Baseball in Detroit entered a new era in1978 with the rookie seasons of Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Jack Morris and Lance Parrish. The 1979 Detroit Tigers continued the transition. Veteran manager Ralph Houk retired after ’78 and an outreach was made to Sparky Anderson, recently dismissed in Cincinnati. It took until midseason for the deal to get finalized and Anderson to come aboard, but when he did, the great Tiger move into a new decade had take another step forward.
Les Moss was handling the managerial duties when the season opened and he had an offense that could steal bases and hit home runs. Ron LeFlore was the man who set the table and the centerfielder posted a .355 on-base percentage and stole 78 bags. Whitaker’s .395 OBP and 20 steals gave the offense some more spark.
Power came from Steve Kemp and the leftfielder hit 26 home runs and drove in 105 runs, to go along with an excellent .398 OBP. Jason Thompson was another good bat at a corner position and the first baseman popped 20 homers. A late May deal for Champ Summers to play right field paid off in a big way—over the final four-plus months, Summers had a .414 OBP, a .614 slugging percentage and hit 20 homers of his own.
Trammell was still developing as a hitter, but his .335 OBP was respectable. John Wockenfuss was a reliable utility player and hit 15 home runs off the bench. All told, it was good enough for Detroit to rank fifth in the American League in runs scored.
Morris had broken in as a relief pitcher in 1978 and ’79 saw his first move into the rotation. It was an unqualified success, with 17 victories and a 3.28 ERA. But there were problems behind him.
Milt Wilcox was the #2 and his ERA clocked in at 4.35. Wilcox and Morris combined to make 56 starts. Even that’s a low number for the top two in a rotation. But Moss, and then Sparky, had to do a lot of experimentation with the other starting pitchers.
Veteran Jack Billingham pitched well when he took the ball—a 3.30 ERA and ten wins—but the 36-year-old was only able to make 19 starts. Pat Underwood was too young at age 22 and finished with a 4.59 ERA in his 15 starts. Dan Petry would eventually become a reliable cog in the rotation. This season he was twenty years old and getting his feet wet, 15 starts and a 3.95 ERA. Dave Rozema, age 22, had similar numbers—16 starts and a 3.51 ERA.
Individually, there was promise. Collectively, that’s too much instability. And after Aurelio Lopez, with his 21 saves, 10 wins and 2.41 ERA, the bullpen was weak. So Detroit’s staff ERA ended up a mediocre eighth in the American League.
The season started slowly. The Tigers lost five of seven to a mediocre Twins teams. They managed to split twelve games against good divisional foes in the Brewers, Orioles and Yankees, but when Memorial Day arrived, Detroit was 18-21. They were in fifth place, eight games back of frontrunning Baltimore.
Here might be a good place to step back and remind younger readers that the baseball alignment prior to 1994 had each league split into just an East and West division and only the first-place finisher could go to the postseason. That meant Detroit and other centrally located franchises, were split up and shared with each coast.
Detroit was in the AL East, as was Cleveland and Milwaukee (an AL team prior to 1998). They joined with the East’s four current members in New York, Boston, Baltimore and Toronto. The AL East of this era was the toughest division in baseball. The Yankees were two-time defending World Series champs, the Red Sox and Orioles perennial contenders and the Brewers joining the Tigers as the up-and-comers. There wasn’t any margin for error.
Detroit came out of the holiday and went 8-5 on a road trip that ended in California. When they returned to old Tiger Stadium, Sparky was signed and in the dugout.
The Tigers continued to chip away with wins against the AL West. But just as had been the case in ’78, it was a road trip to Boston and Baltimore that dealt a lethal blow. Detroit lost six of eight. Twice in Baltimore they lost on a walkoff when they had the lead. The Tigers dropped another game to the Orioles that was tied 5-5 in the eighth inning.
But Detroit came off the mat. They took two of three from Boston back at home, then went up to Milwaukee for a long five-game series and won three times. When Detroit closed the first half by taking four of five from the White Sox, the Tigers had reached .500.
Being .500 in the AL East still left you in fifth place, fourteen games off the pace, so there was no pennant race buzz in the air. But Detroit needed to keep improving. And they did.
The Tigers took home series from the Brewers. After taking another home series from three-time defending AL West champ Kansas City, Detroit headed west to California. The Angels were in the lead in a push to dethrone the Royals. The Tigers had a chance to play spoiler in this mid-August matchup.
Morris picked up his 10th win in the series opener, aided by three hits and three RBIs from Whitaker to lead the 5-3 win. Thompson and Parrish homered on Tuesday and Detroit won 6-3. In Wednesday’s finale, Thompson homered again, as did Summers. Petry was brilliant, tossing eight innings of two-hit ball and the Tigers won 6-1. The sweep kickstarted a 7-2 road trip through the West Coast.
California made a return trip to Detroit at the end of August. Billingham opened the series with seven strong innings to pull out Monday night’s 3-2 win. The Tiger bats unloaded on Tuesday—three hits from Whitaker and home runs by Summers, Trammell and Thompson—for a 12-2 win. Morris completed another sweep of the Angels on Wednesday with a 2-1 win.
The Angels would succeed in their quest to displace the Royals at the top of the AL West. But it was no thanks to the Tigers, who went 6-0 against the eventual division champs in the heat of August.
Detroit reached Labor Day with a record of 73-64. Baltimore was running away with the East and the Tigers were in a 16 ½ game hole. They played 19 games in September against the Orioles, Red Sox and Yankees. It’s not the kind of slate where you’re going to pile up wins, but Detroit hung in there and went 9-10. They finished the season at 85-76.
In the rigorous AL East that meant fifth place. But it was only three games off of the record the Angels posted in winning the West. Detroit had established that the winning baseball of 1978 was not a fluke. And they had a World Series-winning manager in the dugout to help them build to the next step.
The 1979 Milwaukee Brewers were coming off a breakout 93-win season in 1978,the first winning season in franchise history.In ‘79, the Brewers showed they were no fluke, stepping it up to 95 wins, even if the structure and format of MLB at that time continued to keep them out of the postseason.
Milwaukee was an American League city until 1998. That difference was mostly cosmetic. The real stumbling block was that baseball’s alignment split each league into only two divisions, East & West, and took only the first-place team directly into the League Championship Series. Milwaukee was on the far western border of the East. In 1978, that meant the behemoths from Boston and New York kept the out of the playoffs. In 1979, Baltimore took their turn. In both cases, Milwaukee was better than the eventual champion of the AL West.
The Brewers were fueled by a potent offense. Centerfielder Gorman Thomas hit 45 home runs to lead the league and drove in 123 runs. Sixto Lezcano, the rising 24-year-old star in right field, batted. 321, hit 28 homers and finished with 101 RBI. Paul Molitor, in the second season of a Hall of Fame career, hit .22 and stole 33 bases. Cecil Cooper, the steady first baseman, hit .308, drove in 106 runs and popped 24 homers of his own.
Charlie Moore took over the catching job at age 26 and was another .300 hitter. Ben Oglivie provided more muscle, hitting 29 home runs. The quality of the lineup can be underscored by this—shortstop Robin Yount, a future Hall of Famer and the greatest player in the history of the franchise, had a bad year in 1979. Larry Hisle, the DH who led the offense in ‘78, tore a rotator cuff in early May and saw his career effectively ended. And the Brewers still scored more runs in 1979 (807) than they had in 1978 (804).
Offense across the league was up, so Milwaukee still slipped from leading the league in runs scored in ‘78 to fourth this time around. But that makes the pitching improvement all the more impressive, where they jumped from 8th to 4th in staff ERA.
Mike Caldwell and Lary Sorensen were the 1-2 in the rotation. Neither was as good as they had been in ‘78, but both were still very effective. Caldwell won 16 games with a 3.29 ERA, while Sorensen added 15 wins and an ERA of 3.98. The difference is that, unlike 1978, there was more depth to the staff.
