YANKEE STADIUM, THE BRONX, NEW YORK -- It started off as your seemingly average midseason matchup between two teams trying to keep pace in the playoff race. Sure, the Yankees/Royals contests were always tinged with a little extra emotion since their late 1970s playoff wars, but nobody was prepared for an ending as bizarre as the one yet to unfold.
Starters: Black vs. Rawley
WP: Mike Armb LP: Goose Goosage
SV: Dan Quisenberry
HR: NYY - Winfield (2nd); KC - Brett (9th)
The Royals led, 3-1 after 5 ½ innings, but the Yankees stuck it to Royals starter Bud Black in the sixth. Don Baylor tripled home two runs, and Dave Winfield added a single to score Baylor, giving the Yanks a 4-3 lead that would hold up until the ninth.
Dave Murray, who had been nearly perfect in relief since entering the game in the sixth, retired the first two Royals he faced in the final frame. However, when U.L. Washington’s grounder snuck through the infield, Billy Martin wasted no time and summoned his closer, Rich “Goose” Gossage to face Royals best hitter, George Brett.
It was a strategy that failed… sort of. Brett launched the second pitch he saw from the Goose into the right field stands. But even before he crossed home plate, Martin was out of the Yankees dugout and heading to confront home plate umpire Tim McClelland.
A curious Brett watched from the dugout as Martin and McClelland seemed to be examining the his bat. Eventually, McClelland summoned the other umpires, and after conferring with them, he laid the bat over home plate. That seemed to offer the solution he was looking for. Taking a few steps in the direction of the Royals dugout, McClelland pointed at Brett with his bat, and raised his fist to signal that he was out.
In a split second, a hysterical Brett was racing out of the dugout like his pants were on fire, lunging at McClelland behind a barricade of teammates and other umpires trying to restrain him. His game-winning home run was disallowed, it was explained, because of a seldom-invoked rule that required the pine tar on a bat to be no more than 18 inches from the end. When McClelland measured the bat against the 18-inch wide home plate, it was apparent that the pine tar easily exceeded that length. Rule broken, batter out, game over.
Naturally, the incensed Royals protested the game. And a week later, A.L. President Lee McPhail decided to uphold the protest, stating that Brett’s bat didn’t violate “the spirit of the rules.” The umpires’ decision was overturned, and the game was ordered to be resumed with the Royals up, 5-4, in the top of the ninth.
On August 18th, nearly a month after the game began, the two teams finally got around to playing the final four outs. Billy Martin made one last statement by inserting lefty Don Mattingly at second base and ace pitcher Ron Guidry in center, but it made no difference in the final outcome of the game. After Hal McRae struck out to end the top of the ninth, Dan Quisenberry quickly retired the Yankees in order in the bottom half.
Thus ended one of the more surreal games in recent baseball history. And it only helped cement the notion that baseball, at times, can truly be a game of inches.
