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THE YAZ
ERA COMES TO AN END
The Sox come back and blast the Yankees
June
26, 1983 ... A
12-5 victory put the cap on a series win over the arch-rival Yankees.
It was Demolition Day at Fenway Park, where the Red Sox still remain
below .500 at 17-21 for the season. A 3-0 lead by the Yankees quickly
disappeared as Boston soared to home-park season highs of 12 runs and
16 base hits.
Matt Keough was through after giving up four runs in the
fourth inning. Three came on a booming home run into the right field bleachers
by Dwight Evans, and the other run came home on a single by Jerry Remy.
The Sox scored four more runs in the fifth inning on five
base hits and a sacrifice fly. And after the Yankees had come to within three at
8-5, Boston put it away with another four-run outburst in the eighth,
highlighted by a two-run double by Reid Nichols.
Despite the Yankees' vaulted offensive lineup, it was made
obvious that they are still short on pitching. After Goose Gossage, who worked
in Saturday's 4-1 Yankees victory, the drop-off of bullpen talent is like a
one-way ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. George Frazier, Bob Shirley and
Dale Murray pitched terribly.
In fact, the New York defense resembled that same slapstick
act in Boston's big fourth inning. Two errors that never should occur in a
Yankee-Red Sox brawl were crucial to Boston's getting back into the game. First,
Evans' home run was set up when Keough walked Jim Rice and Roy Smalley bobbled
Tony Armas' routine grounder to third, which should have been a double-play
ball. And, following Evans' 12th homer and a double by Carl Yastrzemski, Jerry
Mumphrey lost the handle on Ed Jurak's fly ball for a two-base error. Two outs
later, Remy got his clutch single to left, and the Sox had a lead it would never
relinquish.
Actually, in the first inning, it looked as though the
Yankees might send the crowd of 33,841 home with sad faces. New York scored two
runs on four singles and an error off lefthander Bruce Hurst, who went through a
similar nightmare in a 10-2 disaster in Detroit on June 16. And when the Yankees
went ahead, 3-0, in the second inning on a pair of singles sandwiched around a
walk, it was looking like the Red Sox were going to put the fans through the
same kind of frustration that has become a regular part of a visit to Fenway.
But when Don Baylor's single in the second produced the
third run, it also produced a heads-up defensive play by Rice, whose throw to
second started a rundown that nailed Dave Winfield for the third out in the
inning. And the defense didn't stop there. After Boston had taken a 4-3 lead, it
was Evans' brilliant over-the-shoulder catch of Willie Randolph's fading line
drive that saved a fourth run and kept Bruce Hurst in the game long enough for
the Red Sox to bring in Bob Stanley for the second time in the series.
Hurst departed after giving up a two-run homer to Baylor in
the seventh inning. Stanley took over and threw 2 2/3 innings of shutout relief
for his 16th save. Stanley, whose career record against the Yankees is 5-2 with
four saves, has won or saved 18 of the last 28 Sox victories. |