Jim Slaton had been traded for Oglivie prior to 1978, but returned to Milwaukee via free agency for this season and was another 15-game winner. Bill Travers had a solid year, with 14 wins. Both had sub-4.00 ERAs, giving manager George Bamberger some steady balance in his rotation. Bill Castro, Jerry Augustine and Bob McClure were reliable, if unspectacular arms, out of the bullpen.
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The schedule-makers put the Brewers to the test early, with the first 15 games against the Yankees, Red Sox and Orioles. Milwaukee played to mixed reviews, going 7-8. But they took advantage against the lower half of the AL East, with a 13-6 run against the Blue Jays, Tigers and Indians. By Memorial Day, the Brewers were 26-21 and four games off the pace being set by Baltimore.
The AL East was a four-team race coming into the early part of the summer. The Yankees started to fade, while the Orioles and Red Sox began to separate. The Brewers again took advantage of the lower half of the division, with a 7-1 stretch against Toronto, Detroit and Cleveland going into the All-Star break. The spurt kept Milwaukee in third place, within six games of the lead.
In late July, all three division powers were coming into old County Stadium. New York was up first and on a Friday night, the Brewers had coughed up a 5-3 lead and were in a 5-5 game, facing the Yankees’ Hall of Fame closer Goose Gossage. With two outs in the ninth, Cooper ripped a walkoff blast that jumpstarted a sweep. The Yankee season went from frustrating on the field to tragic off of it, with catcher Thurman Munson dying when his private plane crashed just a few days later.
That left the Red Sox and Orioles and the next eight games were as forgettable a stretch as Milwaukee fans—a group that’s seen some ugly Augusts over the years—have ever dealt with. They lost three straight to Baltimore, four of five to Boston and were effectively out of contention by the time the homestand ended.
But it was only the quality of the competition that was the reason for being out of the race. The Brewers reached Labor Day with a record of 82-56, the third-best in all of baseball, behind only the eventual World Series teams from Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
That more or less held to the end of the season. The Montreal Expos slipped past Milwaukee for the third-best record, but the Brewers’ final mark of 95-66 was the fourth-best in the game. But in the ruthless world of the late 1970s AL East, it was still eight games shy of the mark. Maybe the most important number you need to know to understand these Brewers is 336.5—that’s the distance from Milwaukee to Minneapolis, which is where the boundaries of the AL West began.
Baseball came to Montreal in 1969, but winning baseball took a decade. The Expos were under .500 each of their first ten seasons, including a 107-loss debacle in 1976. That precipitated the hiring of Dick Williams as manager, who had won two World Series titles in Oakland and led the Boston Red Sox to a pennant.
Williams immediately got the team to respectability, 75 wins and 76 wins over the next two years. And the 1979 Montreal Expos were the breakout team that contended for the NL East title to the final day of the season.
Montreal had a core of excellent young talent that included future Hall of Famers in 25-year-old catcher Gary Carter and 24-year-old centerfield Andre Dawson. Carter hit 22 home runs, while Dawson hit 25 home runs, led the team in RBI with 92 and stole 35 bases.
Rightfielder Ellis Valentine joined the youthful brigade and the 24-year-old rightfielder popped 21 home runs and drove in 82 runs. Larry Parrish, age 25 and playing third base, was the most productive of them all in 1979. Parrish batted .307, drilled 30 home runs and finished with 82 RBI.
These four were augmented by veteran help in first baseman Tony Perez, a big part of Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine and now 37-years-old. And though the middle infielders, Rodney Scott and Chris Speier, didn’t hit, both were renowned for their ability with the glove.
It added up to an offense that was built on power—third in the National League in home runs, and that didn’t waste time getting after pitchers—last in the NL in walks. Montreal ended up in the middle of the league in runs scored.
That was more than enough to win though, because the pitching was the best in the league. Montreal had made a big move in the offseason, acquiring veteran lefthander Bill Lee from the Red Sox for utility infielder Stan Papi. Lee, whose free-spirit lifestyle clashed with management, was cut loose for pennies on the dollar. The lefty won 16 games with a 3.04 ERA in a sharp rebuke to the unprofessionalism of his former team.
Steve Rogers was a workhorse, joining Lee in working well over 200 innings and Rogers won 13 games with 3.00 ERA. Two young arms rounded out the regular rotation, with 22-year-old Scott Sanderson and 24-year-old Dan Schatzeder, who finished with ERAs of 3.43 and 2.83 respectively.
Williams made extensive use of his bullpen, at least by the standards of the times. David Palmer, a 21-year-old, worked 122 innings, won ten games and had a 2.64 ERA. Stan Bahnsen and Rudy May, two veterans, each worked over 90 innings and May won ten more. And another big veteran pickup, Elias Sosa, signed as a free agent, saved 18 games with a buck-96 ERA.
Montreal came out of the gate fast, winning eight of their first ten, and then sweeping a seven-game homestand against NL West competition. The Expos led the NL East—which then included the Pirates, Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies and Mets—by a game. A 16-game road trip was a big challenge, but Montreal was able to split at 8-8, including a three-game sweep of the Phillies, who had won the division each of the previous three seasons.
The Expos reached Memorial Day percentage points ahead of the Phillies and four games ahead of the Cardinals. Montreal followed it up with consistent baseball throughout June and early July. They went 22-15, with no winning streak longer than four and no losing streak longer than three. They gradually built a division lead that peaked at 6 ½ games on July 6. Then a homestand against non-contenders in the Padres and Giants went awry—the Expos lost five of seven and the lead shrunk to 2 ½ games at the All-Star break.
It was a packed division race—the Cubs were 2 ½ back, with the Phillies and Pirates not far behind and the Cardinals still with a shot at 6 ½ out. Only the Mets were a non-factor at the break.
Montreal slumped in the second half, losing seven of twelve, including a three-game sweep to a Pirates team that was coming on strong and that sweep vaulted Pittsburgh into first place. When the Expos went 5-8 in the early part of August, they fell behind by 3 ½ games. Finally, they stopped the bleeding and went on a 10-3 run, but the Pirates were hot and the 3 ½ game deficit stood as the season hit its final turn on Labor Day. Pittsburgh and Montreal were the only two teams left in the race.
The Expos responded to the September pressure by sweeping a Labor Day doubleheader over the Mets and in a busy week went 7-1 to trim the lead to a game. One week later, Montreal swept Chicago four straight and pulled even as they hosted the Pirates for two games on September 17-18.
Rogers got the ball for the Tuesday night opener and pitched well, but the Expos only mustered six hits in a 2-1 loss. Lee pitched on Wednesday and gave up three runs in the first inning. But he settled in, didn’t give up any more runs and the offense chipped away to tie the game and it went to extra innings. But Pittsburgh first baseman Willie “Pops” Stargell was keying his team’s stretch drive and he hit a two-run blast in the eleventh to win it 5-3.
Montreal was the young team and Pittsburgh the veterans, so it might have been reasonable to expect the Expos to fold. But the opposite happened. They responded by sweeping the Mets in Shea Stadium, taking two of three in Philadelphia and moving back into first place by a half-game. It was time for another big series with the Pirates, four games in old Three Rivers Stadium to begin the season’s final week.
It’s times like these that baseball promises drama and either ecstasy or heartbreak with thrilling moments. What happened instead is that the Montreal pitching, so good all year, came completely undone. They gave up 31 runs in four games and were fortunate to escape with a single 7-6 win in the nightcap of a Monday doubleheader.
The Expos trailed by a game and a half, but their situation was a little bit better than that might appear on the surface. They had played two fewer games than the Pirates due to rainouts and actually only trailed by a game in the loss column. If Montreal could at least pull even in losses, they could make up the two games and control their destiny.
Philadelphia came north of the border and Palmer pitched Friday night’s opener. He had a 2-0 lead into the sixth when Phillie third baseman Mike Schmidt hit a two-run homer in the sixth to tie it. It was oddly foreshadowing of a year later, when a two-run blast by Schmidt would break hearts throughout Montreal. The Expos missed a chance to score in the bottom of the sixth and ultimately lost 3-2 in eleven innings.
