The Great Eight: The 1975 Cincinnati Reds

22. Pat Darcy

106 Chapter 22. Pat Darcy Gregory H. Wolf With his twenty-ninth pitch of the game on October 21, 1975, Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher Pat Darcy retired his sixth consecutive Boston Red Sox batter, Carl Yastrzemski, on a weak grounder to shortstop Dave Concepción to end the eleventh inning and keep the score tied in the most pressurepacked game of his life: Game Six of the 1975 World Series. Darcy, a twenty-five-year-old rookie and, surprisingly, the winner of eleven games during the regular season for Reds, had imagined such moments as a child. “For some reason,” he remembered thirty-six years later, “as I was coming into Game Six, I flashed back to when I was a kid and remembered thinking, ‘What would it be like to be on the mound at a critical juncture in a World Series game and have to make a good play? Could I do it?’”1 With consecutive one-out singles by Tony Pérez and George Foster, the Reds threatened in the top of the twelfth inning. A victory in Boston would give Cincinnati its first World Series championship since 1940. With mounting tension, Red Sox pitcher Rick Wise set down Concepción and César Gerónimo to end the inning. Calm and collected, Darcy went to the mound and threw his warmup tosses to Bench. Facing Carlton Fisk, he threw his thirtieth pitch and home plate umpire Satch Davidson signaled ball one. At 12:34 a.m. (et), in the secondlongest World Series game at the time (consuming four hours and one minute), Darcy then threw what he intended to be a hard, sinking fastball inside, but it sailed high. It was his only mistake of the game. Fisk unloaded a long high drive down the left-field line. He waved, pushed, and willed the ball to stay fair, and the result was one of baseball’s most iconic moments, Fisk’s game-winning walk-off home run. Darcy and the Reds were the losers. But unlike the New York Yankees after Ralph Terry surrendered a Series-ending home run to Bill Mazeroski in 1960, Darcy and the Big Red Machine would get another chance, in Game Seven, which, because Fisk’s winning blow came after midnight, would begin the same day. This time victory was theirs. For Pat Darcy, the pitcher victimized by the Red Sox catcher, the pitch was the last one of his only full season in the Major Leagues. After an undisage w l pct. era g gs gf cg sho sv ip h bb so hbp wp 25 11 5 .688 3.58 27 22 3 1 0 1 130.2 134 59 46 0 2 Most famous for throwing one of history’s most famous home runs, Pat Darcy finished 11-5 on the 1975 Reds. pat darcy 107 tinguished five-year career in the Houston Astros’ farm system, Darcy had been acquired by the Reds in 1974 and flourished under the tutelage of Manager Vern Rapp with the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians , earning a late season call-up to the Major Leagues. In 1975 Darcy emerged from relative obscurity to win his last nine decisions as the Cincinnati Reds’ fifth starter on his way to a surprising 11-5 record. With the Reds’ surfeit of starting pitchers he was limited to two relief appearances in the World Series. Then he was beset by shoulder problems in 1976, was sent back to Indianapolis in midseason , and never made it back to the Major Leagues Patrick Leonard Darcy was born on May 12, 1950, in Troy, Ohio (twenty miles north of Dayton), the son of an fbi agent. When he was three years old, his father, Lyman, moved the family to Tucson , Arizona, after a brief period in New Mexico. “Like a lot of people, we moved out here because of illness in the family. My sister had asthma,” Darcy said of the move to the dry, desert climate.2 Young Darcy was involved with sports his entire childhood. At Rincon High School he starred on the baseball team from 1966 to 1968 as an outfielder and pitcher . In his senior season, the team, coached by Gilbert Carrillo and assisted by former Red Sox Minor League infielder Bill Mehle, finished second in the Class 5a state baseball tournament. After high school Darcy entered Mesa Community College, where he played baseball in 1969 as his team won the Arizona Community College...