Game Two
With their backs already up against the wall after losing Game One at home, the Red Sox turned to Bruce Hurst (who had gone 13-8 in the regular season) and he pitched a gem. On the other side, the Angels countered with Kirk McCaskill (who went 17-10) and it looked like the Red Sox would have their work cut out for them.
Instead, it was a role reversal from the night before as the Sox hit McCaskill hard from the very start. Boggs led off the game with a triple and was driven in by Barrett’s double. Barrett drove in another run in the second with a bases loaded single, but Buckner ended the rally (and the inning) by grounding into a double play. The Red Sox squandered multiple chances to blow the game open and McCaskill settled down after the second inning.
Meanwhile, Hurst was dealing and even though he scattered eleven hits over his nine innings, he didn’t walk anyone and struck out four while only giving up two runs (one unearned). Apart from Wally Joyner’s solo home run, every California hit was a single and Hurst was only let down by two more errors, one each from Spike Owen and Boggs (although Boggs made up for it with a smart play where he cut off a throw from Rice in left field and caught Bobby Grich in no man’s land between third and home, picking him off).
The Red Sox pulled ahead for good in the fifth when Evans hit an RBI double (in reality, a fly ball that landed behind second base because the Angels lost it in the sun). They added three more in the seventh and three in the eighth, capped off by Rice’s two-run homer (Rice finally got his first two hits of the series in this game, of which the home run was the second).
Overall, it was pretty sloppy in the field (three errors for the Red Sox, two for the Angels), exacerbated by the setting afternoon sun, but Hurst pitched great and the Red Sox evened up the series at a game apiece.