It was a missed opportunity, because the Pirates lost. Another tight game went down on Saturday and again Montreal coughed up a 2-0 lead, with Sosa blowing the save for Lee in the eighth. This time the game had a better ending—backup infielder Dave Cash hit an RBI single in the ninth for the 3-2 win. And the Pirates lost again. The Expos were even in the loss column. Their job now was simple—win Sunday, win two makeup games and possibly win a one-game playoff with the Pirates pending how the makeup games went.
But the best-laid plans ran into Philadelphia lefthander Steve Carlton. The best pitcher of his time, Carlton dueled with Rogers and won 2-0. When Pittsburgh beat Chicago, the NL East race was over.
Montreal wasn’t going to disappear from contention. They battled Philadelphia to the final weekend in 1980 before a home run by Schmidt ultimately beat them. The Expos got into the playoffs in the strike year of 1981 and came within a hair of the World Series before Los Angeles’ Rick Monday beat them with a home run.
The legacy of this cast of Expos is one of missed opportunity—that with all this young talent they never reached a World Series, much less won it. But they also brought winning baseball to their city for the first time and that started with the 1979 Montreal Expos.
Major league baseball came to the city of Houston in 1962 and for the ensuing seventeen years it was mostly subpar. The franchise only had two winning seasons, never won more than 84 games and never seriously contended. The 1979 Houston Astros changed all that, leading the old NL West for much of the year, competing until the final weekend and winning 89 games, continuing a pattern of improvement under fourth-year manager Bill Virdon.
It was all about pitching for these Astros. They were second in the National League in ERA with the rotation anchored by 18-game winner J.R. Richard and 21-game winning knuckleballer Joe Niekro. The two aces combined to make 76 starts, or nearly half of the team’s total games.
The rotation was balanced out by Ken Forsch, Rick Williams and Joaquin Andujar, all of whom were effective starters with ERAs in the low 3s. Williams and Andujar also did considerable work out of the bullpen where they joined Joe Sambito, who saved 21 games (at a time when save totals weren’t nearly as high as they are today) with a 1.77 ERA.
Houston’s offense was anemic and playing in the vast expanse of the old Astrodome didn’t help. They were last in the National League in runs scored and hit only 49 home runs. Leftfielder Jose Cruz went deep nine times—and he was the team leader in home runs. Nor did anyone bat .300 and no one used walks or doubles to spruce up their on-base percentage or slugging percentage.
What Houston could do was run. They stole 190 bases and led the league. Third baseman Enos Cabell, first baseman Cesar Cedeno and centerfielder Terry Puhl joined Cruz in swiping 30-plus bags. Rightfielder Jeffrey Leonard stole 23 more. The Astros were young—eight everyday players under the age of 30—they were fast and they used that to their advantage.
A fast 12-4 start was highlighted by a three-game home sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team that would eventually win the World Series. All three were decided by one run, all were won late and Andujar picked up two of the victories in relief. The Astros led the NL West (in the pre-1993 two-division alignment this included the Dodgers, Reds, Padres, Giants and Braves) by four games in early May.
Losing three of four in Cincinnatipulled Houston back to earth and started a string where Houston lost 10 of 14, and they slipped a half-game back of the Reds by Memorial Day. San Francisco and Los Angeles, the two-time defending NL champs, were packed in the middle of a four-team race.
The Astros got hot as summer arrived. They swept the Reds at home and then did the same to the Montreal Expos, who would push Pittsburgh to the season’s final week in the NL East. Houston nudged into first place, then delivered home sweeps of bad teams in the Mets and Padres. The lead in the NL West stretched to six games.
Then Houston won the first six games of a road trip and took the first two of a three-game set in Cincinnati. The lead was soaring and peaked at 10 ½ games on the Fourth of July. A loss in the finale to the Reds was quickly followed by a seven-game losing streak, but the Astros reached the All-Star break at 54-40 and were plus-six on the Reds and up 8 ½ on the Giants. The collapse of the Dodgerswas the surprise of the division and Los Angeles was in last place.
The poor play leading into the break resumed after the All-Star game. Houston lost four straight in Pittsburgh, continued to slump and though the Astros posted a respectable 15-11 record, the Reds were sizzling and came all the way back. Even without the benefit of head-to-head games, as both teams played Eastern Division opponents, Cincinnati was within a half-game on Labor Day in it was now clearly a two-team race. On September 11, the Astros went to old Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati for a two-game set.
Rafael Landestoy was one of Houston’s better offensive threats, with a .338 on-base percentage. The second baseman racked up five hits in the Wednesday night opener and the Astros led 7-6 in the seventh inning. But Sambito gave up consecutive home runs and they ended up losing 9-8. One day later Niekro was knocked out by the fourth inning and lost 7-4. The pitching had come undone in the biggest series of the year and Houston slipped 2 ½ games back.
The Astros were able to stop the bleeding and the deficit was still 2 ½ when the Reds came to the Astrodome on the season’s penultimate weekend. Houston definitely needed to win the series and would probably need to sweep.
Friday’s opener went long into the night, tied 2-2 in the 13th inning. Houston had a reserve catcher who would one day make a name for himself as a manager—Bruce Bochy, who hit a two-out RBI single to win the game. On Saturday, Niekro was sharp, making up for his previous outing against the Reds and the 4-1 win cut the margin to a half-game and made the Sunday finale a battle for first place.
Vern Ruhle was a young starter who would be a big part of what this team would accomplish over the next couple years. But in this game, tied 1-1 in the fourth, Ruhle was knocked off the mound with five runs. The Astros lost 7-1.
Winning the series had kept them alive, but failing to sweep meant an uphill climb in a final week where both teams would play weak competition. Houston trailed by 2 ½ games going into the final weekend in Los Angeles. The Astros took the field on Friday knowing that the Reds had already beaten Atlanta. Houston lost and the race was over.
There was still no denying the strides the 1979 Houston Astros had made, including their first taste of pennant-race baseball. This core group came back in 1980 and won the NL West. In 1981 they made the expanded playoffs that came about due to the midseason players’ strike. They never reached the World Series, but they gave Houston something the city had previously not seen and that’s good baseball.
The Baltimore Orioles had made the American League Championship Series a regular part of their schedule in the early 1970s with five appearances from 1969-74. After a three-year hiatus, the Orioles returned to the 1979 ALCS. The California Angels were novices at this postseason baseball thing, having won their first AL West title. It was Baltimore who had the upper hand in a series whose individual games were much more competitive than the series result as a whole.
You can read more about the regular season paths each team took to its division title and the years enjoyed by the key players. This article’s focus is on the games of the 1979 ALCS itself.
The series that was then a best-of-five affair opened in Baltimore by virtue of the rotation system that existed. The first two games would be in Charm City, with the balance of the ALCS played out in Anaheim over the weekend.
Two future Hall of Famers took the ball in Game 1. Jim Palmer was on the mound for the Orioles against the Angels’ Nolan Ryan. California got to Palmer with two outs in the first, as Dan Ford hit a solo home run. Two innings later, the Angels attacked again with two outs and again it was Ford doing the damage. After a base hit by Rick Miller and a walk to Carney Lansford, Ford drilled an RBI double for a two-zip lead.
California second baseman Bobby Grich was a former Oriole and he helped his old team in the bottom half of the third with an error that triggered a Baltimore rally. Rick Dempsey hit an RBI double and light-hitting shortstop Mark Belanger tied the game with a two-out RBI single.
The Angels should have gotten to Palmer again in the fourth when Rod Carew led off with a double and there were quickly runners on the corners with no one out. But Palmer escaped and his team took the lead in the inning’s bottom half. Pat Kelly drew a walk, stole second, took third on a wild pitch and scored on a sac fly from third baseman Doug DeCinces.
Carew, one of the best pure contact hitters to ever play the game singled in the sixth and scored the tying run on a double by Grich. The Orioles were in position to get the lead right back when they put two on with one out. But Ryan induced Lee May to hit into a 5-4-3 double play.
