For four days in September 1978, the New York Yankees turned Fenway Park into their own backyard. They scored 42 runs in four games, humiliated the first-place Red Sox on their own field, and wiped out the last four games of a deficit that had stood at 14 in July.
The rivalry has a hundred chapters. None of them reads like this one.
DID YOU KNOW?
The Yankees won the four games of the Boston Massacre by scores of 15-3, 13-2, 7-0 and 7-4, and did most of the damage without home runs. They collected 18 hits in the finale, and every single one was a single.
Fourteen Games Back
To understand what four days in Boston meant, you have to start in July. On July 17, 1978, the defending-champion Yankees were swept by Kansas City at home and fell 14 games behind the Red Sox. The season was, by every reasonable measure, over. Boston was running away with the East, and the Yankees were fighting themselves as much as anyone - the Bronx Zoo at full roar.
Then the Bombers started winning and did not stop. They went 22-8 in August, and when they arrived at Fenway on September 7 for a four-game series, the deficit was down to four games with 20 to play. A series win would halve it. A sweep - unthinkable - would produce a dead heat.
They swept.
The Massacre
Game one set the tone. The Yankees scored two in the first off Mike Torrez, a hero of the '77 Series now wearing Boston colors, and chased him in the second. They led 12-0 by the fourth and won 15-3 with 21 hits - not one of them a home run.
Game two was 13-2. Reggie Jackson hit a three-run homer, Lou Piniella finished a single shy of the cycle, and Jim Beattie came within one out of a complete-game shutout.
Game three matched the aces: Ron Guidry, 20-2 with a 1.84 ERA, against Dennis Eckersley. Guidry threw a two-hit shutout, and the Yankees did something stranger than a blowout - they scored all seven runs in the seventh inning, all with two outs and nobody on. Chambliss doubled, Piniella doubled two home, Bucky Dent singled two more in. Final: 7-0.
Game four was the cruelest. Boston starter Bobby Sprowl walked the ballpark in the first, the Yankees put up three, and just kept lining singles. Eighteen hits, all singles, eight walks, 7-4. Goose Gossage pitched the final three innings for his 23rd save.
When it ended, the teams were tied for first place.
What It Meant
The 1978 race still had turns left - the Red Sox won their final eight games, which is why the season needed the one-game playoff that made Bucky Dent famous. But the Massacre was the pivot. A team 14 games out in mid-July walked into Fenway in September and took the Red Sox's lead, their dignity and, for a generation of fans on both sides, the argument.
Ask a Yankees fan of a certain age about the Boston Massacre and watch them smile. Ask a Boston fan and watch them change the subject. That is what 42-9 in four days buys you.
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Sources: Baseball-Reference.com (September 7-10, 1978 box scores) · SABR Games Project (1978 AL East race) · Pinstripe Alley (Boston Massacre retrospectives) · Baseball Almanac (Boston Massacre entry)