How the Boston Red Sox Won the 1975 World Series, Part I

Ladies and gentlemen, your 1975 Boston Red Sox
(This year marks the 40-year anniversary of the epic clash between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox in the 1975 World Series. Since neither team has accepted the invitation for a repeat this October, The Nobby Works commemorates what is often called the greatest World Series ever played with this look back at how one lonely fan tilted the odds in favor his underdog team.)
I've had THE POWER for some time now. Inherited it from my father, I guess, and got my first intimations of it when I was no more than a kid of 12-121/2. It was then that I began to see direct correlations between the success of my team, the Boston Red Sox, and where and how I positioned myself during their games.
It was back in 1961 and the Sox were about to play the Detroit Tigers in an afternoon game at Fenway Park. From the pre-game show through the "Star-Spangled Banner" I was receiving strong vibrations from the area of the family coffee table and sofa. I wasn't at all sure what the vibrations were about at the time. Being on the brink of adolescence, vibrations were coming from everywhere, but I went with my instincts. I nestled into the corner of the sofa, kicked off my PF Flyers, and propped my feet up on the coffee table.
The event would change my life, because there in the corner of the sofa with my feet upon the table and crossed at the ankles and my head resting upon a satin pillow inscribed Festival of Mount Carmel, Aug. 9-12, 1955, Thompsonville, Conn., I had my first real experience with THE POWER. Call it native intuition or call it divine revelation, but I just knew that if I held my position on the sofa and my attention on the TV, the Red Sox would win that game. I decided to call the space my body occupied the POWER CENTER (PC) and the state of my mind TOTAL CONCENTRATION (TC). And neither thirst for Coke nor hunger for chips was going to make me abandon either until the last out of the game had been made.
Bill Monbouquette, then ace of the Sox staff, was the starting pitcher against the Tigers that day. It was a Saturday - cleaning day. My mother, ace of our house-cleaning staff, was starting her vacuum cleaner against me and our Motorola. Neil Chrisly, an outfielder, was the Tiger leadoff hitter. Chrisly batted left-handed with what they now call “an inside-out” swing, meaning that his swing drove the ball to the opposite field. In those days Curt Gowdy was calling him a wrong-field hitter. (In Little League, if we did it, our coaches reamed us out for swinging too late.)
My mother cleaned right-handed and approached the coffee table from the left. "Just a minute, Mom," I said. "Just this one batter." But she drove forward with the hose of her vacuum, forcing my feet off the coffee table and out of the POWER CENTER. And Chrisly drove a Monbouquette fastball off the left-field wall for a double.
I was rattled - hopping mad, as they say in the big leagues - and I told my mother so. "You just ruined the guy's no-hitter!" I hollered above the roar of her Hoover. But she played deaf to my outburst and simply vacuumed her way out of the POWER CENTER, into the dining room and tracts of household dirt beyond.
Fortunately I regained my composure and the POWER CENTER in time to get Monbouquette through the next three batters, but let history record that Bill Monbouquette missed a no-hitter that day by one pitch - and that pitch became Neil Chrisly's vacuum cleaner double off the wall.
There was no mistaking the lesson of that game: it is not whether the game is won or lost, nor even how the game is played that counts so much as what I--with my newfound, awesome POWER--did at home. Games, I realized, could be decided before they even began, depending upon my ability to find the PC and get into TC - both of which could be elusive as a glance at the Red Sox composite won-lost record since '61 will reveal.
I've been out in front of the TV before virtually every game, feeling for the vibrations in the room. The pre-game chatter between the old batting coach who's become an announcer and the old announcer who's become a batting coach has helped imbue my being with a sense of baseballness. Then the National Anthem comes on and helps soothe the stresses of the workaday world in my body. By the time the drum and bugle corps gets to "rockets' red glare and bombs bursting in air," I’m in harmony with the universe and body and soul are reaching out for the POWER CENTER in the room.
Sometimes the vibrations come from the worn, red armchair in the comer - sometimes from the straight-back rocker by the door - often they come from my couch - eight handsome feet long, stuffed' with duck feathers and upholstered in a custom-made fabric that featured thousands of pairs of tiny red socks. (It is the winningest three-cushioned couch in the majors, and I have the stats to prove it.) Occasionally THE POWER will settle in a hard place - like an end table - or worse. I've never liked watching ball games from the top of an end table.
