October 12, 1975: Reds’ rally knots World Series after two games in Boston

If the Boston Red Sox taking the 1975 World Series opener from the Big Red Machine was surprising, 95-win Boston taking a two-games-to-none lead over the 108-win Cincinnati Reds would have been a complete shock to the baseball system. And for the better part of Sunday afternoon, October 12, it seemed that the Red Sox would do just that.

For the second straight day at Fenway Park, Boston’s starter retired the first 10 Reds. This time, it was Bill Lee, who began his first career postseason appearance by striking out Pete Rose on three pitches. A 17-game winner in 1975, Lee hadn’t won since August 24 or started a game since September 19.1 Manager Darrell Johnson did not pitch Lee at all in Boston’s American League Championship Series sweep of the Oakland A’s. Against Lee, Cincinnati mustered just one ball hit out of the infield in the first three innings, Johnny Bench’s first-inning fly ball to center.

And unlike for Luis Tiant in Game One, who had to start his own rally after the game entered the bottom of the seventh scoreless, the Red Sox put a run on the board for Lee in the first inning. Cecil Cooper, getting the leadoff assignment, doubled to open the game against 32-year-old righty Jack Billingham. After an infield single by Denny Doyle put runners on the corners, Carl Yastrzemski bounced back to Billingham, who held the runner and threw to second, but when Cooper took off for home, shortstop Dave Concepción threw to catcher Bench and Cooper was caught in a rundown.

It looked like a wasted opportunity until Carlton Fisk came to the rescue and singled Doyle home with the game’s first run.

The Reds had been shut out on successive days only once in 1975 – they were blanked just five times during the season – and it only made sense that the team that led the major leagues in scoring would not be held off the scoreboard forever. Cincinnati ended its 13-inning scoreless streak in the fourth. Joe Morgan broke Lee’s perfect string with a one-out walk, took third on Bench’s single, and scored the tying run when Tony Pérez hit into a force play.

Boston regained the lead in the sixth. Yastrzemski singled against Billingham with one out. He moved up to second when Concepción – awarded his second of five career Gold Gloves in 1975 – misplayed Fisk’s grounder for an error. Rico Petrocelli, whose two-run single in Game One spurred the Red Sox’ decisive six-run seventh inning, knocked in Yastrzemski with a single, putting Boston ahead, 2-1.

It was not pretty, but neither was the weather, which was cold, rainy, and windy. The elements eventually caused an adjournment of 27 minutes in the middle of the seventh inning. When the teams came back on the field, the Reds had their third pitcher. Will McEnaney replaced Pedro Borbón, who’d been summoned by Sparky Anderson to relieve Billingham for the last out of the sixth.

McEnaney’s first batter was Lee, whom Red Sox skipper Johnson kept in despite the rain delay. It was certainly not an automatic decision. The Boston Globe’s Peter Gammons said that Lee was finally “out of the celestial doghouse.”2

Lee breezed through the eighth, allowing a two-out Rose single before getting Morgan to bounce out to end the inning. Boston had a chance to extend its lead in the home eighth with a walk and single against Reds rookie Rawly Eastwick, but Dwight Evans fanned to end the inning.

Lee had allowed only four hits and two walks on 92 pitches through eight innings. A day after Tiant pitched the first World Series complete game since Steve Blass of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1971, the Red Sox went for the first back-to-back complete games in the World Series since the 1969 New York Mets. But there were no miracles for Boston in the ninth inning in Game Two.

Bench lined an opposite-field double leading off against Lee, and Johnson summoned Dick Drago. A converted starter, Drago was in his first season exclusively as a reliever. At a time when each American League team had starters go the distance at least twice a week on average, and Boston was third in the majors with 62 complete games, Drago’s 15 saves were in the top five in the AL. (League leader Rich Gossage of the Chicago White Sox had all of 26.)

Drago, who’d blown only three saves all year, induced a grounder from Pérez that shortstop Rick Burleson made a nice play on to record the first out, with Bench crossing to third. Drago got George Foster to fly to left, too shallow to risk sending Bench home against Yastrzemski’s arm.

It was up to Concepción, whose error had helped Boston take its one-run lead in the sixth. With the game on the line, the Reds shortstop hit a bouncer just over Drago’s head. Though second baseman Doyle snagged the ball, there was no play. The game was tied, but not for long.

Concepción took off for second. Fisk had thrown out Reds baserunners in each of their first two steal attempts of the Series, and Burleson, who made the tag, argued that they’d gotten Concepcion on his ninth-inning steal attempt as well. The safe call stood, however, and Ken Griffey followed with a shot to left-center that hit the wall on the third bounce to give the Reds their first lead of the World Series.

When Eastwick set down the Red Sox on two popups and a lineout in the ninth, the Reds could breathe a sigh of relief that they’d survived Boston, coming within an out of falling behind two games to none while scoring only once in 18 innings.

The Reds were as stunned as anyone as to what had happened to their potent bats through the first two games. Pete Rose put it the way the public was looking at the Reds: “That team won 108 games?”3 Yes. And that team was fortunate to win a game at Fenway Park. Gammons of the Globe was more philosophical about the view of Game Two from underdog Boston’s end. “In its emotional drain, it was a game and advantage lost, but a vision for the people who make the World Series films, a game of attitudinal and psychological juxtapositions to be remembered over many a one-more-round from Braintree to San Rafael.”4 

Almost 900 miles from Boston, at the same time the Reds and the Red Sox were battling at Fenway Park, their NFL counterparts were facing off at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, to which the World Series would head after an offday. Cincinnati won the football game that Sunday, too, the favored Bengals pulling away late to beat the New England Patriots, 27-10. But football, the sport that many Americans had come to rely on in the TV age for their prime entertainment, was placing a distant second this month. If you missed the 1975 World Series – even a few innings – you were missing something special.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Ken Griffey, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted the following:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS197510120.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1975/B10120BOS1975.htm

Enders, Eric. 100 Years of the World Series, 1903-2004 (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2005).

Frost, Mark. Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime (New York: Hyperion, 2009).

Neft, David S., and Richard M. Cohen. The World Series: Complete Play-by-Play of Every Game, 1903-1989 Compiled by the Authors of The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).

Nowlin, Bill, and Jim Prime. The Boston Red Sox World Series Encyclopedia (Burlington, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2008).

Notes

1 Ron Fimrite, “Reaching Out for the Series,” Sports Illustrated, October 20, 1975, https://vault.si.com/vault/1975/10/20/reaching-out-for-the-series.

2 Peter Gammons, “Reds Find the Starter Button, Run Over Red Sox in the Ninth,” Boston Globe, October 13, 1975, https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/1975/10/13/reds-find-starter-button-run-over-red-sox-ninth/R3Mj6uAaspsljNvUXCyceJ/story.html.

3 John Erardi, “Ninth-Inning Rally Gets Reds Even,” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 23, 2000: D8.

4 Gammons, “Reds Find the Starter Button, Run Over Red Sox in the Ninth.”