1968 10-09 Tigers at Cardinals World Series Game 6

The day a single inning rewrote the rhythm of a World Series

There are moments in sports that arrive like weather: sudden, inexorable, reshaping everything in their path. In St. Louis, on a gray afternoon at Busch Stadium, one of those moments arrived in the bottom of the third inning — and it did not leave the Cardinals much of a home.

How a loose game became a rout

The contest opened with routine tension: pitchers finding edges, hitters probing, umpires keeping the tone. Early on, Ray Washburn flashed the breaking ball that had made him a reliable starter, but control wavered. A free pass here and a pitched ball that hung there produced a sequence that turned ordinary batting practice into a pressure cooker for St. Louis.

Then the Tigers exploded. A walk, a double, a single — baseball’s small arithmetic — turned into a chain reaction, and Jim Northrup's grand slam detonated the inning. Fifteen batters came to the plate; ten runs scored. What had been a competitive game became a study in momentum, where one clean stroke and a handful of misfires opened a canyon in the scoreboard.

The anatomy of a turnaround

Big innings are not only about one swing. They are the story of a pitching staff’s cracks, the infield’s choices, and a lineup refusing to hand back opportunities. Washburn’s early command gave way to walks and hitters finding holes. The Cardinals cycled through relievers — left-handers and right-handers, tall prospects and veterans — trying to stem the tide, but the Tigers fed off each lifeline, turning every base runner into a new problem.

Tactical instinct matters: Detroit’s hitters stayed patient on a day when the Cardinals erred in and around the plate, and the managers on both sides were forced into quick decisions that would ripple through the rest of the afternoon.

Pitching, patience, and the pressure to change

The game became a portrait of pitching decisions. Washburn’s initial promise, followed by Larry Jaster and then a carousel of arms, illustrates a central paradox of big-game baseball: a starter’s early mistakes put a bullpen — sometimes unprepared, sometimes overextended — into the spotlight. The Cardinals’ frequent changes could not blindside the Tigers’ rhythm; instead, every mound visit seemed to accelerate Detroit’s scoring.

Denny McLain, on the other side, fashioned control into quiet dominance. As the Tigers' run total climbed, McLain’s composure held; he scattered hits, struck out batters at key moments, and kept the Redbirds’ sluggers from stringing together rallies. In a game defined by one monstrous inning, there was also the quieter feat of one pitcher doing his one job well: shutting down an offense that had once been a champion.

Weather, crowd, and the theater of baseball

Rain came and went, umbrellas bobbed, and the crowd shivered through interruptions that could have unstitched momentum for either team. Instead, the storm amplified the drama: the long pauses made each at-bat feel momentous, and when the clouds broke enough for play to continue, it often felt like a fresh page in a tattered book.

Even amid the rout, individual narratives persisted. Lou Brock, the fleet-footed leadoff machine, continued to carve numbers into his World Series ledger; veterans like Roger Maris and Orlando Cepeda found moments of contact. The scoreboard may have told one story, but the field kept multiple threads alive.

Legacy beyond the innings

Historic innings become shorthand for eras. A ten-run explosion, a grand slam, and a pitched masterpiece by the winning hurler joined to push the 1968 championship series into a decisive final game. For Detroit, the game was more than one afternoon’s annihilation: it was a rebuke to narrative, a demonstration that a series can swing on a single act of sustained pressure.

For St. Louis, the afternoon became a checklist of lessons: the vulnerability of a staff once trust erodes, the danger of allowing walks to become innings, and how quickly a postseason script can flip.

What the numbers don’t tell

Baseball’s box scores capture outcomes, not the texture of a day: the smell of wet grass, the hush before a pitch, the way a crowd’s roar becomes a sound without edges. This game was a reminder that sport is sensory as much as statistical. The players’ small gestures — a clenched fist, a stare, a runner’s headlong slide — became punctuation marks in a narrative that had acquired urgency by the second.

Time in sport compresses and stretches; a single inning made this game feel longer, denser, and more consequential than any of its preceding frames. It reshaped a series and reinforced a truth about competition: momentum, once seized, can feel as inevitable as the tide.

In the end, the scoreboard recorded a lopsided afternoon, but the real ledger was written in confidence and consequence; one inning crystallized an entire season’s worth of adjustment, risk, and character.

Key points:

• Jim Northrup’s grand slam ignited a ten-run third inning that tilted the game irreversibly.
• Denny McLain combined control and poise to limit the Cardinals while his offense erupted.
• Ray Washburn’s early control problems forced multiple pitching changes and widened the gap.
• Heavy rain and delays heightened the drama, turning routine moments into high-stakes theater.
• Even in a rout, individual legacies — from Lou Brock’s steals to veteran instincts — remained visible.