June 30, 1992: Boston’s Bob Zupcic robs Mickey Tettleton of home run, then hits game-winning grand slam

The ninth inning of the Boston Red Sox-Detroit Tigers game on the last day of June in 1992 was one to remember for Red Sox rookie Bob Zupcic. A first-round draft pick from Oral Roberts University in 1987,1 Zupcic had reached the majors in 1991, appearing in 18 September games and hitting .160, with one solo homer (against the New York Yankees) and three RBIs.

In 1992, though, the 25-year-old Pennsylvanian played center field for new manager Butch Hobson and appeared in 124 games, in part because after June 21, the team lost Mike Greenwell for the season with an elbow injury that required surgery. Zupcic was batting .313 coming into the June 30 Fenway Park game against the visiting Tigers. He wasn’t producing a lot of runs, though. He had only 7 RBIs in 40 games.  

The Red Sox were in fifth place in the seven-team American League East Division, 9½ games behind the first-place Toronto Blue Jays. The Tigers – who swept a three-game series from the Red Sox in Detroit a week earlier, then won the June 29 series opener at Fenway Park, 8-3 – were just one game behind the Red Sox.

Hobson’s starter was Mike Gardiner, in his second season with the Red Sox. Gardiner had been 9-10 (4.85) in 1991, when the team finished in second place behind Toronto. At this point in 1992, however, he was 3-8 (4.31) and had lost his last seven starts, including a 5-1 loss to the Tigers on June 24. He set down Detroit in order in the first.

Detroit’s manager was Sparky Anderson, in his 14th season in the Tigers’ dugout, and his starting pitcher was 26-year-old left-hander Buddy Groom. Like Gardiner, the Texas native had been selected in the June 1987 amateur draft, a 12th-round pick from of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. Groom was making the third appearance of what turned out to be a 14-season career. He cruised through the first inning, retiring all three Red Sox batters. Zupcic’s groundout to third was the second out of the inning.

In the second inning, Groom’s teammates – who had scored a total of just three runs in his first two big-league starts, losses to the Chicago White Sox and Texas Rangers – staked him to a five-run lead. Cecil Fielder’s walk and Mickey Tettleton’s infield single put two Tigers on with no outs. The rally seemed to stall when Dan Gladden hit into a double play, but Scott Livingstone walked. Catcher Chad Kreuter knocked in the first run of the game with a single between first and second.

Gardiner loaded the bases with a four-pitch walk to Milt Cuyler, who was hitless in 20 at-bats since an RBI single off Gardiner on June 24.2 With right fielder Tony Phillips at the plate, Gardiner threw a wild pitch and Livingstone scored. Two pitches later, Phillips doubled to right field and drove in two more runs. Lou Whitaker singled to center, and the Tigers had a 5-0 lead before Gardiner was able to close out the inning.

The Red Sox responded with three runs in the bottom of the second. Tom Brunansky led off with a single to center. Groom took 12 pitches to dole out back-to-back walks to Jack Clark and Mo Vaughn, loading the bases. Luis Rivera grounded into a force play, short to second; Brunansky scored and Clark moved to third base. Phil Plantier hit a sacrifice fly to center, and Clark tagged and scored. Tony Peña doubled past third and into the left-field corner, driving in Rivera, but was thrown out at third for the third out. The score stood 5-3, Tigers.  

Neither team scored over the next five innings. In both the third and fifth, Gardiner held Detroit scoreless after two-on, no-out threats.

After six innings, right-hander Daryl Irvine relieved Gardiner. He had been called up that morning from the minors, and this was his first major-league appearance of 1992. He had been 1-1 in 1990 and 0-0 in 1991.3 As it happened, he and Zupcic both lived in the same building.4 Irvine struck out the first two batters he faced, walked the third, then got a groundout for the third out.

After Plantier hit a two-out single in the bottom of the seventh, the Tigers changed pitchers, too, calling on John Doherty. Herm Winningham’s pinch-hit single put two Red Sox on base, but Jody Reed grounded into a force out to end the inning.

Cuyler snapped his 0-for-22 slump by doubling in the top of the eighth, but it followed two groundouts and preceded another.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Red Sox made it a one-run game. Zupcic, 0-for-3 to that point, reached on an infield single. Wade Boggs hit into a force, then Brunansky doubled to right field, scoring Boggs from first.

Brunansky was the potential tying run, but he tried to advance on Clark’s grounder to third and was tagged out. Anderson called on lefty Mike Munoz to pitch to 24-year-old Mo Vaughn, who began the day batting just .231 with 3 home runs. Vaughn took a called third strike.

