The 1975 World Series: Red Sox, Reds and Game Six
The Reds beat the Red Sox in seven games in 1975, but the Series is remembered for Game Six and Carlton Fisk's home run. Learn how the two clubs got there and why the Series still draws fans.
The 1975 World Series is remembered for one swing, and the swing is worth remembering. In the twelfth inning of Game Six at Fenway Park, Boston catcher Carlton Fisk hit a long fly ball down the left-field line and waved at it with both arms, as if he could push it fair by will. It hit the foul pole, the Red Sox won 7-6, and the Series was tied at three games each. The Cincinnati Reds won Game Seven the next night, and the title went to the team that had been better all year.
That outcome is the part that sometimes gets lost. The Series was close because the Red Sox played it that way, but the Reds were the stronger club by every measure in the historical record. They won 108 games in the regular season, 13 more than Boston, and they swept the Pirates in the National League Championship Series. The Series is a lesson in how a seven-game contest can be decided by one run, and how a loss can be remembered more vividly than the win that followed it.
This article sets out the clubs and their paths, walks through the seven games, tells the story of Game Six in detail, and explains what the numbers say about both teams. All the season and standings figures come from the historical record through 2025. The accounts of individual games are drawn from widely documented history. Where this article is not certain of a detail, it leaves the detail out.
The Big Red Machine at its best
The Reds of the mid-1970s are known as the Big Red Machine, and 1975 was the year they proved it. According to the historical record they finished 108-54, first in the National League West, 20 games ahead of the second-place Dodgers, who went 88-74. No other club in the major leagues won more than 98 games that year, and in the National League the next best record belonged to the Pirates at 92-69.
The lineup was a collection of stars, and the database records the individual honors. Joe Morgan, the second baseman, won the National League Most Valuable Player Award and stole 67 bases, third in the major leagues. Johnny Bench drove in 110 runs, second in the majors, and Tony Perez drove in 109, third. Pete Rose collected 210 hits, tied for second in the majors behind Dave Cash's 213. Their manager was Sparky Anderson, and their closer, Rawly Eastwick, saved 22 games, third in the majors.
The pattern in the lineup was balance: speed from Morgan, power from Bench and Perez, contact from Rose, and a team that could beat an opponent in several different ways. In the postseason they swept Pittsburgh three games to none to win the pennant. The Series, for them, was a chance to win the club's first championship since 1940.
The Red Sox and a young team's luck
Boston's road was different. The Red Sox went 95-65 and won the American League East by four and a half games over the Orioles, who finished 90-69. They then swept the Oakland Athletics in the American League Championship Series, three games to none. That was a notable result because Oakland had won the previous three World Series, in 1972, 1973 and 1974, and their regular-season record of 98-64 in 1975 showed they were still strong.
The Red Sox had two distinctive parts. The first was their youth. Fred Lynn, a rookie outfielder, won both the American League Rookie of the Year Award and the Most Valuable Player Award in 1975, the first player to do so, and he hit .331 for the season, second in the league behind Rod Carew's .359. The second was their catcher, Carlton Fisk, and their veteran Carl Yastrzemski, who had been the face of the franchise for years. Luis Tiant, the veteran right-hander, was the staff's anchor, and he started three games in the Series.
One piece of Boston's story is a missing player. Jim Rice, the young left fielder, was injured late in the season and did not play in the Series. Boston's lineup was thus without a hitter who would later become a Hall of Famer. That does not take away from what the team did, but it is worth remembering when you read about how close the Series came to going the other way.
The Red Sox had not won a World Series since 1918. A win in 1975 would have broken a drought of more than half a century. The way the Series ended added another chapter to the story that the 1986 Red Sox would extend eleven years later.
The seven games at a glance
The Series followed the two-three-two format: two games at Fenway Park, three at Cincinnati, then back to Boston for Games Six and Seven.
| Game | Site | Result | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boston | Red Sox 6, Reds 0 | Tiant pitched a shutout |
| 2 | Boston | Reds win | Cincinnati rallied late |
| 3 | Cincinnati | Reds 6, Red Sox 5 (10 innings) | Bunt collision controversy |
| 4 | Cincinnati | Red Sox 5, Reds 4 | Tiant won again |
| 5 | Cincinnati | Reds win | Perez homered |
| 6 | Boston | Red Sox 7, Reds 6 (12 innings) | Fisk's home run |
| 7 | Boston | Reds 4, Red Sox 3 | Morgan's single in the ninth |
The final record in the historical record is Reds 4, Red Sox 3. The Reds won four of the seven, but they did not control the Series: five of the seven games were decided by a single run, and two went to extra innings.
Games One through Five: a close contest
Game One belonged to Tiant, who pitched a shutout in front of the home crowd. It looked like the start of a Boston Series. Cincinnati answered in Game Two by rallying in the late innings, and the Series moved to Ohio tied at one game apiece.
Game Three is remembered for a call that did not go Boston's way. In the tenth inning, with the game tied, Cincinnati's Ed Armbrister bunted in front of the plate, and Fisk and Armbrister collided as Fisk tried to field it. Fisk's throw sailed into center field, and the Reds went on to score the winning run. The Red Sox argued that Armbrister had interfered with Fisk, but the plate umpire ruled that he had not. It is one of the most discussed umpiring decisions in Series history, and it is a good example of how a rule's interpretation can swing a game. For another look at how ball-in-play rules decide games, see the ground-rule double and other dead-ball rules.
Game Four went to Boston, a 5-4 win with another Tiant start. Game Five went to the Reds, aided by a Tony Perez home run, and Cincinnati took a three-games-to-two lead as the Series returned to Boston. They were one win from the title, but there was a three-day wait.
