Billy Martin was standing at the batting cage on a sunny afternoon in Kansas City. This was Oct. 8, 1976. The next day, the Yankees and the Royals would tangle in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, the Yankees’ first postseason appearance in 12 years, first-time ever in an ALCS.
First-time ever in a best-of-five series, which is what determined the LCS winners from 1969 until 1984.
“It’s a part of your inner calculator when you play enough best-of-seven series,” said Martin, who’d played in his share of them as a second baseman with the Yankees in the ’50s. “In a best-of-five, you’d better not have a bad day because you have to play catch-up right away. And sometimes, you never do.”
The Yankees were smart about it: They won Game 1 and then Game 3, so even when the Royals won Games 2 and 4, they were never chasing. But that did set up the first winner-take all Game 5 in Yankees history, so it would be the first such game in the history of Old Yankee Stadium (freshly refurbished and reopened that year).
Game 5 …
Yeah. It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the way “Game 7” does, does it? Game 7 is baseball’s most regal stage, the pressure ratcheted up to, as Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel said, 11. Game 7 is the ultimate definition of a rubber game. Game 7 inspires poetry, not prose.
But in a best-of-five series — even one that seems like it’s stretched on for a month, like this Yankees-Guardians one, postponed Monday night until 4 p.m. Tuesday — Game 5 is Game 7. It holds the same potential reward — the acquisition of at least five more days of baseball season, which means five more days of summer (even if the calendar disagrees).
It also owns steeper consequences because an eight-month season can perish in the space of three hours — or in the instant of a crack of the bat.
“It’s an amazing opportunity,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone, one of a select few who know what it is to enthrall a stadium overloaded with tension and anxiety with one swing of the lumber.
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“With that, that comes with some nerves and things you’ve to deal with, but that’s part of playing this time of year. But for the most part, you’re relishing that opportunity to go out there and do something special.”
So Tuesday afternoon, The Bronx will host the fifth such Game 5 rubber match. The Yankees have played two such games in their new ballpark, 2011 (a 3-2 loss to the Tigers most notable for being Mariano Rivera’s final postseason appearance (he pitched a scoreless ninth) and 2012 (a 3-1 win against the Orioles behind CC Sabathia’s 121-pitch complete game).
The old yard saw a Yankees-Brewers Game 5 of a first-ever division series necessitated by the 1981 strike and the resulting split season; Reggie Jackson hit a memorable blast that game that violently collided off the facing of the upper deck. Asked where the ball landed, Jackson said, “second bleeping base.”
But 46 years (and four days) ago, the Yankees and Royals played the first such game, tied at 2-2 in the ALCS. The Royals jumped out to quick leads of 2-0 and 3-2, but by the eighth, they’d taken a 6-3 lead, and the crowd of 56,821 was raucously eager to count down the final six outs to the World Series.
Then George Brett went upper tank off Grant Jackson, it was 6-6, and as Thurman Munson would say, “When he hit that ball out, it felt like this whole ballpark had a heart attack.”
It would take the first truly great moment in the rebuilt stadium’s brief history to revive it. On Mark Littell’s first pitch of the bottom of the ninth, Chris Chambliss hit a towering shot to right-center that Howard Cosell on ABC famously declared: “That’s! Gone!” before it was actually gone.
But it was gone. The ensuing on-field madness made Chambliss’ triumphant 360-foot tour of the bases a bit hazardous, but 27 years later, a few days after Boone’s epic blast against Boston, Chambliss said with a laugh, “If I had to, I could’ve floated around the bases.”
Such are the stakes. Such are the consequences. Game 5 might not inspire the poets the way Game 7 does, but that won’t ease the anxiety in your stomach as 4 o’clock approaches Tuesday. This will do just fine.
