The 1975 Boston Red Sox Scratch A 7-Year Itch
The Boston Red Sox had spent seven straight years in a holding pattern coming into 1975. It wasn’t a bad one—they were between 84-89 wins every single year. But after the 1967 “Impossible Dream” pennant, the Red Sox had not returned to postseason play.
1974 had been the cruelest cut, when they had an eight-game lead in the AL East in August before a complete collapse left them in third place. The 1975 Boston Red Sox scratched the seven-year itch, won the pennant and nearly ended the franchise’s now 57-year drought on winning the whole thing.
FRED LYNN’S HISTORIC ROOKIE SEASON
Boston got back on top with the most potent offense in the American League, and it was keyed by two rookies in the outfield. Fred Lynn took over in centerfield and electrified all of baseball. Lynn produced a stat line of .401 on-base percentage/.566 slugging percentage, drove in 105 runs and made spectacular defensive plays in Fenway Park’s deep centerfield. He won the AL MVP award, the first (and so far only) rookie to do so.
MORE STARS FUEL A POTENT OFFENSE
Lynn wasn’t the only rookie star–or even the best one, once their careers were all said and done. Jim Rice began his road to Cooperstown in left field and allowed the great Hall of Fame veteran, 35-year-old Carl Yastrzemski to move to first base. Rice posted a stat line of .350/.491 and drove in 102 runs.
While Lynn and Rice got the headlines in 1975, Boston had a third outstanding young outfielder who would have a long career in the Hub. Dwight Evans, blessed with a rifle arm, was in rightfield and he put up numbers of .353/.456 at the age of 23.
The trio of young outfielders combined with Yastrzemski—who posted a .371 OBP and hit 14 home runs–and the 27-year-old catcher Carlton Fisk, whose numbers read .395/.529. Cecil Cooper had an excellent stat line of .355/.544. And let’s not forget Bernie Carbo off the bench. The flaky lefthanded hitter delivered a .409 OPB and 15 home runs in part-time duty.
There were weak spots—Doug Griffin and Rick Burleson in the middle infield didn’t hit very well and third baseman Rico Petrocelli was in decline. But Boston’s offense was the most prolific in the American League.
FENWAY PARK: A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
At least some of that productivity can be attributed to the dimensions of hitter-friendly Fenway Park and those same dimensions took their toll on the pitching staff. The Red Sox finished ninth in what was then just a 12-team American League for staff ERA. How did they survive this kind of pitching? Clutch work at the top.
EL TIANTE LEADS THE ROTATION
Luis Tiant won 18 games with a 4.02 ERA. Bill Lee won 17 with a 3.95 ERA. Rick Wise did the same thing. All three pitchers logged over 250 innings and took pressure off a bullpen that lacked depth. Reggie Cleveland and Roger Moret split duty between the bullpen and the rotation and combined to win 27 games. Doug Drago handled what passed for the closer role in that era, saving 15 games with a 3.60 ERA.
A SLUGGISH AL EAST
The Red Sox didn’t come blazing out of the gate, but they were able to win six of ten early games against the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees. Boston was 20-17 on Memorial Day, but with most of the AL East also sluggish, that was good enough for first place.
It’s worth stopping here to remind younger readers that only the first-place team could qualify for the postseason, advancing directly to the League Championship Series. Furthermore, with each league having just an East and West division, Boston, Baltimore and New York were joined by the Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians, and Milwaukee Brewers (an AL team prior to 1998). The Toronto Blue Jays did not yet exist.
A BIG ROAD TRIP
It was a 13-game road trip in the late spring/early summer that the Red Sox started to get some separation. They went 9-4 and even though a four-game series in Baltimore ended with a split, that might have been the highlight of the trip.
Lee pitched the opener and it looked like a gem might be wasted, as Boston trailed 2-0 in the ninth inning. They rallied for three runs and took the lead. After Lee gave up a leadoff single in the ninth, he was removed for Cleveland, who promptly gave up the tying run on a two-out double. Drago came on and to pitch a couple clutch shutout innings of relief and eventually a sac fly from Burleson won it in twelve innings.
The Red Sox then lost consecutive games 3-0, the first on Saturday and the second the opening of a Sunday doubleheader. After the offensive collapse in Baltimore last season, the signature low-water mark of the final two months, this had to be more than a little concerning—other than the brief ninth-inning outburst of the opener, the bats were again silent.
Tiant got the ball for the back end of the doubleheader and settled everything down with a complete-game seven-hitter. The offense showed some life in a 5-1 win that got a split, and on the road that was more than enough. Boston came back home and played seven games against Baltimore and New York and went 4-3, continuing to steadily create space in the AL East.
STRETCHING THE LEAD
Right before and after the All-Star break, the Red Sox got a nine-game winning streak going against AL West teams in Minnesota, Texas and Kansas City. The streak included three consecutive walkoff wins at home. Cooper hit a game-tying home run in one of the games and a game-winning single in another. The lead in the division stretched to 5 ½ games.
On August 3, the Boston lead had soared to 9 ½ games. They beat New York three of four in late July, the highlight being Lee outdueling Catfish Hunter in a 1-0 win. The Yankees were all but finished, but the Orioles were still lurking as the stretch drive approached. Boston was plus-six games on Baltimore when Labor Day arrived.
HOLDING OFF THE ORIOLES
The Red Sox won 10 of their next 17, while the Orioles started to make a push. They cut the lead to 4 ½ games in time for a two-game head-to-head series on September 16 in Fenway Park. If Boston just won one game, it would all but seal the deal. A Baltimore sweep meant everyone would be on pins and needles the final two weeks.
The Hub was a nervous city when Tiant took the mound against Oriole ace Jim Palmer in the opener. Palmer would win the Cy Young Award this season. El Tiante never had the stats of the game’s best pitchers. But this matchup showed why he was a gamer.
Palmer was sharp and the Red Sox only scratched out two runs. But Tiant was better, twirling his way to a five-hit shutout. The 2-0 win ended the drama in the AL East and the Orioles would never get closer. Boston finished the year with a 95-66 record and a 4 ½ game margin. They were finally heading back to the postseason.
OCTOBER
Boston would face the great dynasty of the early 1970s in the Oakland A’s in the American League Championship Series. The A’s had won the previous three World Series titles and were coming off a 98-win campaign.
The Red Sox called an abrupt end to the reign by winning the ALCS in three straight (it was not until 1985 that the LCS round became best-of-seven).
The return to the World Series set Boston up to face the Cincinnati Reds, the feared “Big Red Machine” of Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez, a lineup of four Hall of Famers (I’m including Rose since on baseball merit he quite obviously was one).
It would become a World Series that’s on the short list of the best Fall Classics ever played, but this wouldn’t be the year the trophy came to Beantown. The Red Sox dropped a heartbreaker in Game 7.
OPTIMISM REIGNS
Even after the crushing defeat, this generation of Boston baseball fans wasn’t as jaded as their successors would become in future years. Optimism reigned throughout New England. Yastrszemski believed that, even at this advanced stage of his career, he had multiple World Series trips ahead of him with this young group of players.
But this would be the high point for this particular cast of core Red Sox players. They continued to be good–very good, even. But after a hangover in 1976, Boston lost a close division race to New York in 1977 and then a positively crushing pennant race to the Yanks in 1978. They didn’t make it back to the postseason and the World Series until 1986. And the franchise’s ultimate vindication was still a ways over the horizon, not coming until 2004.