Giants Vs. Dodgers 1978: The Best Game Ever

I Just discovered that I can find every box score for every baseball game played in recent memory, so I decided to look up the best game I've ever seen (live that is).

The game was played between the Giants and Dodgers on Thursday, Aug. 3rd, 1978. This was only a week after my 10th birthday, and 1978 was really the year I fell in love with the Giants (for better or for worse).

The Giants were having their first winning season since 1973, and were holding onto first place in the NL West by only a small margin over the Dodgers going into that game. It was a cold Thursday night at Candlestick (”The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” —Mark Twain), but the Park was packed with about 42,084 people. 

San Francisco fans have always been willing to come out no matter what the conditions are when the Giants are playing well, and especially when they are playing those bums from L.A.

Going into the 9th inning, the Giants were leading 4-3. With two outs in the top of the 9th, one out away from a complete game victory for Jim Barr, Lee Lacy hit a medium deep, routine fly ball to right-center field. 

Both Giants CF Larry Herndan and RF Jack Clark converged on the ball and collided viciously, knocking each other out. Clark had almost caught the ball before the collision, but once they ran into each other he dropped it. The ball sat on the ground no more than a few feet from Herndan and Clark, but both were too incapacitated to even get back on their feet. 

By the time the left fielder Terry Whitfield was able to get over there, Lacy had run all the way around the bases for an inside-the-park HR to tie the score. Randy Moffitt then came in and got the last out of the inning.

In the bottom of the 9th Terry Whitfield led off and drew a walk against left-handed reliever Terry Forster, something Whitfield didn’t do very often. Hector Cruz, who’d come in to play for Clark in RF, sacrificied. The Dodgers then intentionally walked the right-handed Mike Ivie who was pinch-hitting for Willie McCovey (Ivie had a couple of pinch hit grand slams for the Giants that year) to set up the double play. 

Up came left-handed Darrell Evans, the Giants third baseman. Early in the count, as I remember it, Evans got a pitch to hit and drilled a one-hop bullet out to Reggie Smith, the Dodger’s right fielder. 

In 1978, Reggie still had a great throwing arm (it wasn’t until around 1980 or 1981 that he had a major arm injury, and couldn’t throw at all anymore and had to be moved permanently to first base), so it looked like there was going to be a play at the plate. 

Instead, Reggie bobbled Evans’ smash when he tried to take it out of his glove, and Whitfield scored easily for the win. 

Needless to say, Candlestick Park erupted in a way I don’t think I’ve seen since. Even in the new stadium in the early 2000’s when Barry Bonds was hitting like Babe Ruth’s older brother, setting all-time records while the Giants were winning big (those were pretty exciting times too). It was quite an experience.

Here’s the box score.