October 3, 2022: With little to play for, Red Sox clinch .500 season at home

As a given season nears its end, baseball fans of any stripe hope to see their team make the playoffs and go all the way. There are, though, teams that clearly have no hope and are statistically eliminated from the postseason. What, then, do fans cheer for? Sometimes individual players, sometimes other milestones.

In 2018 the Boston Red Sox won their fourth World Series championship of the twenty-first century. After waiting 86 years between championships, from 1918 to 2004, Red Sox fans have had much to celebrate. Even a last-place finish in 2012 was followed up by a World Series win the very next year. In 2014 and 2015, the Red Sox finished last again, then won 93 games in each of the next two seasons and the World Series in 2018.

In 2021, after the anomalous pandemic season of 2020, the Red Sox did unexpectedly well, getting to within two wins of that year’s World Series. Their playoff run included several thrilling nights at Fenway Park, including beating the rival New York Yankees in a winner-take-all wild-card game,1 advancing to the American League Championship Series with back-to-back walk-offs over the 2020 pennant-winning Tampa Bay Rays, and clubbing four home runs against the eventual AL champion Houston Astros in Game Three of the ALCS.

In 2022, however, a rash of injuries and a team that never quite seemed complete struggled badly. The Red Sox were in first place in the AL East (albeit tied with the Toronto Blue Jays) for just one day—April 19. As late as July 11, they held second place, trailing just the Yankees, who took over first in late April and never left. But 15 days later, the Red Sox were in last place.

Wait ’til next year? Well, sure, but what was a Red Sox fan to root for in 2022? Getting out of the cellar came first. Those hopes never really more than flickered, as fourth place belonged to the Orioles, who finished a surprising 83-79 after losing 108 or more games in each of the previous three full-schedule seasons.

If not a fourth-place finish, another possible aspiration emerged: a winning record. As late as August 2, the Red Sox were 53-52. They were still in last place, but they’d won more than they’d lost. Not the most spectacular of accomplishments (they were still 17 games out of first), but still something to strive for on a day-by-day basis.

On September 4, after a five-game winning streak, Boston was 67-68. As late as September 20, the Red Sox were just three games below .500, with 15 games left on the schedule. It was not at all impossible.

But it didn’t come to pass. They lost the next six games. They were nine games below .500 with only nine games to go. One last goal remained: a winning record at home.

On the day of the October 3 game against the postseason-bound Rays, the Red Sox were 40-38 at home. There were three games left on the schedule. If they could beat Tampa Bay in one of the final three games, they would clinch a winning home schedule. Beating the Rays might not be easy, though. The Red Sox were just 4-12 against them in 2022.2 Indeed, against the AL East, the Red Sox were only 23-50.

The starting pitchers were 42-year-old Boston native Rich Hill, a left-hander in his third stint with the Red Sox.3 He was 8-7 this season. Tampa Bay’s starter was righty Tyler Glasnow, in just his second start back from Tommy John surgery.

The Rays scored first on a first-inning home run hit down the left-field line by 21-year-old shortstop Wander Franco, landing less than 10 feet fair. They scored two more runs in the top of the fourth on a two-run homer by right fielder Manuel Margot, something of a carbon copy of Franco’s and over everything in left, maybe 20 feet fair. The Rays had a 3-0 lead.

Glasnow had struck out seven but had never been intended to work more than a few innings and was replaced by rookie Kevin Herget for the fourth. It was just Herget’s third big-league game and he hadn’t worked since September 15.

Herget closed out the fourth and retired the side in the fifth, but the Red Sox got to him in the bottom of the sixth. Rafael Devers was leading the team with 87 RBIs; he doubled off the wall in left field. After J.D. Martinez struck out for the third time in the game, right fielder Alex Verdugo singled to right, with Devers taking third base.

Christian Arroyo, playing second base, doubled past third base and into the left-field corner, scoring both Devers and Verdugo to cut the Rays’ lead to 3-2. Rookie first baseman Triston Casas, Boston’s first-round pick in the June 2018 draft, hit the ball back to Herget, who threw to first as Arroyo took third, from where he scored on a double off the center-field wall by shortstop Kiké Hernández. Tie game.