Palmer was now dialed in and rolled through the ninth, keeping the Angels at bay. Ryan left after seven, but John Montague kept the Orioles under control in the eighth and ninth. The game went into extra innings.
California went quietly in the top of the 10th against reliever Don Stanhouse. DeCinces led off the home half of the inning. DeCinces would soon leave Baltimore via free agency to join these same Angels, but tonight he was just a thorn in the side of California manager Gene Mauch. DeCinces began the 10th with a single and was quickly bunted up to second. With two outs, Montague intentionally walked leadoff hitter Al Bumbry.
John Lowenstein, a platoon outfielder and left-handed hitting specialist was up. He launched a three-run blast to win the game 6-3. Lowenstein was the hero, but Baltimore pitching had been decisive—over the last four innings, California managed just one hit, a single by Carew.
Game 2 was a late Thursday afternoon start, beginning shortly after 3 PM, so there was no time for the Angels to lament their Game 1 fate. Especially not when Baltimore was coming back with soon-to-be Cy Young Award winner Mike Flanagan.
The second game started just like the first—with a two-out solo blast from Ford to get the Angels a quick 1-0 lead. But this one quickly got away from California starter Dave Frost when it was time for him to take the mound.
Bumbry led off with a single and then stole second. Subsequent singles by Eddie Murray, Kelly, DeCinces, two walks and an error produced four runs. In the bottom of the second, Bumbry walked and again stole second. After he scored on a base hit from Kiko Garcia, Frost was out and Mark Clear was in.
It didn’t help. After a single from Ken Singleton, Murray delivered a three-run jack and this game was blown wide open early 8-1. When DeCinces led off the Oriole third with a walk and scored on consecutive two-out singles from Bumbry and Garcia, it looked like just another meaningless run that made it 9-1. It turned out to be incredibly important.
Flanagan cruised through five. The Angels touched him again in the sixth when Carew doubled and came around on a single form Lansford. In the seventh, singles from Don Baylor and Brian Downing led to a Grich sac fly and it was 9-3. Still nothing to suggest a game was in the offing.
The top of the eighth was when it got interesting. Flanagan issued a leadoff walk. After an error, Lansford drove in a run that made it 9-4 and left runners on the corners. Baylor, who would win the AL MVP award from the DH spot this year, drove in another run with a single that moved Lansford to third and chased Flanagan. Downing hit a sac fly.
Baltimore might have put the game away all over again after two bunt singles opened the bottom of the eighth, but they couldn’t get anything across. It set the stage for a dramatic ninth inning.
Stanhouse walked the leadoff man, Larry Harlow, and then gave up a one-out double to pinch-hitter Willie Davis. California had made it all the way back to have the tying run at the plate. Carew grounded out. One run scored, but the Angels were down to their last breath. Ford was up and he singled the other way. The hit cut the lead to 9-8 and on a futile throw to third, Ford moved up to second. The winning run was improbably in scoring position.
Oriole manager Earl Weaver ordered an intentional walk to Baylor, preferring to take his chances with Downing. The move paid off. Downing bounced a grounder to DeCinces who stepped on third. Baltimore survived a hair-raising 9-8 finish.
A rain-out had delayed the opening of the ALCS by a day, so the normal day off for travel was not in place. The teams headed west and were back on the field for Friday night, an early evening start locally and prime-time in the East. The Orioles sent Dennis Martinez out to try and clinch their first pennant since 1971. Frank Tanana, the Angel lefty, had his team’s season in his hands.
For the third straight game, California scored in the first inning and though it wasn’t Ford hitting a home run, the rightfielder was still in the middle of it. After Lansford singled and stole second, Ford picked him up with a base hit. The 1-0 lead held until the top of the fourth, when Singleton doubled and consecutive singles from Murray and May tied the game.
Baylor did not have a good ALCS, going just 3-for-16. His biggest hit came in the bottom of the fourth in Game 3 when he homered for a 2-1 lead. The Angels had a great chance to extend the lead in the bottom of the fifth when the bases were loaded with one out. Alas, Ford finally came up short, hitting into a double play.
In the top of the sixth, Baltimore made it hurt. Singleton and Murray singled and May drew a walk to load the bases with none out. DeCinces sac fly tied the game and moved Murray to third. Now it was California’s turn to come up big defensively. Rich Dauer hit a fly ball to center that Murray tried to tag up on. Miller gunned him down at the plate and kept it a 2-2 game.
It didn’t stay that way long though. Bumbry lashed a one-out triple in the seventh and scored the go-ahead run. In the meantime, Martinez was cruising, having set down ten in a row heading into the ninth inning. Then he got Baylor to start the final frame.
Carew wasn’t going quietly and he went the other way for a double into the left-center gap. Weaver called for Stanhouse. The reliever walked Downing, but Grich to hit a lazy fly ball to center. Unbelievably, the reliable Bumbry dropped it and the game was tied. Harlow then doubled and the Angels had stolen a 4-3 win.
All three games had been heartstoppers. Bumbry was on a big hook if his team didn’t close out this ALCS. But he and all of Baltimore could soon breathe easy. Because the thrill-a-minute baseball that marked the first three games was about to come to a screeching halt on Saturday afternoon.
Baltimore got after California starter Chris Knapp in the third for two runs. A base hit, a walk and a bunt single led to a Singleton sac fly and RBI hit for Murray. Even though Gary Roenicke hit into a double play the Orioles already had enough runs for lefty Scott McGregor.
DeCinces and Dempsey each doubled in the fourth to make it 3-0. The Angels rallied in the fifth, when singles by Downing and Grich helped load the bases with none out. But a Miller fly ball wasn’t deep enough to score a run and McGregor then induced a double play ground ball. The 1979 ALCS effectively ended at this point.
Baltimore blew it open in the seventh. Singleton and Roenicke each had RBI singles and Kelly delivered the coup de grace with a three-run blast that opened an 8-0 lead. McGregor completed a six-hit shutout and the Orioles were returning to the World Series.
The American League was still a year away from voting an LCS MVP, so this honor is left vacant. If we can fill it retroactively, the pick would be Murray. He was 5-for-12, homered and the multiple intentional walks he kept getting underscored how much California feared him and got his OBP for the series to .588.
Other heroes included Dempsey, who went 4-for-10 with two doubles and Singleton was 6-for-16. On the California side, Carew had seven hits and Ford’s consistent first-inning dominance always had the Angels in games.
Baltimore briefly kept their momentum going in the 1979 World Series against Pittsburgh. The Orioles grabbed the first two games at home and led the series 3-1, with Murray again hitting the ball well. But the first baseman’s fortunes tracked those of the team. He began to slump, the rest of the offense went with him and the Pirates won the final three games.
The 1979 ALCS wasn’t the last we were going to see of either franchise. The Angels returned here in 1982and again in 1986, though each loss got progressively more heartbreaking and it wasn’t until 2002that they finally put their demons to rest and won it all.
The Orioles would not wait nearly as long—this core group of players, augmented by a young shortstop with the name of Ripken, would win it all in 1983.
The California Angels came into existence in 1961 and like any expansion team, had a troubled early phase of existence. What was more troublesome is that the Angels’ problems continued in the 1970s. Over the period of 1976-78, the club had six managers, all of whom managed a substantial number of games. In the second half of ’78, the team finally got the right guy with Jim Fregosi and the 1979 California Angels rewarded the fans and owner Gene Autry with their first AL West title.
1978 had ended on a good note. Fregosi managed the final 116 games and went 62-54. The Angels made a spirited run at the Kansas City Royals before coming up a short, but the second-place finish was still the best in club history.
California then made a huge splash in the offseason. Just prior to spring training, they dealt a package of four players to the Minnesota Twins to get first baseman Rod Carew. The best pure contact hitter in baseball, Carew won the MVP award in 1977 when he made a run at .400, and he immediately stepped into the Angel lineup and with a .419 on-base percentage in 1979, helped make the Angels the best in the league at getting runners on base.