Trying to keep the Red Sox within a run in the ninth, Irvine set down Whitaker and Travis Fryman on fly balls to left, but Fielder singled. Tettleton, whose 18 homers included two against the Red Sox in Detroit, hit a fly to deep right-center field. Zupcic ran hard at an angle, then lunged over the edge of the Red Sox bullpen to haul in a ball that would otherwise have dropped in for a home run. The inning was over, and the score remained 5-4.

Anderson turned to Mike Henneman to close out the game. Henneman had converted 12 of 13 save opportunities in 1992, and he had pitched five scoreless innings against the Red Sox in the three-game series in Detroit.

Rivera grounded out, but Plantier walked on a full count. Scott Cooper pinch-hit for catcher John Flaherty. He came through with a double into the right-field corner and all of sudden, the Red Sox had the potential tying run on third and the winning run on second.

Going by the book, Anderson walked Reed intentionally to set up a force, even though the Red Sox second baseman was batting just .151 in his past 21 games.

That brought up Zupcic.

The Tigers may or may not have known that Zupcic had one big hit in his past. Ten months earlier, on August 29, 1991, with the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox, Zupcic had hit a grand slam that clinched the International League Eastern Division title for Pawtucket.5 He’d been riding a 16-game hitting streak at the time. It was certainly one of the factors that led to his being called up that September.

On a 3-and-1 count, Zupcic knew Henneman had to put one over the plate or the game would be tied. He swung and pulled the pitch into the screen atop the Green Monster in left field. The second home run of his big-league career gave the Red Sox a come-from-behind 8-5 win.6   

Gardiner was off the hook, no longer to lose his eighth consecutive start. Irvine got the win, 1-0 for the season. He finished 3-4 (6.11), and his time in the majors was over.

The 1992 Red Sox weren’t a home-run-hitting team. Zupcic’s blast was just the team’s 34th of the season. The Tigers had had that many in June alone.

Just a week and a half later, Zupcic hit another clutch grand slam. On July 10 against the Chicago White Sox, his eighth-inning slam off Bobby Thigpen converted a 2-0 deficit into a 5-2 lead, in a game the Red Sox eventually won, 6-5.

At season’s end, however, the Red Sox were in last place in the AL East, 23 games behind the first-place (and eventual World Series champion) Blue Jays. The Tigers were next-to-last, two games above Boston in the standings. Zupcic had 11 outfield assists, at least one from each of the three outfield positions. It was the best season of his four-year big-league career; he batted .276 with 43 RBIs.

After the 1992 season, Zupcic was given a Ford Probe GT automobile as winner of Boston Channel 38’s “10th Player Award” for the Red Sox player who performed “above and beyond the capacity one would normally expect.” Since he was still driving a car he’d had since his sophomore year in college, with 115,000 miles on it, he especially appreciated the honor.7 The Boston Baseball Writers voted him the Harry Agganis Rookie of the Year.8

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown Jr. and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Bob Zupcic, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Both Zupcic’s grand slam and his spectacular catch of Mickey Tettleton’s would-be home run can be seen on YouTube.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS199206300.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1992/B06300BOS1992.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgdDSROvuKw

Notes

1 The Red Sox selected Zupcic with a compensation pick, 32nd overall, which they received after June 1986 first-round draft choice Greg McMurtry did not sign.

2 Tom Gage, “Red Sox Shock Tigers,” Detroit News, July 1, 1992: 1D, 5D.

3 In Pawtucket, Irvine was 3-0 with 15 saves and a 0.95 ERA. He was also a personal favorite of Pawtucket skipper Butch Hobson. Nick Cafardo, “Slam-Bang Ending for Zupcic,” Boston Globe, July 1, 1992: 73, 77.

4 Seth Livingstone, “Rookie Slams Life into Red Sox,” Quincy (Massachusetts) Patriot Ledger, July 1, 1992: 21. The two planned to carpool to Fenway Park for home games.

5 Associated Press, “Pawtucket Clinches Eastern Division,” Hartford Courant, August 30, 1991: E13.

6 Henneman had once gone 53 appearances without giving up a home run, though this was his third of 1992. His analysis of the inning? “I just stunk. They beat me, simple as that. We should have won.” Danny Knobler, “Sox Slam Tigers in 9th,” Flint (Michigan) Journal, July 1, 1992: E1, E5. 

7 Marvin Pave, “Moving Memories,” Boston Globe, October 3, 1992: 68.

8 Nick Cafardo, “Sox Do Some Free Thinking,” Boston Globe, November 26, 1992: 101.