Fifty two years ago today, the Yankees and Red Sox were playing in Yankee Stadium. The Yankees were in first place in the six team American League East Division with a record of 19-10, 2 1/2 games ahead of the second place Baltimore Orioles and the Red Sox were in fourth place with a record of 13-16.

The Yankees were ahead 1-0 in the bottom of the sixth with the “Spaceman” Bill Lee on the mound for the Sox with two outs and nobody on when the Yankees designated hitter, Lou Piniella, hit a ground ball single to left. Graig Nettles, the Yankee third baseman then singled to right and Piniella went to second. Yankee right fielder Otto Velez then singled to right and Piniella, perhaps forgetting who was in right field for the Sox, tried to score from second.

Of course, the right fielder was Dwight Evans, who may have had the best throwing arm of any outfielder ever to pay the game — in my humble opinion — and he threw a strike to Carlton Fisk at the plate and the ball and Piniella arrived at the plate at the same time. Naturally, Piniella crashed into Fisk, the two went flying, Fisk held onto the ball and Piniella was out. Keep in mind the fact that, this was in 1976, long before the enlightened society of the 21st century had begun to make everything, including baseball, kinder and gentler, and collisions at home plate were legal and commonplace.

Of course, the two players who had collided at the plate, the 6-foot, 182-pound Piniella and the 6-3, 200-pound Fisk, started throwing punches before they got off the ground. If you were going to pick the two hardest-nosed players in baseball to come together at home plate in a violent collision, you would have picked these two in 1976.

As always happens in baseball, even in this kinder, gentler era, the dugouts and bullpens emptied and everyone got into the act. Most benches clearing brawls in baseball involve a lot of shoving and wrestling and not much punching. Believe me, I have watched the tapes of this and this one was a real fight.

Of course, the “Spaceman” was right in the middle of it. He faced off with Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles and, even after Nettles had thrown him to the ground, resulting in a separated shoulder which would affect the rest of his career, he still couldn’t shut his mouth. As the Associated Press reported later, Nettles said after, “He (Lee) stopped and said something to me. I let it go, but he said something else. I wasn’t going to keep taking that stuff.”

The AP’s description of what happened next said “this time Nettles connected with a shot that left Lee’s left eye looking like something out of a Muhammed Ali-Joe Frazier fight.”

The Red Sox would go on to finish third in the East and the Yankees would win the pennant but got swept in the World Series by the Cincinnati Reds.

“Spaceman” Bill Lee, who had won 17 games three years in a row prior to 1976 with a 51-35 record, would win just 44 and lose 37 in the next five years and was never the same again. Of course, every Red Sox fan alive knows that he pitched for many more years, and for all we know, is still pitching and barnstorming all over the world spreading the “Spaceman” Bill Lee legend.

We’ll never know what heights Bill Lee and the Red Sox might have achieved if Lou Piniella had not crashed into Carlton Fisk at home plate that day.

We’ll also never be able to calculate the negative effect upon attendance created by the lack of argument and controversy created by the elimination of collisions at second base and home or the elimination of on field arguments over umpires’ calls eliminated by instant replay.

Wouldn’t the average fan rather see Lou Piniella, Billy Martin or Earl Weaver screaming and kicking dirt on an umpire than watch the umpires huddle over their communications devices in a hopeless attempt to get it right every time?

Place your bets

The Supreme Court issued a ruling this week authorizing organized sports betting.

“The legalization of sports gambling requires an important policy choice, but the choice is not ours to make,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the 6-3 opinion. “Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each state is free to act on its own.”

If the federal government elects not to become involved, each state may make it’s own decision as to whether or not to allow sports gambling and may regulate it in the way they see fit. This, of course, becomes a new source of tax revenue for the states. Most states, until this point, have de facto allowed sports betting by their lack of enforcement but watch them act now that there is money to be made.

It is interesting that the decision comes almost 98 years to the day after the Chicago Police raided Wrigley Field during a game between the Phillies and Cubs. The gamblers had apparently set up on a daily basis in a certain section of the bleachers and the police had undercover operators infiltrate the section.

When the dust had cleared 47 people had been arrested on gambling charges. According to John R. Schmidt, of WBEZ, 91.5, in Chicago, the betting was so intense that bets were often placed on each pitch and he quotes a participant as saying “Ten cents says he swings.”

The year before, the baseball world was rocked by the Black Sox Scandal where eight Chicago White Sox players were accused of throwing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. All the players were acquitted of criminal charges but were banned from baseball for life. The scandal was likely the cause of the city taking action against the gamblers.

It will be interesting to see how baseball and the other sports react to the legalization and regulation of gambling on their games.

— Carl Johnson lives in Sanford and writes a weekly baseball column for the Journal Tribune Sunday. Contact him atbaseballworldbjt@yahoo.com and check out his blog at baseballworldbjt.com.