On This Day In History

Shank commemorates the 20 strikeout game by Roger Clemens 35 years ago:

It was 35 years ago, April 29, 1986, and the big story of the day/night was Celtics vs. Hawks at the old Boston Garden in the second round of the playoffs. Those Bird-Walton-Parish-McHale Celtics were en route to a 50-1 home record (including playoffs), qualifying as perhaps the greatest basketball team of all time.

The Celtics-Hawks playoff game started hours after the first round of the NFL Draft, in which the defending AFC champion Patriots selected SMU running back Reggie Dupard. New England’s selection of Dupard was not preceded by one million hours of useless sports radio commentary by fantasy geeks and wannabe GMs. Nobody had ever heard of Jimmy G.

That's because he wasn't born yet, asshole...

Boston’s “minor” sports story of April 29, 1986, figured to be the baseball game at Fenway Park, where the mediocre John McNamara Red Sox (81-81 in 1985) were playing the moribund Seattle Mariners on Yawkey Way before it was haunted. Social distancing was no issue at Fenway that night, as only 13,414 turned out for Sox-Mariners. Because of a conflict with the Celtics broadcast, the Sox game could not be found on AM radio.

While most of this newspaper’s sports staff focused on the Celtics and the draft, I was the Globe’s only reporter at Fenway that night. No photographer was assigned. Everybody was at the Garden. Globe baseball scribe Larry Whiteside had the night off, scored a ticket for the Celtics game, and — in the tradition of all great baseball writers — stopped by Fenway for a free meal on his way to North Station. Sides even stuck around to watch 23-year-old Roger Clemens pitch a couple of innings.