September 18, 1985: Boston’s Rich Gedman drives in career-high 7 runs with cycle performance

With a little more than two weeks left in the 1985 regular season, Boston’s battery of Al Nipper and Rich Gedman paced the Red Sox as they pounded the first-place Toronto Blue Jays, 13-1. The game was a combination of precision pitching and timely hitting by the Red Sox and what the Boston Globe described as “an assortment of fielding, pitching and baserunning follies”1 by the visiting Blue Jays.

Gedman, who had been selected to his first All-Star Game in July, had one of the best performances of his career, both at and behind home plate. He went 4-for-5, hit for the cycle, scored twice, and drove in a career-high seven runs. The Boston catcher also had a rare putout at first base. Nipper notched his fifth complete game of the season, striking out five and walking none.

A quick, two-game series at Fenway Park marked the first time the American League East Division foes had faced off against each other in nearly three months. Toronto, seeking its first-ever division title, had led the AL East since May 12. The Blue Jays came to Boston off three straight wins over the second-place New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium, turning what had become a tenuous 1½-game lead to a 4½-game margin.

In June, the Red Sox had swept a four-game series from Toronto at Fenway Park, part of a surge of 17 wins in 19 games. Boston was nine games over .500 and just 2½ games out of first on June 17, but that turned out to be the team’s season peak. It had taken a 12-5 stretch in September, including a 6-5 win over the Blue Jays in the September 17 series opener, to get back to one game under .500. The Red Sox were fifth in the AL East, 19½ games out.

A pair of right-handers had the mound duties for the short-series finale. For the Red Sox, the 26-year-old Nipper was in his second full season in the majors. After a slow start to the season, winning just one game through the end of May, he had won six of seven decisions in June and July. Then he struggled again, claiming one victory in August and the first half of September to set his season mark at 8-11. In his previous outing, he had pitched a complete game, allowing three earned runs to the Baltimore Orioles, but lack of run support led to another loss.

For Toronto, nine-year veteran Jim Clancy had the start, his third appearance since missing six weeks with shoulder tendinitis. Batterymates Clancy and Ernie Whitt were the only Blue Jays remaining from the club’s 1977 expansion season.

Neither team scored in the first inning, even though Boston had two baserunners. Leading off the Toronto second was cleanup batter George Bell. On June 23 in Toronto, Boston’s Bruce Kison hit Bell with a pitch, and Bell charged the mound and attempted to karate-kick Kison.2

Bell had three hits in the series opener at Fenway Park in September. Facing the Blue Jays left fielder a night later, Nipper acknowledged, “I made up my mind I was going to throw the first pitch inside to see what he’d do.”3

Bell fouled it off, so Nipper threw another inside. Bell started toward the mound, bat in hand. The benches emptied, but, according to the Boston Globe, “only unpleasantries were exchanged.”4 The game resumed, and Nipper struck out Bell, then retired the next two Blue Jays batters as well.

After a scoreless first frame, the Red Sox battered Clancy in the second and third. With one out in the bottom of the second, Mike Easler walked and advanced to third on a Marty Barrett double to left. Easler scored on Glenn Hoffman’s sacrifice fly to center, and Barrett tallied on Dwight Evans’s double. An RBI single by Wade Boggs gave the home team their third run.

Nipper retired the Jays in order in the third, bringing the Red Sox quickly back to the plate. With one out, Gedman hit a home run, his 18th. An out later, Easler tripled, and Clancy’s day was done.5 Dennis Lamp followed and toed the rubber against six batters; he retired two but the other four scored, all in the bottom of the fourth. After an intentional walk to Jim Rice loaded the bases, Lamp was relieved by rookie John Cerutti.

Gedman punched Cerutti’s first offering into left field, where the ball rolled under Bell’s glove all the way to the wall for a bases-clearing triple. With two outs, Easler walked, and Gedman scored Boston’s ninth run on Barrett’s single.

Meanwhile, Nipper had one blemish – a single – through four innings. In the top of the fifth, with one down, Cliff Johnson singled to right and took a wide turn at first, only to be erased by an alert play by Evans, headed for his eighth career Gold Glove, and Gedman. The Toronto Star reported that Gedman “snuck up from behind to take right-fielder Dwight Evans’ peg”6 and tagged out the embarrassed Johnson.

Cerutti retired the first two Boston batters in the fifth, but Bill Buckner singled and Rice doubled. Gedman beat out a chop single, and Buckner crossed home plate. Cerutti had pitched 1⅓ innings, allowing two runs, and he was lifted after Gedman’s single. Jim Acker became the Jays’ fourth hurler.

