Hardball Heaven

Hard to believe it was 20 years ago today. It was a cold, damp spring night at Fenway, with young fireballer Roger Clemens against Mike Moore and the strikeout-prone Seattle Mariners. Seattle's lineup had old war horses like Gorman Thomas and Steve Yeager, free-swinging Danny Tartabull and Phil Bradley, and two guys who would eventually figure heavily into the Sox' post-season march in 1986 --Spike Owen, Clemens' former college teammate at Texas, and Dave "Hendu" Henderson, who would hit one of the most thrilling home runs in Red Sox history five short months later.

I was a freshman in college, watching on an old black and white TV with a couple of guys on my floor. Clemens had 9 K's after four innings, 16 after seven, and as we all know, a major-league record 20 when he blew poor Bradley away (Bradley fanned 4 times) for the second out in the top of the 9th. Roger could have made it a symbolic 21, but Ken Phelps actually mustered a ground ball for the final out of the game.

Interesting side notes:

- Don Baylor - who played 1B for the Sox in '86 - dropped a pop foul early in the game, allowing the Rocket to record another K

- The Sox actually trailed in this game, 1-0, until Dwight Evans hit a laser-beam three-run homer to the camera stand in center in the bottom of the 7th

- According to the box score on retrosheet.org, a grand total of only 13,414 watched the game in person at Fenway. Could have been the weather... or it could have been the fact that back then, the Red Sox were third fiddle in this town, after the Larry Bird-led Celtics and the Neely/Bourque/Moog Bruins. You know, back when our winter sports teams were actually competitive... what a difference two decades make.