On October 14, 1976, Chris Chambliss hit a first-pitch fastball into the right-field seats and the Bronx lost its mind. The home run that won the pennant is still the loudest single moment of the Steinbrenner era - and Chambliss never even got to touch home plate.
DID YOU KNOW?
Chambliss never touched home plate after his pennant-winning homer. Fans swarmed the field, tore out the bases and carried the plate off with them. He returned later - wearing a police raincoat - to press his foot into the spot where the plate had been.
To understand why the place came apart that night, remember where the Yankees had been. The franchise had not won a pennant since 1964 - twelve years, the longest drought since the team had started winning them. George Steinbrenner had bought the club in 1973, promising to restore it, and by 1976 the renovated Yankee Stadium was open and Thurman Munson's team was in the playoffs.
The Game
The American League Championship Series was best-of-five, and it came down to Game 5 against Kansas City on a Thursday night in front of 56,821 at the Stadium. It was a brawl of a game. The Yankees built an early lead, the Royals clawed back, and in the eighth inning George Brett - three hits already that night - lined a three-run homer off Grant Jackson to tie it 6-6 and silence the building.
It stayed tied into the ninth. Chambliss, who had been hitting everything all series, led off against reliever Mark Littell.
The Swing
Littell's first pitch was a high fastball, and Chambliss hit it on a line into the right-field seats. Yankees 7, Royals 6. Pennant number 30. It was 11:43 at night.
What happened next is the part people remember. Fans poured over the walls before the ball even landed, thousands of them, and Chambliss had to fight through the mob to get around the bases at all. He never touched home plate - by the time he got near it, it had been torn up and carried off. He came back out later in a police raincoat to touch the spot.
"You didn't know whether to laugh or cry," the New York Times reported of the scene, as fans tore up turf and hauled away the bases. It was, the paper noted, the loudest the Yankees had heard their fans since the 1960s.
What It Started
The Reds swept the World Series that followed - but nobody in the Bronx much cared by then. The pennant had come home, and the table was set for the back-to-back championships of 1977 and 1978. Chambliss was the ALCS MVP, with a record 11 hits in the series, and he remained the quiet, reliable heart of the lineup for years.
Fifty years on, every October walk-off at the Stadium gets compared to it. None has topped it. Some moments do not need a dynasty attached - they are the reason the dynasty happened.
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Sources: New York Times (October 15, 1976 game coverage) · MLB.com ("Chambliss' home run brings Yanks back to World Series," 50th anniversary) · SABR Games Project (1976 ALCS Game 5) · Baseball-Reference.com (series statistics)
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