One of the more memorable games in postseason history took place 50 years ago, a contest that came to its dramatic conclusion with a post-midnight swing in which the batter willed the ball fair with arms flailing.
On Oct. 21, 1975, in Game 6 of the World Series, a contest postponed three days by rain, Boston catcher Carlton Fisk socked a walk-off homer on a 1-0 pitch leading off the bottom of the 12th inning that gave the Red Sox a 7-6 victory over the Cincinnati Reds before a capacity Fenway Park crowd of 35,205.
Using hand signals and body English to coax his hit off pitcher Pat Darcy from going foul, the baseball instead ricocheted off the left-field foul pole as euphoric fans poured on the diamond from the stands while Fisk rounded the bases and the Fall Classic headed to a seventh game.
“Well, first of all, I said, ‘I hit that ball good,’” said Fisk when asked by host Jon Paul Morosi what he remembered thinking when he, 27 years old at the time, hit the ball – all captured in an episode of “The Road to Cooperstown" podcast. “But then I’m saying, ‘Is that going to go fair? Is that going to go foul?’ And that’s when I started just waving. I just started waving, and it looked like it was going to go foul, and then it kind of went the last, I don’t know how many feet, just seemed like it went straight and hit the pole. So once a year, I’m relevant still.”
“The Road to Cooperstown” focuses on the challenges and obstacles some of the game’s greatest players overcame on their way to achieving baseball’s highest honor. Fisk’s is the final episode of the second season of the podcast series, which also includes conversations with Larry Walker, Ted Simmons, Edgar Martinez, Chipper Jones, Randy Johnson, Lee Smith, Fred McGriff and Robin Yount.
Fisk, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000 and turns 78 on Dec. 26, finished his career with 2,356 hits and 1,330 RBIs. And while he clubbed 376 regular-season homers, his trip around the bases back in 1975 was an experience both he and the baseball world will never forget.
“I was just, you know, happy and jumping,” he told Morosi. “I noticed going around that a lot of the [Reds players] knew that the game was over. So, you know, eyes were down and they were starting to walk off the field. But other than that, it was just rejoicing in the moment.
“And I don’t know if I knew that I touched the ground. I hardly heard the crowd at all, if I remember right. It was just, everything was just right there. You know that one special moment that you have in the universe that nobody else has ever had, and hopefully somebody will have it, because there’s not a more enjoyable moment than that ever for anybody.”
Morosi read, for Fisk’s perspective, the first three paragraphs from 2004 BBWAA Career Excellence Award winner Peter Gammons’ famous game story that appeared in The Boston Globe the next day.
“And all of a sudden the ball was there,” Gammons wrote, “like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of the morning.
“When it finally crashed off the mesh attached to the left field foul pole, one step after another the reaction unfurled: from Carlton Fisk’s convulsive leap to John Kiley’s booming of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ to the wearing off of the numbness to the outcry that echoed across the cold New England morning.
“At 12:34 a.m., in the 12th inning, Fisk’s histrionic home run brought a 7-6 end to a game that will be the pride of historians in the year 2525, a game won and lost what seemed like a dozen times, and a game that brings back summertime one more day. For the seventh game of the World Series.”
“Wow,” was Fisk’s initial response after Morosi finished reciting. “I haven’t read that in 50 years, and then it’s even more goosebumpy now than it was then, because then, you know, it is the home run that happened to me, and now it’s 50-year history, and you kind of forget how, I don’t know, you kind of forget how histrionic it was at the time, and now you do recognize that it was. So that’s even more pertinent now, or it sinks in more now than it did then. So, that’s some pretty good sports prose right there.”
The famed bat Fisk used to hit his impressive homer -- borrowed from teammate Rick Burleson -- is one of the artifacts that are part of Whole New Ballgame, an exhibit on the second floor of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Listen to all of the episodes of "The Road to Cooperstown," a podcast by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and SiriusXM.