Carew wasn’t one. Brian Downing, their young catcher, had a .418 OBP, and added a little bit of pop, with a .462 slugging percentage. Rick Miller was in center and posted a .367 OBP. Then there were the power hitters, all of whom were adept at not just going deep, but getting themselves on base regularly.
Bobby Grich hit 30 home runs, finished with 101 RBIs and the second baseman’s OBP was .365. Willie Mays Aikens, a talented young DH, popped 21 home runs and his OBP was .376. And no one was better than Don Baylor. The leftfielder hit 36 home runs, drove in 139 runs, put up a .371 OBP and walked off with the AL MVP award.
It added up to the best offense in the American League. California needed it, because the pitching wasn’t great. Dave Frost and Nolan Ryan led the staff with 16 wins apiece, but neither had a dominant ERA, at 3.57 and 3.60 respectively. Frank Tanana made 17 starts, and the lefty was a big help, with a 3.89 ERA, but the back end, with Jim Barr, Don Aase and Chris Knapp was a serious weak point.
The bullpen was even worse. Mark Clear saved 14 games and the 23-year-old finished with a 3.63 ERA, as he began what would be a respectable big-league career. But there was no depth to speak of.
Fortunately, the other entity there was no depth to speak of it was the AL West. By season’s end, four AL East teams would have better records than anyone in the West, so the Angels had a lower bar to hurdle.
California came strong out of the gate, with a 22-9 start. They were 4 ½ games up in mid-May, before a brief slide at the end of the month left them with a one-game margin on Memorial Day, amidst a packed four team race with the Royals, Twins and Texas Rangers.
The Angels came out of Memorial Day and won 12 of 19, a respectable stretch, but the fact it increased their lead back to five games underscored the divisional weakness. Then they went 5-8 in a stretch of games against the Rangers and Royals to tighten the race back up. A key survival point came in an 18-game schedule stretch against the powers in the AL East, and the Angels were able to hold serve. They went 9-9 in home-and-home series with the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox.
By the All-Star break, California was 55-38, good for a two-game lead over Texas and five over Minnesota. What was most surprising is that Kansas City had slid ten games out. But the Royals weren’t going to roll over and die.
California held serve through three weeks in August, but then managed to lose six of seven against bad AL East teams in the Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians. The Halos briefly slipped a half-game back, before winning the final three games of the series in Cleveland.
The Royals were barreling hard into September, and by Labor Day were within a game and a half, as they sought a fourth straight AL West title. Texas had faded, but Minnesota was still in the picture, three games out. California swept a big series with the Milwaukee Brewers, a team on its way to 95 wins in the AL East, and the Angels nudged their margin back to four and got some breathing room.
On September 17, they lead stood at three games. California arrived in Kansas City for a four-game series to open the week.
Knapp was crushed in the opener, a 16-4 loss, as the Royals kept their momentum going. Then they scored four runs in the first inning in Tuesday’s second game. At this point, Frost settled down and delivered one of the clutch pitching performances of the season. He worked into the ninth, Kansas City never scored again, and the Angels rallied to a 6-4 win.
Ryan got the ball on Wednesday and lost to reliable Royal lefty Larry Gura in another 6-4 game. In the Thursday finale, Baylor hit an early home run and it was tied 2-2 in the seventh. The Angels then unloaded, scoring six times and Downing hitting a three-run shot. The 11-6 win ensured California left town with their lead still intact at three games.
The following Monday began the final week of the season, the lead was still at three games and Kansas City made their return trip to Anaheim. Minnesota was four games out, but with the Royals and Angels playing head-to-head it would take the equivalent of an inside straight for the Twins to pull it out.
Monday night saw a Ryan-Gura rematch, and Nolan fell behind 3-0 early, with a couple defensive miscues bearing a big portion of responsibility. The big flamethrower settled down though, and Ford became the hero of the game. The rightfielder hit a two-run single with two outs in the third, then hit sac flies for runs in the fifth and seventh, as the Angels won 4-3.
On Tuesday, the Twins lost, so as the game progressed on the West Coast, the Angels knew they could clinch with a win. Tanana was on the mound and he met the moment, throwing a complete-game five-hitter and it was time to start the party.
California finished the season 88-74, which in the era when divisions had seven teams apiece, was a low record for a first-place team. But it was good enough, and that was all anyone in SoCal wanted after waited seventeen years.
The Angels met the Baltimore Orioles in the ALCS and turned in a credible effort against the 102-win Birds, but the California problems in the bullpen and with rotation depth did them in. They lost the first game in ten innings, and the second when a rally from 9-1 down came up one run short with the bases loaded. An exciting win in a must-win Game 3 (the LCS was best-of-five then) kept them alive, but Knapp was on the mound for Game 4 and he was rocked. The season was over.
Even if the season was over, California was finally a champion. They would make it back to the ALCS in 1982, with a lot of these everyday players. The pursuit of a World Series would be heartbreaking—that ’82 ALCS saw the Angels blow a 2-0 series lead and lose three straight. They lost a crusher in the 1986 ALCS. Finally, in 2002, with the franchise name changed to “Anaheim Angels”, and managed by Mike Scoscia, the Halos won it all. It was the culmination of what began in 1979.
The Cincinnati Reds were in a period of significant transition in 1979. The Big Red Machine, that had won four pennants and two World Series titles from 1970-76, had started to break up in 1977, and two years later that process was accelerated.
Manager Sparky Anderson was fired after second-place finishes in 1977-78, and then Pete Rose left via free agency for the Philadelphia Phillies. The 1979 Cincinnati Reds were able to win amidst the change, with new manager John McNamara and young third baseman Ray Knight helping lead the way to an NL West title.
Knight stepped into Rose’s old position and hit .318, one key part of an offense that ranked third in the National League in runs scored. The Reds didn’t hit a lot of home runs and they weren’t even great in batting average, but they drew walks better than anyone, and hit the ball into the alleys at Riverfront Stadium.
Joe Morgan, now 35-years-old at second base, was the perfect example. The future Hall of Famer only hit .250, but in drawing 93 walks, his OBP was a solid .379. Johnny Bench had a strong year behind the plate at age 31, a .364 OBP/.459 slugging percentage.
George Foster, the leftfielder who had been the team’s best player the last two years and the NL MVP in 1977, hit 30 home runs. Ken Griffey was still productive, at .374/.471. A key role player was backup outfielder Dave Collins, who came off the bench to put up a .364 OBP and provide a basestealing threat.
The pitching was pretty good too, ranking fourth in the NL in ERA. Tom Seaver was 34-years-old and still getting it done, winning 16 games, working 215 innings and posting a 3.14 ERA. Mike LaCoss, Fred Norman, Bill Bonham and Paul Moskau all had ERAs in the 3s, filling out a rotation that was not spectacular, but steady.
The bullpen was built around Tom Hume, whose versatility made a big difference all year. Hume made 35 relief appearances, 12 starts, and turned those into 17 saves, 10 wins and a 2.76 ERA. He got help from Frank Pastore, who also turned in some key starts, and Doug Bair, who saved 16 games, albeit with a 4.29 ERA.
Cincinnati started the season playing consistently and they were 25-20 on Memorial Day, amidst a packed NL West with the Houston Astros, San Francisco Giants and the two-time defending pennant winning Los Angeles Dodgers.
It was the Astros who made the strong move coming out of Memorial Day. They beat the Reds three straight in Houston out of the holiday weekend, then took a later series in June. Over the Fourth of July, Cincinnati again lost two straight to the Astros, by the midsummer, Houston was soaring, ten games ahead.
On July 5 the season finally started to slowly turn back in Cincinnati’s favor. Seaver took the mound against Houston ace J.R. Richard, a matchup we had not seen the last of. The top of the Cincy order chipped away at Richard. Griffey and Cesar Geronimo each had three hits, while Morgan drew four walks. The 5-4 win stopped the bleeding and over the next two weeks leading up to the All-Star break, Cincinnati chopped the Houston lead down to a manageable six and a half games.
