Boston Red Sox Memories: Remembering the 1986 ALCS

Game Six

With the incredible and dramatic finish of Game Five, the last two games of this series often get forgotten. Even though the Red Sox were elated and the Angels deflated by the end of the last game, the series wasn’t over yet. The Angels only had to win one of the remaining two games while the Red Sox still needed to win both.

Making the Red Sox task more difficult was that, in staying with their three-man rotation, Oil Can Boyd was pitching on three days rest. It looked like the Angels were going to take care of business early once the game started.

Boyd was calmer and more collected than he had been but he struggled in the first inning, giving up back-to-back doubles off the Green Monster and throwing 44 pitches as the Angels scored two runs. It could’ve been more but Boyd got out of the inning by the skin of his teeth. Just like in Game Two, the Red Sox got to Angels starter Kirk McCaskill early, scoring two runs off of him in the bottom of the inning without a single hit.

Boyd settled down after the first and was dealing, throwing seven strong innings, only giving up a subsequent solo home run to Brian Downing in the seventh. Meanwhile, the Red Sox knocked McCaskill out of the game in the third inning when they put up five runs. They scored another in the fifth to go up 8-2 and even though Downing hit his solo homer in the seventh and the Angels got another in the eighth, they looked defeated.

Owen hit a two-RBI triple in the bottom of the seventh and the Red Sox won easily by a final score of 10-4. As the game wore on, you could see the frustration and desperation getting to the Angels; you’ll never see a more depressed bunch sitting in a dugout than when the camera panned across the bench late in the game. Interestingly, in this game it was the Red Sox contact hitters who did the most damage.

Barrett continued his torrid series by going 3-for-4 with an RBI, Rich Gedman was 2-for-4 with an RBI, Spike Owen was 4-for-4 with two RBI, and Bill Buckner was 2-for-4 with an RBI. This was also the first game of the series where Buckner was hobbling so badly that it was painful to watch. His mobility had been limited all season and in the earlier games of this series, but it was so bad in this one that he could barely run to first or walk back to the dugout.

Even though the first inning took forty-five minutes, the rest of the game breezed by and while this and the following game are usually afterthoughts when this series is remembered, they clearly showed that the momentum had shifted irrevocably in Boston’s favor after Game Five.