September 12, 1969: Yankees’ win over Red Sox lost in New York sports shuffle

“It was 4:03 p.m. when the bulletin from Associated Press clattered across the country,” remembered Newark Star Ledger sportswriter Dave Klein of the events of Friday, September 12, 1969.1 The news spread like wildfire throughout New York City, and it put the talk about the first-place Amazing Mets’ surge to the National League’s Eastern Division championship on hold for a few hours.

Allie Sherman, head coach of the NFL’s New York Giants since 1961, had been fired, a day after the Giants concluded a winless preseason.2 Never again would the song “Goodbye Allie,” sung to the tune of “Goodnight Ladies,” ring out from the voices of disgruntled fans during a Giants’ home game at Yankee Stadium.3

A blue-haired female cashier at the store across the street from Toots Shor’s, the well-known New York City restaurant, said she was uninterested in Allie Sherman, the Giants, or professional football. “There is only one thing I care about and that’s the Mets,” she said. “Those are my boys.”4

The red-hot Mets were now ahead of the slumping second-place Chicago Cubs by two full games, riding a seven-game winning streak, and scheduled to play a doubleheader at Pittsburgh that evening.

Meanwhile, as the New York Times noted, “the city’s other baseball team returned to Yankee Stadium and played a twilight-night doubleheader, necessitated by a rainout of July 17, with the Boston Red Sox, hoping to lessen the 6½-game distance that separate third and fifth place in the [American League’s] Eastern Division.”5

The first game was to begin at 5:00 P.M., around an hour after the news about Sherman hit the news wires. An average season turnout of 13,898 filed into Yankee Stadium. Some fans were unaware of the news. Others had heard about it on their car radios while heading to the game. “The singing got him,” a fan at Yankee Stadium said. “They finally got him.”6

The New York Yankees had entered the 1969 season without Mickey Mantle, who had retired just before the team went to spring training.7 Although the Yankees were coming off a winning season in 1968, most sportswriters picked them to finish fifth in 1969 because of a subpar offense.8 Entering this game, manager Ralph Houk’s team, struggling at the plate, was in fifth place with a 70-72 record and had just lost consecutive games to the Washington Senators.

Their opponent, the Red Sox, had won the American League pennant just two seasons earlier, but they were in third place with a 76-65 record and coming off two straight losses at Baltimore. The two losses to the first-place Orioles mathematically eliminated the Red Sox. Second in the AL East was the best they could hope for in 1969. They trailed the second-place Detroit Tigers by five games and were only 3½ ahead of the fourth-place Senators.  

The starting pitcher in the first game of the doubleheader for the Yankees was 28-year-old Al Downing, a left-hander, and that spelled trouble for Boston, which was on a four-game losing streak against left-handed hurlers. Downing was an AL All-Star in 1967 but because of injuries had pitched only 61 innings in 1968. Holding out because of a contract dispute in 1969 resulted in his demotion to Triple-A Syracuse to start the season. When he was called up by the Yankees in late April, Downing was assigned to work out of the bullpen and make an occasional start.

After being charged with the loss at Washington on July 13, Downing saw his record fall to 1-3 with a 5.56 ERA. Since then, he had won four of five starts and lowered his ERA to 3.07. In the top of the first he retired the first two batters, gave up a single to Carl Yastrzemski, and ended the inning by striking out Reggie Smith.   

In the bottom of the first, Jim Lonborg took the mound for the Red Sox. The AL Cy Young Award winner in 1967 and a brilliant performer in the 1967 World Series wasn’t the same pitcher since Boston’s miracle season. A skiing accident ruined his 1968 season, and a sore shoulder put him on the disabled list in the early stage of the 1969 season. When he returned to action, he won his first six decisions. Then, after he dropped two, a broken toe sidelined him once again. When he returned, he hurled a win in relief in a 20-inning game against Seattle.  Since then he had lost six straight decisions as a starter.

At Yankee Stadium, things did not start well for him. Horace Clarke, the first New York hitter of the game, singled. Jerry Kenney, the Yankees’ lanky shortstop, then cranked a home run into the second row in left field, his first homer since Opening Day. Lonborg gave up another hit in the inning, but settled down and retired 11 of the next 14 batters to keep New York at two runs through the first four innings.

Downing took care of the Red Sox in the second and third innings, but in the top of the fourth Yastrzemski knocked a leadoff double down the left-field line and Tony Conigliaro came through with a two-out RBI single to cut the Yankees’ lead in half. Boston first baseman George Scott followed with a hit that bounced twice before hopping over the left-field barrier to put runners on second and third. The Red Sox were a hit away from tying the game or taking the lead.