Cincinnati picked up the pace out of the break, winning 10 of 15, including a three-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Reds then went 19-7 in the month of August. Even with no head-to-head games against Houston, Cincinnati obliterated the division lead, spent a handful of days in first place and were within a half-game of the Astros on Labor Day, with a 77-60 record.
The lead was still Houston by a half on September 11, when the Reds and Astros met at Riverfront for a two-game set. Seaver and Richard each got the ball for the opener, although this time, neither had it. The Astros led 7-6 in the seventh, when light-hitting shortstop Dave Concepion hit a two-run homer for the Reds. Foster followed with another blast. The Reds hung on to win 9-8.
One night later Collings and Knight each had three hits, and both offenses got on the board early. Pastore came out of the bullpen and delivered 3.1 innings of one-hit ball, the first time a pitcher had settled things down in this series. Cincinnati won 7-4 and had a 1 ½ game lead.
Ten days later it was the penultimate weekend of the season. The Reds had upped the lead to 2 ½ games and were in Houston for a three-game set.
Friday night was another Seaver-Richard battle. Knight got to the Houston ace for a two-run shot early, but Richard settled down. Seaver pitched well, but the Astros chipped out two runs and both aces were gone as the game went extras, tied 2-2. Houston won it in the 13th.
Tensions grew higher for Reds fans on Saturday. They got a run in the first inning, but did not score again in a 4-1 loss. Cincy loaded the bases in the seventh with no outs, but failed to score, as three consecutive pinch-hitters were unable to do the job. Sunday’s finale would be a game for first place.
Pastore got the ball and delivered. He went the distance, scattered nine hits and gave up only one run. Foster homered early, Knight had three hits and five-run fourth inning gave Cincinnati an easy 7-1 win. They still had the NL West lead, but at 1 ½ games, with a week left, it wasn’t time to celebrate just yet.
The time to celebrate came the following Friday. Cincinnati was able to push their lead back to 2 ½ games, and they controlled the half-game in the event that makeup games were required on the following Monday. Pastore ensured that wouldn’t be necessary. He tossed a four-hit shutout against the Atlanta Braves for the home fans, and the party could start in Riverfront.
Cincinnati faced a familiar foe in the National League Championship Series. They had beaten the Pirates in the NLCS round in 1970, 1972 and 1975. This time, Pittsburgh got their revenge. In what was then a best-of-five round, the Reds lost extra-inning heartbreakers at home in Games 1 & 2 and then were routed in Game 3 for a sweep.
The Reds kept the post-Big Red Machine success going for a couple more years, but it seemed as though fate conspired against them. They had the best record in baseball in 1981, but the strike that roiled that year resulted in a split-season format where the winners of each “half” met in the playoffs for the division title. The Reds ended up a close second in both halves.
McNamara and Knight would go on to the World Series, but it was in 1986…when McNamara managed the Boston Red Sox and Knight played for the New York Mets, and both were at the heart of the incredible drama that was Game 6 of that Series.
The Reds would return to prominence in 1985—when Rose came back to town as player-manager. And they returned to October in 1990 when they won the World Series.
The Baltimore Orioles were the AL East’s dominant team, starting with the expansion of 1969 and each league’s split into two divisions. The Orioles won five of the first six AL East titles. The Birds then finished out of the money from 1975-78, though the team remained competitive each year. But “competitive” wasn’t good enough for manager Earl Weaver, and the 1979 Baltimore Orioles put the team back on top of the division and back in the World Series.
Weaver’s great teams had been built on pitching, and this team was no different. To say the Orioles led the league in ERA is accurate, but also understates the case. The ERA differential between the Baltimore staff and the second-best team was the same as the gap from #2 to #10.
Mike Flanagan won 23 games and the Cy Young Award. Dennis Martinez, Steve Stone, Scott McGregor were all effective, with ERAs in the 3s. The veteran Jim Palmer no longer had the same arm that won him three Cy Youngs, but he was still good enough to post a 10-6 record and 3.30 ERA.
And the rotation was just the beginning. The bullpen was deep and versatile. Sammy Steward worked 117 innings and posted a 3.52 ERA. Tippy Martinez won ten games with a 2.88 ERA. Tim Stoddard didn’t have the same workload, but his 1.71 ERA spoke volumes, while Don Stanhouse saved 21 games with a 2.85 ERA.
This staff carried an offense that only ranked eighth in the American League. The production at catcher, second base, third base, centerfield and DH was fairly mediocre. But big years from two players provided enough punch.
Eddie Murray was only 23-years-old and getting started on what would be a Hall of Fame career at first base. Murray hit 25 home runs, finished with 99 RBIs and had an on-base percentage of .369. And Ken Singleton in rightfield was even better—a .405 OBP, 35 home runs and 111 RBIs.
The Orioles got off to a poor start, with a 3-8 beginning marked by losing a pair of series to the New York Yankees and being swept by the up-and-coming Milwaukee Brewers. But the Birds quickly righted the ship and reeled off 15 wins in 16 games, including a four-game sweep of the Brewers and a road sweep of the future AL West champions, the California Angels.
By Memorial Day, the Birds were 29-16 and held a two-game lead on the Boston Red Sox, the Brewers were six back and the Yankees were five back. Between the holiday and the All-Star break, New York fell hard, and the two-time defending World Series champions were in an 11-game hole. Baltimore reached the midway point still holding a two-game margin on Boston and being plus-6 on Milwaukee.
Between the All-Star break and Labor Day, the Orioles broke it wide open. They won 13 of 16 to start the second half and the signature moment was a three-game series in Milwaukee.
Stone pitched the series opener and threw 8.2 innings of one-hit baseball against one of the game’s best offenses, a 2-1 Oriole win. They won the second game 9-5 behind four hits from Dauer and a ninth-inning grand slam from Murray that broke open a game they only led by a run. In the finale, Al Bumbry and Rich Dauer each had three hits at the top of the order, Dennis Martinez pitched a complete game and a 5-2 win completed the sweep.
By Labor Day, the lead had reached eight on Milwaukee and nine on Boston. For New York, a bad year turned tragic in early August when their captain, catcher Thurman Munson, died in a plane crash. No one challenged the Orioles in September and they clinched the AL East with over a week to go, winning 102 games.
The California Angels were the opponent in the American League Championship Series. The ALCS would produce some breathtaking excitement–extra-innings and ninth-inning dramatics–through the first three games. Baltimore won two of those games and then closed out a pennant with a Game 4 blowout.
The World Series had a result that was unfortunately like 1971, at least if you were an Oriole fan. Just as they had that year, they met the Pittsburgh Pirates. In ’71, the Orioles had won the first two games at home before losing a seven-game series. In ’79, they took three of the first four before losing a seven-game series.
Murray couldn’t keep his ALCS hot streak going—he struggled to a 4-for-26 performance in the Series, including flying out in the eighth inning of Game 7 when the bases were loaded with two outs and his team trailed 2-1. As of this writing in September 2014, Baltimore is the last team to lose the final two games of a World Series at home.
The ending shouldn’t detract from the season as a whole though. The Orioles saw Murray emerge as a star, they blew away the best division in baseball and they returned to the World Series.
The Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds were old “friends” when it came to hooking up in the National League Championship Series. They met in 1970, 1972 and 1975, with the Reds winning all three times. The Pirates finally got their revenge in the fourth meeting in the 1979 NLCS.
You can read more about the paths the Pirates and Reds took their respective division titles and the seasons enjoyed by their key players at the links below. This article will focus strictly on the games of the 1979 NLCS.
The series opened in Cincinnati by virtue of the rotation system that determined homefield. The series that was then best-of-five would see two games in Cincy, with the balance of games being played in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh sent 25-year-old lefty John Candelaria to the mound to face Cincinnati veteran Tom Seaver, who had helped the New York Mets win a World Series in 1969 and an NL pennant in 1973.