A wave of substitutions ensued for the visitors, drawing on an expanded September roster, and by the end of the seventh inning, Garth Iorg was the only starter remaining in the Blue Jays’ lineup. A total of 23 players in Blue Jays uniforms got their names in the box score.

Toronto made it 9-1 in the seventh on Ron Shepherd’s double and Lou Thornton’s RBI single. Acker kept the Sox off the scoreboard for 1⅓ innings, but then Tom Filer entered to pitch the bottom of the seventh. This was Filer’s first relief appearance after nine starts, and he brought a 7-0 record with him.7 Like most of his teammates, however, Filer was hammered; in his case, it was for three tallies in his one inning of work. The first four Boston batters reached: Boggs and Buckner singled, Rice doubled to drive in Boggs and Gedman drove in two more runs with a ground-rule double to right. That was all the scoring. The Sox had pummeled the Jays, 13-1.

Nipper stifled the Blue Jays’ bats, limiting them to five singles and a double, and he was rewarded with his ninth win of the year. This was only the second time the Blue Jays had been swept in a series all season; both took place against the Red Sox in Boston, giving Toronto the distinction of being 0-for-Fenway (0-6 for the season). It was the first time in Toronto franchise history that the team had failed to win a game in Boston.8

Toronto skipper Bobby Cox took the beating in stride, telling reporters, “I didn’t mind at all after the first few runs. I got a chance to see some kids play, get some pitchers in – it wasn’t hard to handle.”9 Further, at the end of the day, Toronto still held a “five-game bulge”10 over the Yankees, with 16 games left to play.11

Gedman’s performance marked the 17th time in franchise history that a batter had hit for the cycle, coming a season after teammate Evans’s cycle (June 28, 1984).12 Gedman’s 4-for-5 game raised his batting average to .306, eighth-best in the American League.13 Every one of his hits led to at least one run. Boggs was also 4-for-5, lifting his league-leading average to .372.14 The Red Sox had clanged six hits off the Green Monster (the left-field wall).

Gedman’s achievement was the fourth (and final) cycle in 1985, as he joined Jeffrey Leonard (San Francisco, June 27, against the Cincinnati Reds), Keith Hernandez (New York Mets, July 4, against the Atlanta Braves), and Oddibe McDowell (Texas Rangers, July 23, against the Cleveland Indians).

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks Gary Belleville, Kurt Blumenau, and John Fredland for their informative comments.

Photo credit: Rich Gedman, Trading Card Database. 

Sources  

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, MLB.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS198509180.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1985/B09180BOS1985.htm

Notes

1 Bob Duffy, “Gedman Cycle Carries Sox on 13-1 Ride,” Boston Globe, September 19, 1985: 49, 54.

2 Duffy; Video of June 23, 1985 incident, “George Bell Drop Kicks Bruce Kison,” YouTube video (Mark “Hebsy” Hebscher), 1:38, accessed March 29, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1H9YRy0HAU.

3 Duffy.

4 Duffy.

5 Clancy ended his career with a 3-8 record and a 6.19 ERA in 14 games at Fenway Park.

6 Wayne Parrish, “Even in Defeat, the Jays Have Fun,” Toronto Star, September 19, 1985: E6.

8 This stat excludes the strike-shortened 1981 season, when the Blue Jays did not play at Fenway Park. See Neil MacCarl, “Gedman Hits for Cycle, 7 RBIs Bosox Blast Six Toronto Hurlers,” Toronto Star, September 19, 1985: E1.

9 Duffy.

10 Parrish.

11 On September 18 New York lost its sixth game in a row, to remain five games back. Toronto finished September with a record of 98-57 and a 5½-game lead in the AL East. Even though they won just one of their final six contests, they captured the pennant and made it to the League Championship Series, losing to the eventual World Series champion Kansas City Royals in seven games.

12 Ed Eagle, “Players Who Have Hit for the Cycle,” mlb.com, August 23, 2023, https://www.mlb.com/news/players-who-hit-for-the-cycle-c265552018.

13 “Batting,” Boston Globe, September 19, 1985: 58.

14 In 1985 Boggs led the American League in batting average (.368), finishing more than 30 points above the next-best hitter, Kansas City’s George Brett (.335). Boggs finished the 1985 season batting .447 (21-for-47) against the Blue Jays, with a 1.161 OPS.