In the seventh, Red Sox reliever John Schreiber replaced Hill and gave up a single, but then got an inning-ending double play. After the seventh-inning stretch, catcher Reese McGuire led off with a ground-rule double that hopped into the seats down the right-field line. He took third on a softly hit ball to the first baseman by Tommy Pham. Devers then hit a fly ball to left, and McGuire tagged up and scored the go-ahead run.

Ryan Brasier retired three Rays batters in the eighth. The Red Sox got a single but didn’t score.

With the Red Sox three outs from clinching a winning record at home, Boston’s Matt Barnes came in to close. He got Randy Arozarena to ground out, but then Franco hit a ball to right-center that shot between the fielders and to the wall. Eyeing an inside-the-park home run, Franco rounded third but was held by the third-base coach.

It was a cold night and not too many wanted to see the game go to extra innings, but there was a runner on third—the tying run—with just one out.

First baseman Harold Ramírez hit a ball hard, down the third-base line. Devers fielded it near the bag. He’d been playing close, to hold Franco to less of a lead. Franco had started toward the plate, but Devers trapped him in a rundown. Devers tossed to McGuire, who chased Franco back toward third. Shortstop Hernández had come in behind Devers and took the return throw, then started chasing Franco toward the plate.

Franco was fast, but Hernández put on an extra burst himself, taking seven running steps and then diving forward, toppling Franco face-forward onto the ground with the tag for the second out. It was as dramatic a rundown as many could remember, with a touch of humor in the way it ended.

Margot grounded out to second and the game was over. With their 41st home victory of 2022, the Red Sox were guaranteed better than a .500 record at home.

As it happened, they won the next game, a rain-shortened 6-0 win called in the bottom of the fifth. And they won on October 5, as well, ending the season by winning six consecutive home games.

Author’s note

This is a personal story of one fan who kept seeking things to root for. I’ve been a regular at Fenway Park dating back to the last century, and in 2022 I—unintentionally at first4—embarked upon something I had never done before: attending every home game all year long.5

Though it was the 79th game of the “streak,” it was my son Emmet’s first game since COVID. My sister Joyce Arnason and brother-in-law Walt were in from Denver, so we took advantage of a “Fenway 4Pax” offer designed to sell seats in the waning days of an uninspiring season—four tickets for $49, with four hot dogs and four drinks included. It was too good a deal to pass up.

Baseball fans always need something to look forward to, something in which to take some pleasure, or at least a degree of satisfaction. This was the game that clinched .500 at home in a season where there had been very little in the way of things for Red Sox fans to root for.

The streak continued with two more wins. On October 5, two days after this game, I got to hear The Standells’ “Dirty Water” (the Red Sox victory song) for the 43rd time in 2022.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes below, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS202210030.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2022/B10030BOS2022.htm

Acknowledgments

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

Photo credit: Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 The AL wild-card game with the Yankees was a single-game matchup to see which team would move on and which would go home. It was something of a rerun of the 1978 single-game playoff for the pennant, won by the Yankees after Bucky Dent’s morale-busting home run gave them the lead. The Red Sox exorcised some memories of the 1978 game with a 6-2 win on October 5, 2021.

2 The Red Sox, though, were riding a three-game home winning streak, having won their last three against Baltimore, giving them a 10-9 season record over the Orioles. Then they had gone to Toronto, where the Blue Jays swept them, the Red Sox finishing 2022 with a record of just 3-16 against Toronto.

3 Hill had pitched for the Red Sox in 2010-2012 (2-0 in 40 relief appearances), in 2015 (2-1 in four starts), and had joined the Red Sox again in 2022.

4 I told my son I regretted having gotten started on my own “streak,” wishing I had deliberately missed a game in late April or early May, just to be freed from the self-inflicted “curse” of “needing” to go to every game. 

5 Baseball writer and SABR member Rob Neyer had given me the idea. In 2000, when Rob was a columnist for ESPN.com, he had gone to every Red Sox home game of the season. We sat together for a few of those games, and one night—after the July 24 game—we simply decided to stay. I had previously interviewed the head of the night cleaning crew, so we went and talked with him afterward, essentially establishing our bona fides with the security guard. But then we wandered, exploring the nearly-empty ballpark until the shift change at 7:00 A.M. the following morning. Rob tells the story of his entire season in Feeding the Green Monster (New York: iPublish 2001). I was honored to contribute the cover photograph.