A Great Memory From 1990

My friend Adam passed this YouTube video to me this morning. As the Red Sox are closing in on winning the AL East this weekend, here is a video of the last out from the 1990 division-clincher at Fenway between the Red Sox and Chicago White Sox.

This is the one with the famous catch that Tom Brunansky made to save the game and the title. I remember watching this game in a now-defunct sports bar in the East Village. (Long before watching Red Sox games in bars became one of my passions.) With two outs and two on and the score 3-1 Red Sox, Ozzie Guillen (then a shortstop with a good porn mustache), hit a ball off Jeff Reardon that for sure would have tied up the game had it dropped in. But Bruno had a great jump and got to it. (I have never seen a replay of him actually making the catch from any other angle. At first I wasn't sure he even got it. But by the fan reaction, he clearly got it.)

The Red Sox celebrated by bringing out a Gatorade bucket and dumping it in the middle of the celebration. You don't see that anymore.

I looked up the game on Baseball Reference, and noticed a few things. The White Sox were actually six games better than the Red Sox in 1990, but the A's beat them out for the West title (remember, no Wild Card). There are two players still active from that game: Frank Thomas and Sammy Sosa. And this was also the final regular season game in a Red Sox uniform for the great Dwight Evans, who is seen in the dugout during the last out. (He was the DH that night.)

Here is the box score:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS199010030.shtml

1990 is still one of my favorite baseball seasons. Red Sox won the AL East, Yankees finished dead last. I'll never forget a game on September 1st that year, when the Red Sox humiliated the Yankees on the Saturday NBC game of the Week, 15-1, at Fenway Park.But I bet most Red Sox fans have little or no memory of it. That's a shame.

But this video is still a great memory of the Red Sox taking a division crown,and in spectacular style, when it truly meant something more.