Johnny Bench tripled for the Reds in the bottom of the second with one out, by Ray Knight and Dan Driessen failed to pick him up. It would be the Pirates who struck first in the top of the third, with a solo homer by Phil Garner, then a one-out triple from Omar Moreno, followed by a sac fly from Tim Foli. The Pirates had a 2-0 lead.
Cincinnati showed their own muscle in the fourth when Dave Concepion singled, and George Foster tied the game with a two-run homer. The pitching took over, the starters gave way to the bullpens and the game went to 11th inning still tied 2-2.
Foli led off the top of the 11th with a single off of Cincinnati’s Tom Hume, who had been in since the ninth. Dave Parker then singled. Willie Stargell then delivered the big blow, a home run to put Pittsburgh up 5-2.
Cincinnati tried to rally with two outs in their own half of the 11th. Concepion singled and Foster worked a walk. Pittsburgh summoned righthander Don Robinson to replace lefty Grant Jackson, with righty hitters Bench and Knight coming up. Bench walked, but Knight struck out to end the game.
The teams came right back the following afternoon and the tense games continued. Each team turned to a pitcher who had split time between the bullpen and rotation, Jim Bibby for Pittsburgh and Frank Pastore for Cincinnati. The Reds got on the board first, with Pastore helping himself, delivering a sac fly following hits by Driessen and Knight.
Pittsburgh tied the game in the fourth with consecutive singles by Foli, Parker and Stargell to start the inning. But Stargell was thrown out on the bases and an inning that might have been big, ended with the score still tied 1-1. The Pirates got the lead in the fifth when Garner singled to start the inning and Foli drilled a two-out double.
The Reds didn’t rally until the eighth, when they loaded the bases with two outs against Pirate closer Kent Tekulve. Knight flied to center. In the ninth though, the Reds broke through. With one out, Hector Cruz pinch-hit for Hume and singled. Dave Collins doubled him in to tie the game. Concepion and Foster missed chances to end it right here and for the second time in less than 24 hours, we were going extra innings.
Doug Bair was on for the Reds, and Moreno started the Pittsburgh tenth with a single. He was bunted over and Parker drove him in. The Reds went quietly in the 10th, with Knight again making the last out. The young third baseman was the replacement for Pete Rose, and while Knight had hit .318 in ’79, the NLCS just wasn’t going his way.
After a day off, the teams resumed play in Pittsburgh, but it was all over but the shouting. Moreno got it started quickly against Cincy starter Mike LaCoss, drawing a walk, stealing second and scoring a sac fly from Parker. The Pirates got another run in the second when Garner tripled and scored on a sac fly from Foli.
Stargell homered to start the third and Madlock went deep later in the inning. The barrage continued in the fourth when Pirate starter Bert Blyleven singled, as did Parker and Stargell pulled a two-out double down the right field line. It was 6-0, and other than a solo home run by Bench, the Reds went quietly in a 7-1 final.
The selection of NLCS MVP was easy—Stargell was 5-for-11, he drew three walks, hit two home runs and had six RBIs. That included the biggest hit of the series, the three-run blast that won Game 1. Honorable mention goes to Garner, who was 5-for-12, and Parker’s 4-for-12 showing, including the winning hit of Game 2.
Pittsburgh went on to face the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series, where they rallied from a 3-1 deficit in games to win a seven-game Series. Pittsburgh won the final two games on the road, the last team to achieve that.
1979 was the last hurrah for the Pirates and Reds. When the 1970s disappeared, so did each team from the October stage, with no playoff appearances in the 1980s. Ironically, the each came back in the same year—it was 1990 when they met in the NLCS, and Cincinnati ultimately won the World Series.
The cities of Pittsburgh and Baltimore have become renowned for their NFL rivalry in the 21st century. In the sports world of 1970s, it was baseball where these two blue-collar fan bases had it in for each other.
They met twice in the Fall Classic. In 1971, the Pirates beat the Orioles in seven games. There was a rematch in the 1979 World Series, and one that followed a familiar script—the Pirates fell behind early in the Series and rallied to win a Game 7 on Baltimore’s home field.
You can read more about the road each team took to get this World Series and about the seasons each of the individual key players produced at the links below. This article’s focus is the games of the 1979 World Series.
Baltimore held homefield advantage due to the rotation system that was in place through 2002. It was old Memorial Stadium, “the house on 33rd Street” as it’s still called to this day in Charm City. The Orioles sent Cy Young winner Mike Flanagan to the mound for Game 1, while the Pirates countered with Bruce Kison.
It didn’t take Baltimore long to get started. Al Bumbry blooped a single to lead off the home half of the first and Mark Belanger drew a walk. A ground ball out moved them both up, a walk filled the bases and an error on Pittsburgh second baseman Phil Garner plated two runs. Then a wild pitch scored a third run and Oriole third baseman Doug DeCinces homered. It was 5-0 before anyone was even settled in.
Kison didn’t survive the inning and one person who did settle in was reliever Jim Rooker. He pitched 3 2/3 innings of shutout ball, allowing just two hits. And the Pirates began to grind their way back.
Tim Foli and Dave Parker led off the fourth with singles and productive groundouts scored a run. In the sixth, Parker and Bill Robinson led off with singles. Flanagan got two outs and was poised to escape when three straight ground balls were hit toward DeCinces. He booted two, one got through for a clean single and the Pirates cut the lead to 5-3.
In the top of the eighth, Willie Stargell homered. Now it was a 5-4 game and Baltimore hadn’t remotely threatened since the first. They were just hanging on and ultimately, they barely survived. Parker singled with one out in the ninth, his fourth hit of the game. But Rick Dempsey gunned Parker down trying to steal.
Stargell popped out to end the game. It seems fair to question Pittsburgh manager Chuck Tanner on why Parker was running when his team’s best clutch hitter, one who had already authored several big moments in the stretch drive of the regular season and NLCS, to say nothing of having just homered in his previous at-bat was at the plate. Baltimore took the opener 5-4.
Jim Palmer had won three Cy Young Awards in his great career with the Orioles and though he was no longer that caliber of pitcher, he was still pretty good and he got the ball in Game 2. Bert Blyleven went for the Pirates.
Pittsburgh got to Palmer in the second with singles from Stargell, John Milner and Bill Madlock, along with a sac fly from Ed Ott, to get two runs. Baltimore’s Eddie Murray promptly cut that in half with home run to lead off the home half of the inning.
Murray then tied the game in the sixth, as he doubled in Ken Singleton, and subsequently moved up to third with one out. Parker then came up big defensively. Murray tried to tag on a line drive out off the bat of John Lowenstein, and Parker nailed Murray at the plate. The game remained tied 2-2.
It was still a 2-2 game in the ninth and both starting pitchers were out. Bill Robinson led off with a single for Pittsburgh. Oriole manager Earl Weaver summoned Don Stanhouse. The closer had trouble in the ALCS win over the California Angels and the trouble didn’t stop here.
Even though Dempsey threw out Robinson trying to steal, Stanhouse allowed a two-out single to Ott, walked Garner and then surrendered a base hit to Manny Sanguillen. The soft spot of the Pirate lineup had beaten the Oriole closer and Pittsburgh tied the series with a 3-2 win.
The action shifted to Pittsburgh for Friday night’s Game 3. There was no travel day, as the opening of the Series had been postponed by a day due to a rain. Scott McGregor had pitched the clinching game of the ALCS for Baltimore and he got the call, facing John Candelaria, who won the opener of the NLCS for Pittsburgh.
Weaver inserted Kiko Garcia into the lineup at shortstop for Mark Belanger. The latter was the best defensive shortstop of his time, but his bat was woeful. Weaver was clearly looking to kickstart an offense that had been quiet for 17 innings, and had required the Pirates beating themselves for even that five-run outburst in the first inning of Game 1.
Garcia didn’t waste time making his manager look good. He doubled to start the game, the first of his four hits. But the Orioles wasted a first-and-third with no outs opportunity. Pittsburgh scored in their own half of the inning when Moreno hit his own leadoff double and came around on productive outs.
