Sports Illustrated the New York Mets by Sports Illustrated

Author:Sports Illustrated
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2022-12-05T01:10:39+00:00

Game 6 was briefly interrupted by an uninvited parachutist.

“No one,” said Carter, “can take the world championship away from us now, regardless of envy, hatred or jealousy.”

The Sox? Well, they came close again, just as they did in ’75 and ’67 and ’46, but they haven’t won one of these things since Babe Ruth was their best pitcher, and the frustration of such a sorry history is beginning to sink in. “I don’t believe in luck,” said a melancholy Evans. “I don’t believe in history, either, but maybe I’m starting to.” And so what got off to a good start for destiny’s stepchildren had a sorry ending. But there were some memorable moments along the way.

On Saturday, after a run of desultory yawners, the Series got the game it deserved, an improbable melodrama, wild and ragged, desperate and fierce, heartbreaking and heart-lifting. Somehow, in all the confusion and excitement, the Mets won 6–5 in 10 innings and tied the Series. This was hardly World Series play at its most efficient. There were five errors (and no more only because the official scorers were uncommonly charitable) and the two managers, bent on outsmarting each other, actually outsmarted themselves. But this game must be considered one of the most thrilling in Series history, one that combined equal parts of the famous Game 6 at Fenway in 1975 with its Carlton Fisk homer and Game 4 of 1941 when that Hugh Casey spitter and a Dodger win got away from catcher Mickey Owen in the ninth. Until Saturday, Owen had been rated the World Series’ top goat. Alas, now there is a new kid on the block. The tone for this one may have been set in the very top of the first when a parachutist in canary yellow, carrying a placard that said Let’s Go Mets, dropped from the skies above Shea onto the infield with Bill Buckner at bat. Before the night was over, Buckner must have felt as if the sky itself had fallen in on him.

Roger Clemens started the game for Boston against Bob Ojeda, the Game 3 winner. Ojeda was pitching with only three days’ rest while Clemens had had five, and during this, his wonder season, Clemens had been unbeaten in the eight starts he had had with five or more days’ rest. After winning the first two Series games, John McNamara had decided, undeterred by the loss of Game 3, to throw a fourth starter, Nipper, to the wolves in the fourth game so that Hurst, Clemens and, if necessary, Boyd could finish up strong and well-rested. There had been so much talk in this Series about the therapeutic values of rest that one half-expected the participants to be wheeled, lap robes in place, to their positions by white-jacketed attendants.

Though neither he nor Ojeda finished, Clemens did indeed come on strong at the start. His fastball reached 95 miles an hour or better 27 times in the first two innings, when he struck out four. The trouble was, he was throwing too many pitches.

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