Reliving the golden season of baseball in Boston

This story was excerpted from Ian Browne’s Red Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

BOSTON -- Find a baseball fan who hasn't seen the transformative image of Carlton Fisk waving and willing the ball fair, off the foul pole in left field, and lifting the Red Sox and all of MLB with him to force a classic 1975 World Series to Game 7 against the powerful Reds.

But for those who were fortunate enough to attend a roundtable event on Wednesday at Boston’s Museum of Science, the various other subplots of that golden season of baseball in Boston were recounted to the delight of everyone on hand.

The panel of players in attendance from that season 50 years ago included Dwight Evans, Bill Lee, Bernie Carbo, Rico Petrocelli and Tim Blackwell.

Legendary journalists who covered that season took part, including Peter Gammons, Bob Ryan and Leigh Montville.

The occasion for the celebration is a new display on that season that can be seen at the Museum of Science for the next month, and at the New England Sports Museum for a longer term.

Even to this day, it hardly seems to be remembered in the “617” area code that the Reds actually won that World Series. In Boston, the curse talk really started in 1978, and picked up several degrees of intensity following the loss to the Mets in the ‘86 World Series.

For players and fans, the season from a half century ago is looked back on with pure joy. And that joy was shared to an audience of an older generation that got to relive it and a younger generation that got a genuine feel for what it must have been like.

Going into ‘75, the Sox were coming off a calamitous collapse from ‘74, when the fourth-place Orioles trailed Boston by eight games in the American League East on Aug. 29.

The O’s not only won the division title, but the Red Sox fell all the way to third place, finishing seven games out.

Gammons, who was influential in the Boston baseball media at that time, and for many years before and after, asked the team’s general manager at the time, Dick O’Connell, why other AL teams were much more aggressive in that offseason going into ‘75 than the Sox.

O’Connell’s response, according to Gammons?

“Were you watching that afternoon in September [of ‘74] when Fred Lynn went out and took batting practice for the first time in Fenway Park. How can you ask that question?”

“The first seven pitches he hit, he hit off the left-field wall,” Gammons remembers saying. “Dick reminded me, ‘This is where we’re going.’”

And go they did, not just led by Lynn, the AL Rookie of the Year and MVP in 1975, but by fellow Gold Dust Twin Jim Rice, who unfortunately broke a bone in his left hand in late September and couldn’t participate in the postseason.

“What team in all of our collective lives had a better 1-2 rookie punch than those two guys, the Gold Dust Twins of Rice and Lynn?” Ryan asked out loud.

While the rookies often took center stage, the core veterans of that team should not be discounted.

That included the charismatic ace, Luis Tiant, who died 11 months ago. There was a reverence about Tiant from those who spoke of him on Wednesday.

Always known for bringing down the house at Fenway, it was his wife Maria who got the best ovation when her presence was acknowledged.

“He had a sense of humor, even on the field,” said Petrocelli. “One guy would hit a ball to center field about 450 feet, and Luis would say, ‘Go foul, go foul.’”

The 155-pitch win Tiant had in Game 4 to tie up the ‘75 Series is frequently mentioned as one of the gutsiest performances in World Series history. Less remembered is a game from ‘74 when Tiant faced off against Nolan Ryan in Anaheim and went 14 1/3 innings before taking the loss. It was one of his 187 career complete games, but this one was extreme.

“They said, ‘Luis, you got to come out.’ He said, ‘I’m not coming out.’ In the 13th inning, ‘Luis, you’re coming out.’ ‘Forget it, go. Go, sit down.’ Just unbelievable,” said Petrocelli.

Ryan was taken out after 13 innings and tying a career-high of 19 strikeouts. Tiant, much more of a craftsman, scattered 11 hits, four runs and four walks while striking out five.

Many people forget that to get to the Fall Classic, the Red Sox had to take out the three-time defending World Series champion Athletics. Boston swept the best-of-five set, thanks in large part to captain Carl Yastrzemski, who, in his 15th Major League season, moved back to left field for the playoffs to replace Rice after playing first base the majority of the season.

As Boston swept in Game 3, Yaz made two tremendous plays in left field. He threw out Reggie Jackson trying to stretch a double on the first one and lunged into the gap in left-center to save a run against Jackson later in the contest.

“Carl was a very special man,” said Evans. “Great player, competitor. If Jim Rice was here, he would talk about how Carl made us better players. Just for his example, playing hurt. How to play hurt. We see guys that go out and play hurt, and they're not producing. Everyone saying, 'Well, he's really tough, but what good is he,’ means he's not producing. He taught us how to do that.”

And, yes, the World Series. Not only was it great because five of the seven games were decided by a run, but also because of the caliber of players on both teams. The Reds had Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose and Tony Perez. The Red Sox had Yaz, Rice, Lynn, Fisk and Tiant.

The combination of talent and games created magic -- and an unforgettable lede by Gammons on deadline. Here is part of that lede, which certainly stood true on Wednesday.

“In the 12th inning,” wrote Gammons, “a histrionic home run by Fisk brought a 7-6 end to a game that will be of pride of historians in the year 2025.”