winning 17-10 and 9-6. You can’t win a pennant with pitching like that.”14

The Red Sox took the next two games against Toronto and won six of their next seven. They finished the season tied for second place with the Baltimore Orioles, both teams 2½ games behind the Yankees. The Blue Jays were in last place, 45½ games out.

Among the Red Sox homer hitters in this game, at season’s end, Rice led the team with 39 home runs, followed by Scott (33), Hobson (30), Yastrzemski (28), Lynn (18), and Carbo (15). Rice led the team with 114 RBIs, Hobson was second with 112, Yastrzemski was tied with Carlton Fisk with 102 each, Scott had 95, and Lynn had 76.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Adrian Fung for supplying Toronto newspaper coverage.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS197707040.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1977/B07040BOS1977.htm

Notes

1 Newspaper coverage of the game was so focused on the Red Sox home-run fireworks that none of the numerous articles consulted indicated into which bullpen Velez had hit his.

2 Rico Petrocelli, “Yaz and Scott Turned the Tide,” Boston Herald, July 5, 1977: 17.

3 Per “Red Sox Fireworks Display,” Boston Herald, July 5, 1977: 17. The Globe said it was hit just inside the pole. Francis Rosa, “Red Sox Notebook,” Boston Globe, July 5, 1977: 26.

4 Hartenstein had pitched for three different teams in 1970, the last of the three being the Red Sox, for whom he was 0-3. Three days before this game, he had qualified for his major-league pension. “I was going to have a little party tonight to celebrate … but, hmmmmm, I think we’ll have to postpone it now.” Leigh Montville, “Bombs Bursting in Air,” Boston Globe, July 5, 1977: 25.

5 Neil MacCarl, “Boston Slugs 8 HRs to Whip Jays,” Toronto Star, July 5, 1977: C1.

6 Francis Rosa, “Red Sox Notebook.”

7 “Red Sox Fireworks Display.” Ron Fairly said, “I’ve never seen anything like that. There wasn’t a cheap one in all those home runs.” Kevin Mannix, “Scott, Red Sox Celebrate Record Home Run Explosion,” Quincy (Massachusetts) Patriot Ledger, July 5, 1977: 19.

8 Leigh Montville. Montville said that when Hartsfield greeted Johnson on the mound, he told him, “They already hit four home runs this inning. I don’t want no more.” Johnson’s response, per Montville, was to question whether that meant a single, double, or triple would be OK. Just not another home run.

9 Paul Patton, “Bosox Blast Jays with 8 HRs,” Toronto Globe and Mail, July 5,1977: 29. Columnist Allen Abel dubbed it “a mugging of the first order.” Allen Abel, Globe and Mail, July 5,1977: 31.

10 MacCarl, “Boston Slugs 8 HRs to Whip Jays.” Manager Zimmer also called out a time in the fifth: “Fisk hit a double play ball to third but hustled it out to first to prevent it. Then, Scott hit his first home run.” Gerry Finn, “Sox Go Boom – Slump Ends,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Union, July 5, 1977: 33. “If he hadn’t done that, then Scott doesn’t hit the two-run homer, and we never would have won the game.” Francis Rosa, “Sox Find Old Crack Magic,” Boston Globe, July 5, 1977: 26.

11 The Red Sox became the sixth AL or NL team to hit eight homers in a game. In 1987 the Blue Jays hit 10 home runs in a game against the Baltimore Orioles, which is the major-league record as of 2023. The Cincinnati Reds hit nine homers against the Philadelphia Phillies in September 1999. The Red Sox tied their club record with eight home runs against the Detroit Tigers in September 2013.

12 As of 2023, six AL or NL teams have hit seven solo home runs in a game. Rhett Bollinger, “‘I’ve Definitely Never Seen That’: Angels Score 7 on Solo HRs,” MLB.com, August 4, 2022, https://www.mlb.com/news/angels-set-record-by-scoring-all-7-runs-on-solo-homers.

13 Neil MacCarl, “Sox Set Sights on Team Homer Mark,” Toronto Star, July 5, 1977: C1. The homer mark in question was the 240 team home runs hit by the 1961 Yankees. The Red Sox wound up well short, with 213.

14 Bill Liston, “Sox (8 HR’s) Catch Holiday Spirit,” Boston Herald, July 7,1977: 17.