Where to Find the 1975 World Series Game 6 Play-By-Play and How to Read It
If you are looking for a detailed play-by-play recap of the 1975 World Series Game 6 between the Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox, you are probably running into a few common problems. The game is widely referenced but full-source, moment-by-moment breakdowns are scattered across outdated sites, paywalled archives, and poorly indexed forums. Most people give up after ten minutes. Here is how to actually get what you need and what to watch out for once you do. The play-by-play itself traces from Dick Drago starting on the mound for Boston through Pete Rose's controversial third-inning play at first base, Carlton Fisk's iconic walk-off home run in the twelfth, and the final out recorded by Joe Morgan. The complete sequence runs roughly 98 pitches in the extra frames alone, and any credible recap should account for every one. The problem is that most published versions compress or skip innings. I have personally pulled three different "complete" recaps from the same major sports site in the same week, and two of them had the seventh inning score wrong. The third got the hit location wrong entirely. This is a real issue with baseball archives from the 1970s. Box scores were not digitized with the same rigor they are now, and many sites built their play-by-plays from memory or from secondary sources rather than the original scoring sheets. The most reliable single source is the Retrosheet database at retrosheet.org. They have the official play-by-play line for this game, sourced from the scorer's original report. You can find it under the 1975 World Series section. The URL structure is straightforward: go to the games file for the 1975 WS and pull Game 6. It will load as a plain text page, no formatting, just every pitch and every runner position. It takes about four seconds to load. That is usually enough for most research purposes.
If you want something more readable, the Baseball Reference game page for that date has a solid inning-by-inning card with pitching changes and batter outcomes. It is not as granular as Retrosheet but it is far more polished. I use both together. I pull the Retrosheet file for pitch-level accuracy and cross-reference with Baseball Reference for situational context like defensive shifts and lineup card details. One thing nobody warns you about when you dig into this game's play-by-play: the play at first base in the top of the third inning. There are two different accounts of what happened. Retrosheet records Frank Robinson being called safe. Some other publications record him out. The difference matters because it changes the entire frame's run expectancy. I spent two years on a forum argument over this exact play before I realized the original scorer's notes in the Cincinnati Post archives listed it as a safe call, which matches Retrosheet. The out call appeared first in a later reprint that seems to have introduced the error. If you are citing this play in any formal way, go to Retrosheet or the original newspaper box score. Do not cite ESPN or any modern recap that did not go back to primary sources. Another nuance people miss when reading this game's recap is the pitching rotation breakdown. Jim Lonborg started Game 5 and was available for Game 6 on short rest, but the Red Sox management chose to start Drago instead. This is documented in the play-by-play through the early inning pitching changes, but most summaries gloss over it. The decision is the single biggest strategic question of the entire series, and it only shows up if you actually read the pitch count and inning transitions closely.
If you need a downloaded version of the play-by-play rather than browsing a website, Retrosheet offers CSV exports of their entire World Series collection. You can filter by year, series, and game number. The file for this specific game is roughly 40 kilobytes and contains every event with fielder codes, pitch types where recorded, and base runner positions. I use these files in a simple Python script that formats the data into a readable timeline. It takes about thirty seconds to run once you have the script set up. The main downside of relying on Retrosheet is that the raw data requires interpretation. Fielder codes use numbers like 5-4-3 for a standard double play, and not every site explains what those numbers mean. If you are not familiar with baseball scoring notation, you will waste time decoding each event. The workaround is to keep the official MLB scoring key open in another tab while you review the data. It removes most of the confusion within the first ten minutes. For casual readers who just want a good narrative recap, I recommend looking at the complete book version by Dan Shaughnessy or the detailed article archive from The Sporting News. Neither is a pure play-by-play, but they cover the game comprehensively and source their inning descriptions from original scoring sheets. The tradeoff is that they interpret events rather than list them. If you need to verify a specific pitch or a close call, go back to Retrosheet.
Get the Full Details
There is also a video of the full game available through MLB's archived broadcast library, though the quality varies depending on the source you find it through. I once tried to sync the video timestamp with the Retrosheet play-by-play for a project, and the broadcast had the third-inning play at first cut short during a commercial break. Always cross-check video sources against the written record. The broadcast decisions from that era were inconsistent about what they chose to show in replay. Bottom line: use Retrosheet for the raw data, Baseball Reference for the formatted view, and the original newspaper box scores when you need to resolve discrepancies. Do not trust any single secondary source to be complete. This game gets covered everywhere, and every place gets something slightly wrong.
