Reliving the 1975 World Series--Thirty Years Later--Part 1

Throughout the season, I'll be featuring 30^th anniversary excerpts about the Red Sox’ and Reds’ classic 1975 World Series, as selected from a yet-to-be published book about the greatest World Series in history. In the first installment, I’ll examine the Red Sox’ climb to the top of both the Eastern Division and the American League.

The pre-season consensus of scribes and sportscasters had tagged the Boston Red Sox as no better than a third-place contestant in the American League East. Boston’s star catcher, Carlton Fisk, was still recovering from a 1974 knee injury that one orthopedic surgeon had predicted would end his career. After Fisk defied that forecast, he suffered a broken right arm—courtesy of a stray pitch in an early spring training game. The Red Sox also lacked proven players at second base and throughout the outfield. And one of Boston’s most important starting pitchers, veteran Rick Wise, remained a question mark with a cranky right shoulder.

Six months later, the Red Sox had emerged as the best team in the Eastern Division. Fisk returned from both his knee injury and his fractured arm to bat .335, and continued to provide leadership to an overachieving pitching staff. Mid-season acquisition Denny Doyle, who joined the Red Sox in a June 13^th trade with the California Angels, solidified the middle infield and batted .310 (a large improvement over his .067 mark with the Halos). In the meantime, Wise bounced back from arm problems to pitch 255 innings and win 19 games, giving the Sox a capable No. 2 starter behind staff ace Luis Tiant.

Yet, it was a pair of rookies who played the largest roles in leading the Red Sox to a status that far exceeded expectation. Fred Lynn, who won the center field job after initially being targeted to play left field, batted a crisp .331 and led the American League with 103 runs scored. Jim Rice, after staggering through a miserable spring, eventually settled in as the team’s left fielder, and batted .309 with 102 RBIs. The two freshmen staged an intriguing grapple for Rookie of the Year honors, with Lynn making a strong case for his own candidacy in the league’s Most Valuable Player race. In fact, he put on such a strong campaign that he became the first rookie in history to win the MVP.

Led by Lynn, Rice, Tiant, and the 36-year-old Carl Yastrzemski, the Red Sox earned a berth in the American League Championship Series against the Oakland A’s. These were the three-time defending World Champion Oakland A’s, who had grown so accustomed to winning when the pages of the calendar flipped from September to October.

This time around, the A’s had to make do without the services of staff ace Jim" Catfish" Hunter, who had become the game’s first full-fledged free agent after the 1974 season and had escaped Charlie Finley’s baseball asylum. Forced to use left-handers Ken Holtzman and Vida Blue at Fenway Park (a cemetery for some southpaw pitchers, even good ones), the undermanned A’s dropped the first two games of the playoff series. Nothing changed when the Championship Series moved to the Oakland Coliseum. Boston’s offense banged out 11 hits, Rick Wise and bullpen stalwart **** Drago pitched efficiently, and the Red Sox won the game, 5-3, sweeping the reigning champs in three games. For a team regarded so lightly at season’s beginning, the Red Sox had done quite well in deconstructing an active dynasty.