The rain and the three-day wait
The rain began before Game Six and did not stop. Fenway Park was soaked, the game was postponed, and then postponed again. By the time play resumed on October 21, three days after the original date, the two clubs had waited in a Series that had been a nonstop contest.
The delay mattered for a practical reason. Every pitcher on both staffs got extra rest, and the managers could rework their pitching plans for the last two games. Whether the rain helped Boston or helped the Reds is something people still argue about. What is clear is that it gave the Series a long pause before its climax.
Game Six, inning by inning
Game Six began as a Boston game. In the bottom of the first inning, Fred Lynn hit a three-run home run, and the Red Sox led 3-0. Cincinnati then chipped away and went ahead, and the Reds led 6-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning.
Then Bernie Carbo came to bat as a pinch hitter with two men on base. Carbo hit a three-run home run off Eastwick to tie the game 6-6. It was the second pinch-hit home run of his Series, after one in Game Three, and it was the kind of swing that saves a season. Without it there is no twelfth inning.
In the bottom of the ninth, the Red Sox loaded the bases with no one out. The game could have ended in any of a number of ways, and instead the Reds got out of it. A fly ball to left field was caught, the runner on third tried to score, and a throw from the outfield beat him to the plate. Boston did not score, and the game went to extra innings.
The eleventh inning produced the play many fans consider the best of the Series. With a Cincinnati runner on first, Joe Morgan drove a ball toward the right-field wall. Boston outfielder Dwight Evans reached up at the wall and made the catch, preventing what looked like a home run, and the Red Sox doubled the runner off first. If Evans does not make that play, Cincinnati takes the lead.
In the bottom of the twelfth, Fisk led off and hit a ball down the left-field line. Pat Darcy was the Reds' pitcher. The ball carried high and toward the foul pole, and Fisk, running up the line, waved it to the right. It struck the pole for a home run, and the game ended 7-6 after midnight. The television cameras stayed on Fisk, who was the story, rather than on the crowd, and the image became one of the best-known moments in baseball broadcasting.
It was one of the great games in Series history. It lasted twelve innings and offered three or four plays that could each be the subject of a chapter. Another Boston Game Six, with its own late drama, is covered in the 1986 World Series article, and the 1991 Twins and Braves Series is another seven-game Series that stayed close from start to finish.
Game Seven: the ending Boston did not get
The Red Sox took a 3-0 lead early in Game Seven, but the Reds came back. Tony Perez hit a home run off Bill Lee, who had thrown a slow, high pitch that Perez drove over the wall, to cut the lead to 3-2. In the seventh, Cincinnati tied the game. And in the ninth, Joe Morgan lined a single that scored Ken Griffey and put the Reds ahead 4-3.
Cincinnati's Will McEnaney, a young reliever, retired the Red Sox in the bottom of the ninth, and the last out was a fly ball by Yastrzemski to center field. Yastrzemski had been the face of the Red Sox through many of the lean years, and his fly ball ended the Series.
Pete Rose was named the Series' Most Valuable Player. The Reds had won their first championship since 1940, and in 1976 they would win again, sweeping the Yankees to make the Big Red Machine back-to-back champions.
What the numbers say about the era
The season data in the historical record set the Series in context. In 1975 there were 24 major-league teams, and each played about 161 games. The league-wide averages were 4.21 runs per team per game, 0.70 home runs per team per game and 4.98 strikeouts per team per game. That is a low-strikeout, low-homer environment compared with today's game, where strikeouts have climbed far above the 1975 level and home runs per game are much higher.
The league leaders of the year show the shape of the sport. Mike Schmidt led the majors with 38 home runs, with Reggie Jackson and Dave Kingman at 36. Greg Luzinski led the majors in RBI with 120. Dave Cash led with 213 hits, and Davey Lopes led in stolen bases with 77. Jim Palmer won the American League Cy Young Award, with a 2.09 ERA and 23 wins, and Tom Seaver won the National League Cy Young Award. Catfish Hunter and Palmer tied for the American League lead in wins at 23, and Frank Tanana struck out 269 batters to lead the majors.
In those numbers you can see why a team like the Reds stood out. A club that scores runs by many means, with speed, contact and power in the same lineup, does well when offense is hard to come by, and the Series games were decided by a single swing or a single play more often than by a big inning.
What a single game cannot tell you
It is tempting to treat Game Six as the Series. It was not the deciding game, and the Red Sox lost the Series. A seven-game contest is a small sample, and a team that wins four can be only slightly better than the team that wins three. The Reds' 108 wins and their margin over the field in the regular season are better evidence of their quality than the Series itself.
That is also a point about Series memory. We recall the exceptional game and sometimes forget the winner. The 1975 Series is a good case study in the way history rewards drama as well as outcomes.
Common questions
Who won the 1975 World Series? The Cincinnati Reds, four games to three over the Boston Red Sox, according to the historical record.
What happened in Game Six? The Red Sox won 7-6 in twelve innings when Carlton Fisk hit a home run off the left-field foul pole. The game had been delayed by rain for three days.
Who was the Series MVP? Pete Rose of the Reds.
How good were the Reds in 1975? They went 108-54, the best record in the major leagues, and swept the Pirates in the National League Championship Series.
Had the Red Sox won a title recently? No. They had not won a World Series since 1918, and the 1975 loss extended the wait.
Was Jim Rice in the Series? No. He was injured late in the season and did not play.
Where to go next
To see how other Series have been decided, read the 1960 Series, the 1954 Series and the Catch and the 2001 Series. For the most recent results, see the scores page, and for more on the October stage, the playoffs and World Series topic page collects current coverage.