Fisk’s Series Homer Is Still Memorable

CHICAGO —  It may just be the baby boomer’s answer to the famous Bobby Thomson homer “heard round the world.”

A Red Sox catcher at the time, Carlton Fisk’s post-midnight homer in the sixth game of the 1975 Boston-Cincinnati World Series remains a memorable performance.

Of course, it has helped that major networks have seen fit to show Fisk leaping for joy at the start of their game-of-the-week telecasts.

There have been other famous homers in post-season play and during the regular season--Bill Mazeroski’s homer to win the 1960 series for Pittsburgh that beat the New York Yankees, Roger Maris’ blast that broke Babe Ruth’s single season mark, Hank Aaron’s 715th that broke Ruth’s career home run total. But Fisk’s homer came at a unique time in baseball history.

“At the time I certainly didn’t think it would be remembered like it has,” ve said Fisk, now a free agent after a term with the Chicago White Sox.

Yet this was a round-tripper that typified baseball’s resurgence and may have been a benchmark for the sport re-claiming its position as the national pastime.

“I think baseball has had some ups and downs but it’s true that homer probably showed along with the series that baseball was back,” said Sparky Anderson, manager of the Reds at the time and now skipper with the Detroit Tigers.

Fisk remains puzzled as to why so much fuss has been made about his homer, considering the Red Sox did not win the world’s championship that season.

“If it had come against the Yankees in the middle of the season, no one would have remembered it,” Fisk said. “We didn’t win the series, we just won the sixth game. But it was quite a series.”

Quite a series and quite a game. The Reds needed just one more win to earn the world championship on that chilly Fenway Park evening. And they appeared to have had it.

Bernie Carbo tied the game with a pinch-hit homer, sending the contest into extra innings.

The two teams, which had battled so brilliantly in the first five games, went into the 12th inning.

Pat Darcy was working his second ining of relief when Fisk led off the inning. The time was 12:33 a.m. EDT. A crowd of 35,205 was exhausted from the dramatics of previous innings but certainly still hopeful the Red Sox would be able to ward off elimination by the Big Red Machine.

“I do remember talking to Fred Lynn in the on-deck circle. I said ‘Freddie, I’m going to hit one off the wall and you drive me in,”’ Fisk said. “Of course, I went up there and bang, it was over and Freddie didn’t get a chance to hit.”

Anderson recalled his initial feeling when he saw Fisk’s homer barely stay fair.

“Sick, plain sick,” Anderson said. “I don’t think I slept more than an hour or two that night. Of course, we got the big hits the next night and won the Series.”

“It was a very late game,” Fisk said. “My wife and kids were there and we couldn’t find any place to stay town. We had to drive a couple of hours to get back to New Hampshire and it was in the middle of the night when we finally got home.”

Fisk also recalled that hardly an interview went by for the next several years when he wasn’t asked about “the home run.”

“Not as much lately, Fisk says. “I find it a little hard to believe that was 10 years ago that it happened. It was one of those moments that you know at the time will only come around once in your career. It was something that I treasure and something I haven’t forgotten.”