Classic No Mas - Who Killed Donnie Moore?

Twenty-one years ago today, in the top of the ninth, with the Angels just a strike away from the World Series, Boston's Dave Henderson hit a two-run home run off Anaheim reliever Donnie Moore to put the Sox up 6-5 in game 5 of the ALCS. Eventually, Boston would win the game in extra innings and then romp through the next two, earning themselves a trip to Shea for some "what might have been" heartbreak of their own. The Angels, meanwhile, were devastated, and none worse than Donnie Moore himself. Here's a post I wrote in July of 2006 on the anniversary of Moore's death.
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As we here in New York prepare for the 20th anniversary of the ’86 Mets World Series triumph and what promises to be an autumnal barrage of drug and champagne-addled reminiscences, today is a day to remember a darker ghost hovering over the ’86 playoffs.

On this day seventeen years ago, July 18th, 1989, former Angels’ reliever Donnie Moore shot his wife Tonya three times in front of their three children at their house in Anaheim. Tonya and daughter Demetria fled to the hospital, at which point Moore turned the gun on himself and committed suicide in front of his two sons.

Would Moore have shot his wife, and then himself, had he not given up a two-strike, two-out, ninth-inning home run to Boston’s Dave Henderson in game five of the 1986 ALCS?

Maybe. We’ll never know. Moore was a troubled soul, plagued by depression and alcoholism even before the Henderson disaster. But clearly, that one pitch haunted him until his final moments. Moore pitched two more ineffectual seasons with the Angels, hounded by the boo-birds. He was out of baseball entirely by the time of his death. As Moore’s agent put it in the New York Times obituary for Moore, “He felt he was the next Ralph Branca.”

It’s odd how over the years Henderson’s home run has taken on the air of a fait accompli when in fact it was anything but, certainly no “shot heard round the world.” It was a blow for sure, a two-run homer that put the Red Sox up 6-5 in the top of the ninth. But the Angels came back to tie in the bottom of the ninth. The Red Sox won it in the eleventh, scoring the deciding run on a Henderson sac fly. Moore was still pitching.

That goddamn Dave Henderson.

Of course, the Angels still had a 3-2 lead in the series and had two games left to make it past the Sox into the Fall Classic (in retrospect a result that would have sat just fine with one Bill Buckner). But Boston romped in each effort, 10-4 in game 6, and 8-1 in game 7.

In conclusion, a few things to remember about this infamous game that made Dave Henderson a legend and Donnie Moore even more tortured than he already had been:

• Henderson did not start the game. He entered in the fifth for Tony Armas, who’d twisted his ankle.
• The Angels were leading the series 3-1 and went into the 9th leading 5-2. Don Baylor hit a two-run bomb off starter Mike Witt, and Angels manager Gene Mauch brought in Gene Lucas, who plunked Rich Gedman, bringing Henderson to the plate. Mauch called for Moore.
• For his decisions in the ninth, Mauch would be just as vilified as Moore by Angels' fans after the series, Mauch who still carried the stigma of failure for having managed the 1964 “Pholdin” Phils.