DHL Dan CCLXXIII - Looking Back

With the Boston Red Sox no longer in the playoffs, Shank looks back a half century:

Why are we still looking back at the 1975 World Series 50 years later? Because it’s who we are, and other thoughts.

Picked-up pieces while blissfully remembering what life was like when the World Series was here 50 years ago this weekend . . .

⋅ A half-century later, the October 1975 and 2025 calendars align perfectly.

Game 4 in Cincinnati was Wednesday, Oct. 15. That’s when Luis Tiant whirled and twirled for 163 pitches and went the distance in a 5-4 series-squaring victory. The Reds’ Game 5 win was Thursday, Oct. 16. Then everybody flew back to Boston for Game 6 on Saturday.

In October 1975, Kevin Paul Dupont and I were 22 years old, covering high school football for the Globe for the princely sum of $35 per game. Through the kindness of veteran Associated Press sports editor Dave O’Hara, we also were quote-runners at Red Sox games at Fenway Park ($7 per game), which is how we happened to be at the Park Plaza for the food-and-booze World Series hospitality feast on Friday, Oct. 17, the eve of Game 6 — originally scheduled as Bill Lee vs. Jack Billingham. There was a threat of rain all weekend.

While inhaling our free Lobster Newburg, we learned that the Globe was looking for Peter Gammons’s World Series notebook. Nobody on Morrissey Boulevard could find Gammons and we were tasked with cobbling together some notes for the next morning’s paper.