Pittsburgh got two more runs in the third, as Garner followed singles by Stargell and Steve Nicosia by doubling both in. But Garner tried for a triple and got thrown out, so in spite of a later single by Candelaria, McGregor got off the hook with the score still 3-0.
The Orioles starting coming back in the third when Garcia walked and Bennie Ayala homered. Their own potential big inning got cut down when they got two more runners aboard, and Gary Roenicke singled, but Ken Singleton was nailed at the plate by Bill Robinson.
Baltimore tied the game an inning later when Rich Dauer doubled, Dempsey singled and Foli booted a grounder off the bat of McGregor. Then it got away from Candelaria. Garcia tripled in two more runs and chased the starter. Enrique Romo came on in relief, hit Bumbry with a pitch, gave up an RBI single to Singleton and an RBI groundout to DeCinces. Suddenly, the Pirates trailed 7-3.
Pittsburgh got a run back in the sixth when Stargell doubled and scored, but Dempsey did the same in the seventh and the Orioles won 8-4.
Game 4 was in the early part of Saturday afternoon, with Dennis Martinez pitching for Baltimore and Jim Bibby on the mound for Pittsburgh. The Pirates were feeling the heat and Stargell set a quick tone, homering to dead center in the second inning. That was followed by a base hit from Milner and consecutive ground-rule doubles from Madlock and Ott to make it 3-0.
Garner then singled, but Ed Ott was thrown out at the plate. Martinez didn’t survive the first inning, as Weaver went to Sammy Stewart. Moreno drove in another run with a single, but Stewart picked him off first base. The Pirates led 4-0, but had lost two runners on the bases.
Those missed chances didn’t take long to start appearing consequential. A Madlock error in the third gave Baltimore life, and it was followed by a Bumbry single and two-out doubles by Garcia and Singleton to cut the lead to 4-3. Madlock came to bat in the bottom of the inning with the bases loaded, one out and a chance to redeem himself. He grounded into a double play.
Pittsburgh scored twice in the fifth. Milner drilled an RBI double and there were runners on second and third with one out. Madlock was given an intentional walk, but Ott’s ensuing fly ball to left was too short to score even the fast Parker who was on third. The Pirates added another run in the sixth when Parker lashed a two-out double to score Foli. But 6-3 was still a game going into the late innings and there was no reason for it to be so.
Baltimore finally made Pittsburgh pay in full for their sins. Garcia and Singleton singled to start the eighth. DeCinces drew a one-out walk. Tanner called for his closer, Kent Tekulve. Weaver sent up pinch-hitter John Lowenstein, who had hit an extra-inning walkoff home run in the ALCS. This time Lowenstein ripped a two-run double to cut the lead to 6-5. After an intentional walk, Weaver sent up another pinch-hitter, Terry Crowley. He smacked a two-run double and Baltimore had the lead.
Weaver had emptied his bench so thoroughly, the pitcher Tim Stoddard had to bat for himself. No matter. Stoddard singled and another run came home. A Bumbry grounder scored yet another run and it was 9-6. Stoddard pitched the final two innings without incident.
Baltimore now had Flanagan ready to go for Game 5 and home games with Palmer and McGregor and reserve. It was a long road back for Pittsburgh. On Sunday morning, prior to the fifth game, Tanner’s mother passed away. Was it the extra jolt of motivation the Pirates needed, to win it for the skipper? Or was the comeback about to happen something that would have taken place anyway?
Who knows, but the trajectory of this Series was about to alter, and in more ways than just the Pirates starting to take over. The pitchers also began to take over.
Rooker got to start for Pittsburgh in lieu of Kison, whose turn was up, after the reliever had significantly outpitched the starter in Game 1. The game was scoreless until the fifth. The Orioles picked up a run when Roenicke doubled, DeCinces singled and Dauer’s double play grounder brought the run in the back door.
It was the sixth when Pittsburgh got to Flanagan. Foli drew a leadoff walk, Parker singled, both were bunted up and Stargell tied the game with a sac fly. Madlock then singled with two outs, a clutch hit that marks the moment the 1979 World Series really turned.
Blyleven had come on out of the pen in the sixth inning and shut down Baltimore the rest of the way. Pittsburgh got two runs in the seventh. With two outs, Foli tripled to score Garner and Parker then doubled. In the eighth, four singles and an intentional walk scored three more and Pittsburgh stayed alive, 7-1.
After five days of non-stop baseball, the teams got a chance to catch their breath on Monday, with the flights back to Baltimore. Candelaria matched up with Palmer for Game 6 and the result was a tense pitcher’s duel.
Palmer escaped a jam in the first with the Pirates put runners on second and third with no outs. The Oriole starter got Parker and Stargell no less to keep the game scoreless. But Candelaria returned the favor in the same inning when Baltimore had first and third and one out, and he induced Murray to hit into a double play.
No one threatened through six innings, when the Pirates finally got to Palmer in the seventh. Moreno singled with one out and Foli followed suit. Parker singled to right and Stargell picked up another run with a sac fly. Baltimore never threatened and Pittsburgh added two more runs in the eighth, with an RBI double from Garner, who moved up to third and scored on a sac fly from Moreno. With the 4-0 win, the Pirates had forced a seventh game.
McGregor and Bibby were on the mound. It was not an ideal situation for Pittsburgh—Bibby was on three days’ rest and even though that wasn’t incredibly uncommon in the world of 1979, it still wasn’t the norm and Bibby wasn’t one of Pittsburgh’s best. But the need to use Blyleven for four innings in the must-win Game 5 had thrown the Pirate rotation out of whack.
It didn’t matter. Baltimore got a run in the third when Dauer homered, but the Orioles couldn’t mount sustained threats. McGregor looked like he might make it stand up when he kept the 1-0 lead into the sixth. Bill Robinson hit a one-out single and Stargell came to the plate.
Stargell hit a fly ball to deep right. It looked like Singleton might have a play on it near the wall. He nearly did. The rightfielder leaped, but the ball cleared the fence. Pittsburgh had a 2-1 lead, and with these teams playing games whose style resembled the modern-day defensive football brawls of the Steelers and Ravens, that one-run margin seemed enormous.
It was 2-1 in the eighth, when Baltimore finally rallied. Lee May and Bumbry drew one-out walks. Tekulve was summoned. He got Crowley to ground out, and the runners moved up. Singleton was intentionally walked. The decision was to pitch to Murray. The 23-year-old had enjoyed a great year, was embarking on a Hall of Fame career and had been red-hot in the ALCS. But he was 4-for-25 in the World Series. And it was about to be 4-for-26. Murray hit one to deep right, but this one stayed playable for Parker.
Pittsburgh added two insurance runs in an incredibly sloppy ninth. Weaver used five pitchers, four of them facing just one batter. There were to hit batsmen, and with a 4-1 lead, it was all but over. Tekulve closed the door without incident.
It was a comeback that remains at least modestly historic. While coming back from 3-1 down wasn’t unprecedented, nor was winning the last two on the road, the 1979 World Series is the last time the latter feat has been achieved. The fact Pittsburgh beat three high-quality starting pitchers in the process only adds to how impressive the accomplishment was.
Stargell was World Series MVP, an easy choice. He finished 12-for-30 and drove in seven runs. His three home runs were the only homers for any Pirate player. One of them happened to win Game 7. So yes, even though Foli and Garner both peppered Oriole pitching consistently, Pops was an easy call.
Had the Orioles won, the choice likely would have been Garcia, who went 8-for-20 and whose insertion in the lineup in Game 3 had temporarily altered the Series. Although if the theoretical Baltimore win had come in Game 7 behind McGregor, the lefty might have been the pick.
Baltimore would be back—they won 100 games in 1980, competed to the final day of the 1982 regular season before being eliminated and finally won the World Series again in 1983. Pittsburgh wouldn’t be—they didn’t make postseason play again until 1990 and have not returned to the Fall Classic since that magical October when Pops Stargell lifted his team to a championship.