But there were two outs and the last two batters in the batting order were due up. The Yankees purposely walked catcher Jerry Moses to load the bases for Lonborg, who looked at strike three to end the threat.

In the bottom of the fifth, Lonborg’s night came to an end. Bobby Cox started the inning with a single, moved to second on Downing’s sacrifice, and scored on Clarke’s ground-rule double to right field. Kenney followed with a grounder to the left side of second base. Red Sox shortstop Rico Petrocelli fielded the hit, and then his knee buckled a bit. He made an off-balance throw to first. On the off-target throw, Clarke rounded third and Scott, who might have had a chance to retire him with a good throw, threw high, allowing Clarke to score. It was scored a single and an error on Petrocelli, and the Yankees led 4-1.

When Roy White followed with a single to put runners on the corners, Lonborg was replaced by 22-year-old rookie left-hander Bill Lee, who induced the next batter, Joe Pepitone, to ground into an inning-ending double play.

Lee, however, was less fortunate in the next inning. The first batter he faced in the bottom of the sixth, Bobby Murcer, tagged him for a home run to extend the New York lead to 5-1 It was the 24th homer of Murcer’s first season as a big-league regular.

The Red Sox fought back in the top of the seventh. A leadoff single by Moses and a pinch-hit double by Billy Conigliaro (Tony’s brother) put runners on second and third with nobody out. A wild pitch and a sacrifice fly scored the two runners to reduce the deficit to 5-3, but that capped the scoring for the game. Downing sent down the Red Sox in order in the eighth and ninth to secure the win for the Yankees.    

Boston rebounded to win the nightcap, 4-3. Murcer hit two more home runs but was outshined by left-hander Ken Brett. Six days before his 21st birthday, Brett recorded his first big-league win and hit his first homer in the majors.

Still, the next day’s newspaper coverage reflected the Yankees’ diminished place in the city’s sporting interest. “Mets Go 9 in Row, 1-0, 1-0: Kooz, Cardy Bat in Runs,” screamed the back page of the New York Daily News, above a display of photos from the Mets’ doubleheader sweep of the Pirates. “Giants Fire Sherman, Name Webster” was the page’s only other news. Readers had to turn a few pages to find word of what had happened between the Yankees and Red Sox.9

The Yankees came in fifth in the AL East with an 80-81 record, 28½ games behind the Orioles. The Red Sox were third, 22 games back; manager Dick Williams, who’d led the team to the 1967 “Impossible Dream” pennant, was fired on September 23.10 The Mets won the NL East and went on to beat Baltimore in the World Series.

On the gridiron, the 1969 Giants, losers of all five of their preseason games, recovered and won 6 of 14 regular-season games, including victories over the two teams that met in that season’s NFL Championship Game.11  

Acknowledgments

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

Photo credit: Bobby Murcer, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play. He also reviewed Saul Wisnia’s SABR Biography Project biography of Jim Lonborg.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA196909121.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B09121NYA1969.htm

Notes

1 Dave Klein, The New York Giants: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1973), 244.

2 The Giants had won 10 or more games in Sherman’s first three seasons as head coach, 1961-1963, but lost the NFL championship game in all three seasons. In the next five seasons under Sherman, they had finished .500 three times – including 1968 – and had two seasons with 10 or more losses. His overall record in New York, which was his only pro head-coaching assignment, was 57-51. “Allie Sherman,” Pro-Football-Reference.com, https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/SherAl0.htm. Accessed August 2025.

3 George Vecsey, “Giants drop Sherman and Name Webster Coach,” New York Times, September 13, 1969: 18. Alex Webster, a former Giants running back who had served as an offensive coach for the previous two seasons, was Sherman’s replacement. 

4 Vecsey.

5 “Yankees Bow, 4-3, after 5-3 Victory,” New York Times, September 13, 1969: 18.

6 Dave Anderson, “Good-by, Allie Is a Reality Now,” New York Times, September 13, 1969: 18.

7 Joe Trimble, “Like We Said … Mick Calls It Quits,” New York Daiy News.March 2, 1969. 30.

8 Jack Hand (Associated Press), “Detroit (East), Minnesota (West) American League Division Title Champions,” Woodstock (Illinois) Daily Sentinel, April 7, 1969: 5.

9 Dana Mozley, “Bobby Belts 3 in Yankee Split,” New York Daily News, September 13, 1969: 30.

10 Ernie Roberts, “Red Sox Fire Manager Dick Williams,” Boston Evening Globe, September 23, 1969: 1.

11 The Minnesota Vikings defeated the Cleveland Browns, 27-7, in the championship game on January 4, 1970. (The Vikings went on to lose Super Bowl IV to the Kansas City Chiefs, 23-7.)