1975 WORLD SERIES GAME SIX NAMED
MLB’S GREATEST GAME OF THE LAST 50 YEARS

Hall of Famer
Johnny Bench and 1975 MVP and Rookie of the Year Fred Lynn Join MLB Network’s
Bob Costas and Tom Verducci In-Studio Pete Rose, Bernie Carbo, Dwight Evans, Pat Darcy and Denny Doyle Featured in the Final, Three-Hour
Episode of MLB Network’s 20-Part Series on Sunday, May 22 at 8:00 p.m. ET

Secaucus,
NJ, May 19, 2011 – MLB
Network has named Game Six of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox
and Cincinnati Reds as the number-one game of the last 50 seasons in its series
MLB’s 20 Greatest Games. Hall of Famer and former Reds catcher
Johnny Bench and 1975 MVP and Rookie of the Year Fred Lynn join
MLB Network’s Bob Costas and Tom Verducci in-studio to
discuss the game while interviews with former Reds and Red Sox players
Pete Rose, Bernie Carbo, Dwight Evans, Pat Darcy and Denny Doyle are
featured throughout the series’ special three-hour finale on Sunday, May 22 at
8:00 p.m. ET.

In
a 12-inning game that featured five future Hall of Famers and 13 All-Stars, the
game has achieved legendary status thanks to an iconic game-ending home run by
Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk. Throughout the episode, Bench and Lynn discuss the significance of Game Six
to each club, the groundbreaking use of pitchers, Lynn’s dangerous crash into
the outfield wall, key home runs by Carbo and Cesar Geronimo, and the
sustaining legacy of the game and the series 36 years later.

 

“You
could make a case for a number of different games, but we decided on this one at
number-one not only because it had such a dramatic ending in a classic setting
like Fenway Park, but because there were so many ins and outs within the game
itself, so many potential turning points, so many nuances,” said Costas.
“The game and the series involved some of the most significant personalities of
that era in baseball: Bench, Morgan, Rose, Perez, Sparky Anderson, Carl
Yastrzemski, Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, the list goes on. In the
series itself, although this is the most famous game from the series, five of
the seven games were decided by one run. There were lots of comebacks, lots of
twists and turns. It was actually a significant game in television history, too,
because of the rating it got and the way it was produced and directed. It had
everything. And that’s why it emerged as number-one.”

 

MLB
Network began its countdown of MLB’s 20 Greatest Games in January 2011.
The complete list
of MLB’s 20 Greatest Games features nine World Series games, six League
Championship Series games, two League Division Series games, two Division
tiebreakers and one regular season game. Episodes throughout the series featured
interviews with guests including Jack Morris, John Smoltz, Bill Buckner, Andy
Van Slyke, Darryl Strawberry, Aaron Boone, Pedro Martinez, Joe Torre, Kirk
Gibson, Bucky Dent, Joe Carter and David Cone.

 

Highlights
from MLB’s 20 Greatest Games #1 include:

On Playing in Game
Six:

Johnny
Bench:

“Boston was
playing without Jim Rice, which was [a] big advantage to us, but at the
same time, it was still the Boston Red Sox trying to win a World Series, which
made it even more compelling for most of the fans, and everybody really was
pulling for the Red Sox. … But here we were with an opportunity and a chance and
we felt like the ‘Big Red Machine’ was not going to be big anymore if we didn’t
win.”

Pete
Rose:

“I went up to bat
and I looked back at Carlton Fisk and I said, ‘Man, isn’t this the most
exciting game you ever played in?’ … I was telling the truth, I was having fun.
I mean, win, lose or draw man, I was happy to play in this game. Let me tell you
something man, I played 3,500 games and that’s the most exciting game I ever
played in.”

 

 

 

“I told Sparky[Anderson] after the game – Sparky is down there, he’s all worried and I
said, ‘But Sparky, don’t worry about it man. Did you see how they reacted to
that home run? We got them right where we want them, don’t worry about it. He
said, ‘You guys are the ‘Big Red Machine,’ you never won nothing.’ I said, ‘Just
relax, take it easy, just go get in a good night’s sleep, come back tomorrow.’
And we went and got a good night’s sleep, came back tomorrow and won the World
Series.”

 

 

 

Fred Lynn on
crashing into the outfield wall in the fifth
inning:

 

“When I went down,
I had absolutely no feeling from the waist down. I thought I had either cracked
my back, broken [my] back. I didn’t know what was going on. I had no feeling, so
I just lay motionless. I was very alert, I knew what was going on, I listened to
my teammates around me and when the trainer came out, I was fully conscious, but
I took quite a whack, there’s no question. There was no padding in those days,
it was just concrete. … If I left anything to baseball, my legacy would be that
play right there got padding on the walls. The Commissioner of baseball was
there, everybody in the world saw it, and then the next year padding, albeit
thin padding, was on the walls.”