There've been times, however, when there've been no vibrations at all - no signs - no clues as to where the old PC is. I once stood in front of the TV through an entire doubleheader waiting for the room to signal me. It never did, and the Sox lost both games. As I grew more mature and adept at using THE POWER, I'd actively seek out the PC if I didn't get a message by the time of the first beer break. I'd sit here. I'd sit there. I'd hang my legs over the arms and backs of chairs. I'd turn the rocker around and straddle it from behind. I'd take the couch in the supine position or the belly-down position - the upright position if necessary. I'd assume any angle in any place for a Red Sox victory. (Posture isn't everything: it's the only thing!)
My mastery over THE POWER - and its subsequent mastery over me became apparent during the 1975 Championship Series between the Sox and the Oakland A's. In my haste to locate PC and get into TC before the start of game one, 1 tripped over a treacherously placed hassock, which had been given to me by my mother as a house-warming gift. Before I could come to my senses, the Señor, Luis Tiant, was on the mound for the Sox and he was dazzling. From his very first pitch it was clear that the PC was on the floor, and I had my work cut out for me.
Playing the POWER CENTER from the floor is one of the most exhausting positions imaginable, but I played it naturally that day - stretching out laterally in front of the TV and cradling my head in the palm of my right hand. I'd played THE POWER from the floor before and was well acquainted with the discomfort it caused the hip and the elbow, and by the seventh inning of game 1 all the blood from my wrist to my shoulder had drained into the joint between them. The players call it "a handful of bees" when their bats make bad contact on a cold day and it stings, and that's what I had, too - a handful of bees, caused by all those innings of propping my head up with my hand. It was an overall torturous, but gutsy performance on my part - and in the end it paid off. The Sox beat the A's 5-3 to take the lead in their best of five series. .
My excitement about game two of the playoffs was near fever pitch when I discovered to my dismay that the PC was again located on the living room floor. Later reference to the record book and my own infallible memory for such things revealed that on no previous occasion had the POWER CENTER stayed on the floor for two consecutive games. It was unprecedented, and although I winced at the thought of putting my body through the rigors of the floor position again I knew there was a pennant on the line and in a pennant drive everybody gives 150%. And once again the agony paid off in ecstasy - the Stockings beat the A's 6-3.
Both teams traveled the 3,000 miles from Boston to the West Coast for the third game in Oakland. Incredibly, the POWER CENTER didn't move an inch. For the third game in a row every vibration in the house was coming from the same spot in the middle of my living room floor. I was astounded and not a little concerned about my health. I had ice-packed my arm and given my hip a whirlpool bath after game two. At best, I figured, both would be ready again for spring training. The prospect of playing the floor once more was, in a word, stupefying. Not to play the couch during a big series like the playoffs was one thing, but at this point I would've settled for the armchair - or the straight -back rocker - the end table even. I would've played the end table without a word of protest. But to return to the floor and submit my body to its excruciating demands was more than should've been asked of any one fan.
I paced the room and pondered my options. I even tried rationality. "This is nonsense," I argued to myself. "This ball game being played a continent away cannot be affected one way or the other by me. I can watch it from the floor - or the couch - or spread-eagle off the ironing board and it will still come out the same." It’s not like I was some dumb Flat Earther, ignorant of the advances in modem thought. I took adult education classes, read Psychology Today, studied the social theories of Charles Reich and Robert H. Rimmer. Truly I was capable of rational thought and action. So, why this obedience to such a superstitious ritual?
Because the evidence was irrefutable, that's why. My mind flashed back to 1967, the Red Sox “Impossible Dream” year - a 100-1 shot driving for the pennant. They were getting obliterated by the lowly California Angels one day, 8-0, and for the life of me I couldn't find the PC anywhere. In exasperation I decided to go out for a drive and clear my head. I walked through the side entry of my garage and got into my car. I turned on the ignition - and the radio - but before I could reach for my automatic garage door opener, there was Ned Martin's voice on the radio breathlessly announcing the Sox' comeback. Mercy! I couldn't believe it - the POWER CENTER was there in my garage, and I was nearly breathless myself by the time the Sox tied game up. And I was nearly overcome with carbon monoxide by the time Rico Petrocelli turned in a nifty play in front of the bag at second, giving the Sox a miraculous come-from-behind victory. The Red Sox won the pennant by one game that year - and it was won as much by my clutch gasps on poison gas as it was by all of Carl Yastrzemski's home runs.
The memory inspired me. I knew I'd been through worse, so I took my place on the floor. My hip ached. My arm throbbed. The bees in my hand turned to wasps by the bottom of the third and by the top of the sixth the wasps had turned to Jews…and Arabs…fighting it out over the Golan Heights. But the Sox were winning the pennant and I was coming to understand the pleasure in pain.
How the Boston Red Sox Won the 1975 World Series first appeared in The Red Sox Reader, edited by Dan Riley and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1992  (Please note: that’s 40 years before Silver Linings Playbook)