70's Red Sox

78-We all know this story-Up by 141/2 in July/Boston Massacre=collapse/Win last eight(99 total) to force playoff

Most of my friends are a little younger than me and they know Boston blew that huge lead. But I mention the Yankees having a lead and then going 6-2 or 7-1 down the stretch but the Red Sox still catching them to force the playoff and my friends have no idea. If Dent lofts a fly ball to left for an out and the Sox win that game everyone talks about the great comeback the last week instead of the huge collapse in the 2nd half of the season.

Durant/Dave- Very well said.

-The Red Sox bull pen was pretty iffy and Tiant was there only great starter for a while, as Lee was off and on.
- No one remembers the Red Sox coming back to tie it.

I just look at the Yankees line up and it doesn't scare me at all. At the time I remember Rivers and Chamblis as being really intimidating, but when you look at their numbers- there not that great. Reggie, Nettle, Randolph and White were good.

I think scumby is correct, the Yankees bench and pitching were really good.

That division was insane. All those teams were good except for Cleveland and the Blue Jays.

As to my Reds, I don't think free agency killed them. In 1977 and after, their pitching was awful. The starters went from average to terrible- even with Seaver, and their bull pen completely collapsed. The great 8 were starting to fade. WIth great pitching I think they still could have won- they were still amazing- but Morgan and Bench aren't the same after '77, and Geronimo came back to earth.

As to why they let those guys go, free agency was different back then. The Messersmith decision was fairly recent and many teams did not handle it well. Their were a lot of old time owners/gm's who had just recently been working under the old system with no free agency. Many teams seemed to take free agency personal and negotiations got out of hand, which is what happened with Lynn, Burleson & Fisk. Supposedly, the Red Sox front office forgot to send Fisk some sort of contract extension by the deadline and the commissioner declared him a free agent. Talk about stupidity. The Big Red Machine did the same thing in letting free agency break them apart. Many old school owners and gm's were not equipped for the new world of player movement and they screwed up.

I believe it was the book Game Six by Mark frost that I read about six months ago that discusses not only the 75 World Series, but the future seasons for both the Red sox and Reds, detailing how free agency blew apart both those teams as durantjerry said.

GM Bob Howsam put the Big Red Machine together. The Reds ownership had made a conscious decision NOT to play the "new free agent game" and, rather than oversee the dismantling of his team, Howsam stepped aside for successor Dick Wagner, who oversaw the dismantling of the Big Red Machine (losing Gullett, Rose, Morgan, Perez, etc).
Howsam was old-school, as durantjerry said, and would not have responded much differently to free agency than Wagner did, however. Reds were probably gonna do the same things regardless.

I think the Red Sox would've been different.
Dick O'Connell, who put the late 1960s-mid1970s Red Sox together, lost his job when his huge supporter, owner Tom Yawkey died in 1976. O'Connell, who wanted to negotiate with free agents like Lynn and Fisk, was fired by Jean Yawkey and replaced by Haywood Sullivan, who lost Fisk, Lynn, Burleson, Ferguson Jenkins, Bill Lee, etc.
Tom Yawkey loved O'Connell; Jean Yawkey did NOT.

Had O'Connell not been replaced, I think he would have done a much better job guiding the Red Sox into the waters of free agency. For example, O'Connell engineered a trade with the A's in 1976 that would have netted Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi for $2 million, only to see the trade negated by Bowie Kuhn. O'Connell was much more proactive. I believe both Fisk and Lynn would have remained Red Sox had Jean Yawkey not kicked O'Connell to the curb and promoted Sullivan(Sullivan DID draft his son Marc Sullivan, a Red Sox and ATG great--we need a sarcasm emoticon). The Red Sox would have been much better off had O'Connell continued as GM, IMO

It's not "Bucky Dent;" It's "Bucky F***ING Dent!"

It's not "Bucky Dent;" It's "Bucky F***ING Dent!"

we used to call him F***ing Bent

God I hate Bowie Kuhn, he cancelled the Vida Blue trade to the Reds as well.

The Reds were just morons about free agency and Wagner was a disaster- the guys loses Rose and fires Sparky.... arghhhhh, I'm still upset about it.

BTW. Why don't we have a Lyman Bostock card- that guy was amazing

God I hate Bowie Kuhn, he cancelled the Vida Blue trade to the Reds as well.

Losing to that team from southern CA by a couple of games in 1978 after the Blue trade was voided. Blue probably would have made the difference and Cincy would have won the west that year. Still would have to beat Philly (again) and the Yanks (again) but it could have been 3 titles in 4 years.

We just won't talk about the sale of Blue to the Yankees being voided in '76. That was a good decision by Kuhn.