Bench on Cesar
Geronimo’s home run in the top of the 8^th
inning:

“I thought that
was really the sealer right there. I mean I thought that was absolutely a World
Champion home run, we were going to be the World Series
champions.”

 

Bernie Carbo on
his crucial at-bat in the bottom of the 8^th
inning:

“In this
situation, I thought, ‘You know what? I don’t want to take just a third strike,
I think he’s going to come back with a fastball.’ I just kind of made up my
mind. If he would have thrown it behind my back, I would have swung at it.
That’s the way I felt. I said, ‘I’m going to be swinging at this ball.’”

“When I hit it, I
really didn’t think the ball was out of the park. As I rounded first, I saw
Geronimo turn his back and I said, ‘Man, this ball has got a chance.’
Next thing I know it’s a home run. … When I came around second, I’m looking at
Pete [Rose] saying, ‘Hey Pete, don’t you wish you were this strong? Don’t
you wish you were this strong, Pete?’ Pete’s yelling back at me man, ‘Isn’t this
fun Bernie, isn’t this fun? This is what [the] World Series is about. This is
fun Bernie.’ As I came around third and touched home plate I got into the dugout
and realized, ‘Wow we tied this game, I can’t believe it.’ It was just
fantastic.”

Carbo on his drug
and alcohol addiction during the Series:

 

“The bad thing[was] we had three rainouts and we were supposed to go to Tufts University to
work out and I was into the wind. There was no way that I even knew where Tufts
University was or be able to get myself into the condition to go to Tufts
University to work out. Those three days, rainouts and things, my life started
with a drink, a drug, from morning to night and with those three days of
rainouts, I was totally wasted. And when I got to the ballpark, I wasn’t really
together, and maybe it was better that in the sense that’s basically how I
played every game of my baseball career, my Major League
career.”

Lynn on Carbo’s
addiction:

“Bernie’s locker
was next to me and I had no clue. In fact, I didn’t know about this until many,
many years later about his addiction and how he came to the ballpark. I mean, I
was stunned when he told me about it. I can’t even imagine performing like that,
but he was able to do it. I’m happy to say that he’s clean now, but it was a
shocker when I first heard about it.”

Denny Doyle on
misinterpreting Don Zimmer’s base-running call:

“All I heard was
the word ‘go’ and I heard it twice. … What eventually was said – [Zimmer] was
quoted in the newspaper the next day – was that he said to me, ‘You can’t go,
don’t go.’ And I heard the word that I wanted to hear. When it boils down to it,
I screwed it up because he was the man. He was the authority and I counted on
him for everything and I just assumed that was it and I was doing the right
thing.”

Pat Darcy on
Carlton Fisk’s game-winning home run

“It kind of hung
up in the air because the wind was blowing to fair territory and I thought,
‘It’s going to go foul,’ and then it clipped the foul pole.”

“I never realized
that [George] Foster caught the ball and he ended up selling the ball
about 20 years later. At the time I said, ‘How did you convince somebody that
was the ball?’ Then I realized from watching right now, that it hit the foul
pole and he caught it. That was the real ball, whoever bought it got the real
one.”

Lynn on winning
the game:

 

“It was euphoric
obviously in the clubhouse, but all that allows us to do is play Game Seven so
we have to regroup as well. They’re regrouping, we’re regrouping, we’re moving
our emotion aside, at least I was. … Yeah, we have some momentum on our side,
but we’ve seen during the course of this series, momentum doesn’t necessarily
mean you’re going to win.”

On the legacy of
the 1975 World Series:

Lynn:

“I didn’t know the
ramifications of that game and that series until later in my career. Again I was
a rookie, these are all new experiences for me and I was taking it for granted
that we would be back again. Turned out this was my first and only World Series
so now I really look back on it fondly. I think we did some really good things,
both teams, we put baseball back on the map in the forefront with the NBC
production and all the things that happened there. It was just a great
experience and I’m glad I was a part of it.”

Bench:

“I had been the
MVP twice and Rookie of the Year, but when I walked into that clubhouse after
the seventh game, there’s nothing else I’ve ever experienced that really meant
what the whole game meant. … When you went in there, 25 players were the World
Champions. The coaches, the trainers, the equipment men, the sponsors, there’s
really nothing like it. That’s what the worst part of that whole sixth game was.[It] was the fear that we wouldn’t win the seventh game. Yeah, you’re confident
you will, but here you were, [you] let a game get away already and we’ve lost
two. I heard about those two World Series we lost as well so now I’m going to
hear about this game, but if we don’t win it, it’s really going to be
devastating. … It was supposed to be a day game at one point on the weekend, now
it’s a night game. It’s gone into 12:30, almost  one o’clock in the morning and
still nobody has gone to bed. I mean, everybody in America saw that game and all
of the sudden baseball was great again.”

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